Connecting Librarian

2010 was an interesting, challenging, awesome and also a frustrating year for me in terms of PD – professional development.

It was taken up almost entirely by taking on the Acting Branch Manager (ABM) role at our largest library. The plans for doing so went into place in April for a start in August, but I picked up the role instead in May.

I loved it!

Its not something that was new to me, I had been Branch Manager for 8 years at one of our other branches (before kids came along) and had been Acting Branch Manager at a few other branches along the way. It had been a long time though. My last such role was ABM at the same library, just before our old library service dissolved due to Council amalgamations and this new library service was formed – in 1996!

I didn’t stop working, the roles that I had just stopped having responsibility for staff and having the buck stop with me more often than not.

So 14 years, 4 senior managers and a lot of life ago, I did the same job. Well it wasn’t really. Things have changed a lot and yet have stayed very much the same.

The way things are managed is so much electronic now. Time-sheets, pays, maintenance requests, stock requests, communication etc are all done electronically. Lots of email.  But people are still people and that part of the job hasn’t changed in 14 years.

I was very fortunate to take over (temporarily) from a wonderfully organised Branch Manager who was still accessible to me to ask all the questions and for all advice I could ever need. I was also wonderfully supported by our senior management team and by the fantastic team of branch staff. If I could make up an ideal staff complement for a public library, it would look very much like the team we have already.

So what did I learn?

I am very much a task person rather than a people person per se, but age and experience have made all the difference. I first managed a branch at the tender age of 22 and had a lot of problems, which I was wisely assisted and managed through. Those issues were still with me as I took on this challenge, but have been erased. I was able to quickly pick up and take advantage of the strengths of my team and deal with issues when they arose – dealing with them head on as required. I was particularly proud of that achievement, because as with most people, I hate confrontation. But that’s why they were paying me the ‘big bucks’, lol.

On the task side however, I was also fortunate to have a large task to be undertaken during my tenure. We went live with RFID (which I LOVE!), with all tasks managed in-house.  We tagged our 94,000 items and quite a few thousand for our other library branches, rebuilt our circulation desk and removed our old information desk, installed all new equipment and went live – all without having to close the library at any stage. (I love a challenge!)

And that’s besides doing other things like major collection management, replacing all our public Internet PCs, changing our database offerings, changing to self-publishing our reading recommendations newsletters, beginning to offer downloadable audio books and all the day to day stuff that happens in a busy library.

I completed some great training to help me with my job, worked alongside some wonderful branch managers dealing with the same sorts of highs and lows as I was and who were always happy to help and was generally well supported and encouraged and left alone to do my job.

So the frustration?

I want to do more of it, but family circumstances dictate that now is not the time.  I am back to part-time work, but am looking to add some more hours to that in the short term. I have also been asked and responded enthusiastically yes,  to doing a similar role in future as the opportunity arises.

I have been on holidays over Christmas and will be ABM again for a few weeks – but part-time this time and then I will be trying to rediscover my old job and how I fit in with that and our Information Services structure – which has also changed since I have been away.  A new challenge!

Happy New Year everyone. May it bring you all the challenges you like and can handle.

Today, Monday 26th July, 2010 was Round 5 in the Library Day in the Life, where librarians around the globe write about what they did. Its a snapshot in the working life of librarians and builds an amazing picture of the wider ranging work that librarian’s do.

So anyway, here’s my contribution to the big picture.

Speaking of which, let me set the scene first. I am currently Acting Branch Manager at a large public library, which is part of a regional service in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. On a Monday, I have about 12 staff working at our branch and we have a weekend’s backlog to recover from.  So here goes….

8.45am – Arrived at work and noticed one of our emergency exit lights was annoyingly on the blink. As I needed to log a maintenance call to get it fixed, I did a quick review and noted other lights that needed fixing/replacing, before placing said call.

9.00am – Touched base with staff arriving for work and with some managers who were meeting with another staff before meeting with me.

9.05am – Made sure that all people who worked the weekend turned up and were paid appropriately. Very happy that this process is all computerised now and very straightforward. Last time I did this (many moons ago), it was all paper based.

9.25am – Adjusted our daily roster to accommodate changes arriving from the absence of one staff member and the addition of extra hours for another.

9.35am – Meet with our Customer Services Manager and our Adult Collections Manager to do a quick wander around our adult collections, to discuss needs, over stocking and collection maintenance. Our users will be happy to know that one of the immediate impacts will be that we will be getting more romances.

10.30am – More rostering and report completion.

10.40am – Assessing donations, dealing with duplicates discovered on our collection review.

11.15am – Started work on next week’s rosters as I realised I was going to be away on training the next two days. This involved compiling the weekend roster for two weekends ahead and beginning the desk roster for next week.  Got the first draft done, to be completed when I get back to the branch on Thursday.

12 noon – Lunch.

1.00pm – Short staffed over lunch, so spent the next hour trying to make an impact on the 33 boxes that arrived from our headquarters and other branches in our region. Along with one of our branch staff, we managed to get through about half of those boxes. Left the work in the capable hands of other library staff.

2.00pm – Dealt with stock rotation items that had appeared on the courier run. Assessed, made decisions on which titles I wanted for our branch, added them to our collection and sent the others on.

2.15pm – Did some website updating and created one of our e-newsletters – this one on suggested reading on the topic of Mind and Body Fitness.

2.50pm – Answered the email enquiries that had come in over the weekend. Queries ranged from “I returned that item” to “Can I do this…..”

3.00pm – Posted a staff created book review on our adult reading blog.

3.10pm – Briefed one of our librarians on what’s happened whilst she has been on holidays and what might be happening during the two days that I am away.

3.20pm – Added a range of CD’s from another branch to our collection and spent time accommodating them on our shelves.

4.15pm – Dealt with a couple of user issues – including payment for a damaged DVD and a disputed return of an item.

4.30pm – Spent the last of my day on desk which was uber-busy and involved a circulation desk overflowing with returned stock. Our process has been significantly slowed by the RFID tagging process, so an extra hand was very much required.

5.15pm – Finally headed home once I realised two things – one, that the staff could handle it and two, that if I didn’t leave, I could be there all night.

So that’s been my day. Not entirely typical, but not atypical either.

Hope your day was interesting, I look forward to reading of all you have been up to as well.

Its Day 25 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and I was reminded of what good poker faces librarians have when it comes to some days of dealing with our users.

One of our staff was at work, but feeling a little under the weather today and when she made a request of one of our users and received a snarky reply, she was snarky in response. This staff member is very genial normally, so it was out of character for her. When I caught up with her soon after, she said she knew as soon as she opened her mouth that it was the wrong thing, but it was too late.

The user didn’t make a complaint, but you wonder what impression she went away with.

On the other hand, when wearing our poker faces, we quite often manage to turn grumpy users into satisfied ones, just by remaining calm and working towards a mutually acceptable outcome.

Normally we can be ourselves, which is friendly, polite, open. Sometimes however, you just don’t feel like it, but its required for your job. We all have our ways of making the public face work when its so far from how we are feeling.

George Burns said “Sincerity – If you can fake that, you‘ve got it made.” I think he must have been thinking of people whose work involves serving others, like librarians. If we are to be successful, we really need to find the way to be sincere, when all we want to do is try to knock some sense into the very rude library user in front of us or curl up in a corner and leave the world behind.

For me, its a case of biting the bullet, putting the face into place, with maybe a bit more formality than usual and just getting down to it. Then taking a break when I need it, before it all gets too much.

So how do you copy with dealing with the public, when you just don’t feel like it?

Its Day 23 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and this week we have another work experience student.

Year 10 students in Victoria do work experience to discover whether their career interests are what they expect they might be. I did my work experience at a public library, which put me off working in a public library, but not in libraries in general. Cue the ironic music, that later this year I will be celebrating 25 years of working in public libraries.

We take work experience students at our library to hopefully inspire future library staff. Unfortunately we get many more requests for work experience than we can handle, so it usually comes down to first in, first served. Also unfortunately we are often not the first or sometimes anywhere near first choice of the students approaching us.

So we end up with the dilemma of trying to give those students a good experience of libraries, against their desire (or lack thereof) to be there.

Being in an area with lots of kids, our students tend to do a lot of work with our Children’s Librarians, who are incredibly patient and understanding. There is, as you would expect, a lot of what I call – desk support.

We also would love to take the opportunity to utilise their presence to work on project type stuff, but it tends to be repetitive and not so exciting. So trying to get work done, using their presence, when they take us away from doing work by their presence, whilst also giving them a good impression of library work is an interesting conundrum.

Finding the balance can be a real challenge.

Would love to hear how you deal with work experience students and what you do with them once you have them?