Conversational Leadership, Poor Library Leadership, and What I Learned from Cesar Chavez and Carl Hayden

I recently attended one of the PLA trainings for the Certified Public Library Administrator certificate in Phoenix last week. We talked about strategic planning and building advocacy for libraries. The program was presented by George Needham and James Peak. It was a great discussion over the role of libraries today and how libraries need to change. More librarians need to take leadership roles in their communities. However, too many are reluctant and others don't seem to approach their advocacy efforts in the most effective means. This past week I listened to two great podcasts on leadership, one from Uncontrolled Vocabulary and the other from the infopeople podcasts, both of which were discussing the same issue on leadership. There is either a distinct lack of leadership or bad leadership and there are others afraid to take chances and lead their organization.

The Infopeople Podcast with George Needham and Joan Frye Williams discussed library leadership. Near the end of the podcast they discussed a training in which librarians agreed to change the way they do things and begin to lead. They talked about how they weren't going to be afraid to try new things. George when on to say that it is good to fall on your keister. However, no one wants to do that publicly (for example, you don't want to see your doctor do that.) One of the funniest parts of the discussion talked about how many librarians are "A" students in school, but that mindset leads to a perfection mindset. If a project or plan isn't perfect, it doesn't go forth. I was certainly not an "A" student in school and I don't mind making mistakes. I know that I cannot be perfect, so I don't try to be. What is better is to aim for something that is really good and be open to feedback and criticism. That way, a really good idea can come to fruition, but then I can adjust it to make it better. If I roll something out and declare its perfection, I won't be very receptive to making it better.

There have been many demonstrations of poor library leadership in the last few weeks. A lock-out in Victoria indicates that the library board doesn't care about the library. The demotion of several librarians to save money. The nepotism at many library systems where head librarians are being replaced by people close to the Mayor with no library experience. A Boston Public Library director is forced out and the mayor wants the library to submit all invoices to the city instead of providing a lump sum (essentially taking over the trust for the Boston Public Library).

All these moves were recently lamented by John Berry and Kathleen De la Cook the fact that libraries are changing into faceless community centers and by promoting automation and self-service we are losing our support base. Kathleen compared it to art and education and how it has been decimated in much the same way. She even laments this in her own library system.

The scary trends are the precise reason why librarians need to get involved in their communities (This isn't to suggest they aren't, but these are lessons to be learned.) We cannot just sit around and take what happens to us. We need to be proactive to our key community members and demonstrate library ubiquity. It takes a conversation with people one at a time. When I ran through my strategic plan, I was able to identify the key movers and shakers in the community and then demonstrate how the library can serve each of them. That continuous proactive conversation is key to sustain advocacy.

Reading about great leaders we can learn how, through overwhelming odds, people were able to succeed. These people saw a problem and moved to solve it. In one case, Cesar Chavez saw people taken advantage of and decided to do something about it. In another, Carl Hayden realized the problem in Arizona is lack of water and helped build the greatest water diversion project in the history of this country.

Leadership is very simple. It really just involves talking to people to get them motivated for a common cause. Once asked how he gathered so much support for his cause, Cesar Chavez said "I talk to one person, then I talk to another." The student asked again, "no really, how do you do it." To which the reply, "I talk to one person then I talk to another." Gaining library advocacy or getting a project going is the same. When it comes to leadership, people who lead don't have to be in any type of administrative role. They can get people motivated for a cause by persuasion. One doesn't need to be in administration to make that change if you talk to enough people. An open compelling conversation can be enough.

On the other end, conversation can also help diffuse a situation. You can never ignore something. If you don't talk about it or confront it, it will come back to haunt you. I picked up this little tip from Carl Hayden (This is from the book by Stephen Shaddegg: Arizona Politics: The struggle to end one party rule.) He was running for re-election in 1952, Stephen Shadegg was his campaign manager. He had two democratic contenders. They both did not have a chance to beat Hayden as he had been the Senator from Arizona for many years. (He would be the longest serving senator to ever serve, but Strom Thurmond broke that record.) Shadegg sent him on trips to keep him away from his two rivals, thinking that is what he wanted. However, without his knowledge, the Senator met with both gentleman much to the surprise of Shadegg. The reason:

"Never give your enemies any more reason than they already have to go on hating you."

People often get riled up for no reason and a conversation, often face to face, is the best one to have. It lets people know that you are human and sincere. Many people fall into this trap in their communities and online. If people knew more about you and who you are, they are less likely to be your enemy. In fact, the more they talk to you, the more the two of you will see eye to eye. It diffuses problems, but in a proactive setting, avoids them altogether.

I liked this article from PLN (you will need to register to read it), here is the snippet:
Citizens, engage! Jamie LaRue Speaks
SNIP

But civic engagement means more than politics and voting. It means taking actions, together, that result in a community worth living in, in which many can and do thrive.

That engagement will involve, on occasion, some conflict. There are competing visions of the future, and sometimes they have to be argued out.

The point, however, is not conflict. It is, finally, about cooperation, about processes of analysis and action to effect useful change.

What kind of community do you want to live in? And what will it take to craft that community, together? Isn't it time that you joined the conversation?

END SNIP

I am not trying to improve my library, but the community through the library. When workforce development came up as a community need, I needed to find out who to talk to and set up meetings with them. It takes persistence to the right people and get their attention. In the Infopeople Podcast, Joan Frye Williams stated that leadership is the ability to galvanize people into a group. This is what I was able to do when I spoke with the local college, the chamber of commerce, the Department of Economic Security. They are all moving in the direction of doing something, but not coordinating with each other. All I did was speak to each of them, see what they were doing, and then talk to the other groups. They had no idea what the other was doing.

The same thing happened when I tackled adult literacy. I spoke with local businesses regarding problems with their employees and they each knew others I could speak to in order to tackle this problem. Over time, I became the contact person for both literacy and workforce development because I formed the groups and made the contact. Now I know who to contact to move to make things happen. I don't have to talk about libraries, I talk about the community need. This is the key way we advocate, by talking to our community members and creating a library that fits the need of the community. The more we do this, the less people will see libraries as just books, but as a service that can do virtually anything. Once that is accomplished, libraries will be valued and insulated from some of the things that are happening around the nation.

Re-Imagine!

A few weeks back I finished a book by Tom Peters called Re-Imagine! Business in a Disruptive Age. I purchased the book from Goodwill and it was from 2003, but the book was all too relevant today. It is even more relevant for libraries.

Innovate to success, then stay there!
One thing that struck me was a part about business innovation. Businesses that have been around a long time cease to be innovative. In fact, they become defensive of what they currently have. There is no reason for them to change. They are financially solvent, they have a successful business model, and any change is risk. We can look at some of the businesses we all know today, are they innovative? Are they willing to destroy what they have to create a new model, to be innovative? Of course not, it isn't worth the risk.

Tear it down or "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
A business with a long life span is no different than a government agency. Government, of course, has been around much longer and changing the way they do business isn't likely to happen. Libraries, on the other hand, are probably on the most innovative edge of most municipalities. They don't exist to wherehouse books, but to solve society's problems. Furthermore, strategic planning is a key piece of that innovation. However, once one is set up, will administration be able to tear it back down and start all over again? These thoughts came to me as I was reading Reimagine! Some quotes:

..in turbulent times bosses...earn their keep by blowing things up and inventing a new way...not merely making better the old way (p. 32)

Failure typically means that someone has stretched beyond the comfort zone and screwed it up and learned something along the way (p. 27)

The secret to success is failure, fast success secret is fast failure, big success is big failure (p. 27)

Building the resource
When I first became the city librarian, the first thing I did was to create a strategic plan. It worked wonderfully. It engaged the community, brought attention to the library, and ended up with some very good print about how we don't do business as usual. The plan was implemented and we have had huge success. Now we are at the tail end of it with the major initiatives accomplished. We have done everything from establishing an adult literacy tutoring program (including a bookmobile service), to becoming a "third place" for teens, to developing cultural diversity programs and space for Spanish speakers, and now developing a workforce development piece. After this year, we will have accomplished what we set out to do. The result of that work is a 30% increase in circulation, a 50% increase in walk-in business, a 67% increase in technology usage, and 90% of our community owning a library card. The results from the strategic plan resulted in success overall.

Getting comfortable OR my way or the highway
However, there is a fear. There is a fear that once I get to the end of this, I will get comfortable. I will become like many of these businesses and say "this all works, I am not going to change a thing!" By next year, I will need a new plan. Will the public feel the same way about what we are doing? Will that change and result in dismantling what I have built? Will I be able to do it? Those are tough questions for me. I think that I would be able to do it. Realistically, the community needs aren't going to change any time soon. We still have workforce development needs; there needs to be more for teens to do. There will still be a need for people to learn English, but what if the community doesn't want us to do this anylonger? Will I still be able to put what I have done aside to allow the process to continue or will I believe that I know best? I believe that trying to do what's best for the community will lead to the right path. There is a great deal more change coming for our library. Can I continue to do the right thing or will I get set in my ways? Only time will tell.

How healthy is your organization? | Information Wants To Be Free

There is a great post by Meredith Farkas about healthy workplaces. This, in part, was inspired by a recent post over at Library Garden about why people leave?

There are several categories in the Library Garden post that discuss why people leave their jobs:

Pay-

Vacation and/or Holidays-

Hours and/or Nights-

Professional Investment-
Advancement-

To which I commented:
Pay
The system should be performing an annual compensation and classification study. This will ensure that pay is equitable. If you are not doing that, you can't complain that people are leaving for better pay. I had someone leave from a part-time to a full time in another county. That one is tough because it wasn't in the comp and class realm, but most of the people who work for me get the same pay as any other library in Arizona. Librarians make 41K same as Chandler, Arizona, Mariciopa County, etc.

Hours
This is a common complaint and the burden of nights and weekends should be shared. How can one say one should do more than another? In some systems, everybody wants to work a night or a weekend and it works better for everyone. If one is unfairly taxed, that is a reason to leave, but if you do it along with everyone else, there is not much to say about that. If everyone is committing equally and there are problems, it may need a review of hours of operation.

Professional investment
Every library should have a training budget. It should allow as many library staff as possible to go to training, explore their interests, and pay for their trips to conferences etc. Most libraries can only afford to send a few people, and then only higher up, if it can be opened up to everyone, the results are interesting.

Advancement
This one is the toughest. Most libraries are fairly flat institutions. They allow pay increases and there is some room for advancement, but not substatial. This has been an issue for me in the last three months. I lost a library assistant to a bigger system with more pay, I lost a librarian to become a library director in a neighboring town, and a I lost a senior library assistant who became a youth librarian in another neighboring city. There is no room for advancement at my small one library system. The only choice is to go to neighboring communities. It will change, but slowly. In the meantime, I will bleed because of it.


Meredith poses several questions from the book First, Break All the Rules. She repeats 12 questions from the book. I replied to them in her comments and am re-posting it here:

“1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?

Yes because we issue job duties not job descriptions. It breaks all duties down and details percentage of time. There is flexibility, but it provides the general idea.

2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

I always leave extra cash in the budget plus I ask staff what they need around budget time. I also have a Friends wish list that staff contribute to.

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

Job positions are not static. One person cannot do the same as another and it is better to mold that position towards the person’s desire. If they like providing programming instead of cataloging, I would configure it as much as I can to make it work. Sometimes there is flexibility, sometimes not.

4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?

I always do a manager walk around and complement staff on a job well done. I need to do more of that. Previously, I provided an employee of the month program so that staff would be recognized for good work and what they did that was so good. It has taken a brief hiatus. I will find an alternative.

5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

Personal time is very important to me. If someone is going through something personally, they won’t be very happy at their jobs. It is better to extend as much leeway as possible so that they can resolve an issue. I once had a staff member needing to take three weeks off in a few days to go see their dying mother. I let them take it and use it as sick time. This was a total violation of policy, but the person was able to get there before their mother died. A few days later, she wouldn’t have made it.

6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

I hope I provide enough encouragement for training and professional development. It is difficult because most of the training is in the valley, a 30 mile drive, so many are reluctant to go on their own. I put out a training program so that they can request any training they want and attend any conferences they want regardless of their status.

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
Meetings are usually feedback meetings. What is going on and what do we need to do about it? Do we need to adjust anything. Front line staff opinion is critical. If they aren’t providing honest feedback, I can’t make good decisions.

8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?

My library has a strategic plan and each staff members role is molded around providing active parts of the plan or support parts. I came up with a graph that represents each staff members role and displayed it.

9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

This wasn’t always the case, but with some training and some people leaving, everyone works more as a team.

10. Do I have a best friend at work?

I think that is established through after work programs. Some staff members set-up bowling after work or other events. Outside of work events help with this.

11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?

Everybody gets a review from their supervisor. However, it is important that there is a constant discussion about expectations and mission. If you are just doing a review every six months, you may be missing the day to day stuff. It also minimizes surprises at the review bad or good. No one should be surprised if I think they are doing a good job.

12. At work, have I had the opportunities to learn and grow?”

This goes back to providing training opportunities both inside and outside of work. The library provides regular training and elective training. Staff are allowed to attend conferences and programs. Most of them can only go in state right now. Some can go to national conferences. It is tough to afford anything out of state.

Finally, I will point something I read on Tom Peters blog about morale:

Top 50 Have yous?
SNIP
Have you thanked a front-line employee for a small act of helpfulness ... in the last three days?
Have you thanked a front-line employee for a small act of helpfulness ... in the last three hours?
Have you thanked a frontline employee for carrying around a great attitude ... today?
END SNIP

I would say the solution to all of these posts are the simple words thank you. I am surprised that in other organizations, people get so gaga over thank you. It shouldn't be this way. people should know they are doing a good job. There is a great point over at Slow Leadership about this issue:

SNIP

Gratitude isn’t just a pleasant trait, it’s also a very powerful one.

Thanking others and recognizing how much we all depend on support and co-operation makes it far more likely that help will be there when you need it. Those who help others most freely are most likely to be helped in their turn—provided that gratitude as recognized for what it is: a major constituent in the glue that holds together groups of all sizes, from a few friends to society as a whole.

END SNIP

I would say if you want to improve morale, the best thing to do is to say thank you. It is a rare commodity these days.

Doing it without Dewey: A Perry Branch Library Tour

The Back Story

The Perry branch library of the Maricopa County Library District, is a joint-use facility with the Chandler Unified School District and is located in the Town of Gilbert. This arrangement alone, for joint-use libraries, is a first to have three different government entities run one library.

The library has its grand opening on Tuesday July 10, 2007, but has been open since June 7th. It received a great deal of attention from the Arizona Republic article on May 30th that highlighted the change. Library Journal followed up with an article providing more detail, as well as School Library Journal. NPR followed up with an interview with Marshall Shore, adult services coordinator for the Maricopa County Library District. It began a maelstrom of comments from bloggers and on publib.

Some Stats
Hours
The library is open 10am to 8pm Monday through Thursday, and 10-5 on Friday and Saturday. They are open to the school from 7am to 10am only.

Maricopa County Library District uses Polaris ILS and PAMS Computer Time Management Software from 3M.

Joint-use library explanation
This is the second joint-use library in the Maricopa County Library District, the first being the North Valley Regional Library in Anthem.

Public Libraries are increasingly using this technique in order to keep up with demand. There is no mandate for a county or city to build a new library because they have reached a certain population threshold, a school does. A public library can be built faster and cheaper using this model using an IGA(Intergovernmental Agreement).

The IGA dictates how everyone gets along and who does what. It also determines what happens if the joint-use is dissolved. Who gets what books? who gets the computers? Sort of what happens in a divorce and the IGA is the prenuptial agreement. The school often builds the library and costs are split 50/50 with the library agency. Operations are performed entirely by public library staff with often a school liaison that ensures school rules are enforced on library property.

Often the crux of the issue with this relationship is one of responsibility. The school acts as the parent while the child is in school, the library has no such responsibility. This is where policies collide since one needs to restrict and one wants to provide access.

The best articles on Joint-use Libraries are available here:

Joint-use libraries - the ultimate form of cooperation

ALA's site

Joint-Use Libraries: A Bibliography

And the Wisconsin Check-list

Combined School and Public Libraries: Guidelines for Decision Making

Library Staff
Librarians (MLS)
1 branch manager
1 youth librarian
1 teen librarian (acts as school liaison and school librarian)
1 Adult Reference Librarian
Librarians (Non-MLS)
1 circulation supervisor
1 librarian
Library Support Staff
2 Library Assistants
5 library Pages
13 library staff in all (I may have made errors, but I believe I have this information correct)


The New Classification System

The library will categorize all of its materials like a bookstore, using the BISAC system (Book Industry Study Group) Subject headings. There are 50 different categories, of which, each is broken down into several different sub-categories:

ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES
ARCHITECTURE
ART
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BODY, MIND & SPIRIT
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
COMPUTERS
COOKING
CRAFTS & HOBBIES
DRAMA
EDUCATION
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
FICTION
FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY
GAMES
GARDENING
HEALTH & FITNESS
HISTORY
HOUSE & HOME
HUMOR
JUVENILE FICTION
JUVENILE NONFICTION
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES
LAW
LITERARY COLLECTIONS
LITERARY CRITICISM
MATHEMATICS
MEDICAL
MUSIC
NATURE
PERFORMING ARTS
PETS
PHILOSOPHY
PHOTOGRAPHY
POETRY
POLITICAL SCIENCE
PSYCHOLOGY
REFERENCE
RELIGION
SCIENCE
SELF-HELP
SOCIAL SCIENCE
SPORTS & RECREATION
STUDY AIDS
TECHNOLOGY
TRANSPORTATION
TRAVEL
TRUE CRIME

Each subject area has almost 100 sub-genres each. This system, in a sense, can provide just as much detail as the Dewey Decimal System with the full book industry making decisions on how books are categorized rather than a librarian system. Also, all the non-fiction is interfiled so Young Adult and Juvenile are with the general non-fiction. Young Adult is indicated by a big Y on the spine label and Juvenile is indicated by a big J on the spine label.

Our Tour guides



Jennifer Miele, the branch manager, was kind enough to provide a tour for myself and my library staff. We appreciated her taking the time to visit with us in lieu of her very busy schedule. School starts up in Chandler on July 23rd. We also were fortunate enough to meet with Marshall Shore himself, who was there checking on how things were going.


Our library is opening a new branch library that is joint-use. We are not planning to go without Dewey, but many of the concepts this branch is adopting can be used for any library.

The Tour

The first thing we noticed in the tour was how open the library was. The Perry branch has the exact layout of the Basha Branch of the Chandler Public Library System.









First impression
When you first walk in(left picture is straight ahead, the right picture show part of the children's section)

Service Spaces
Five 3M self-check stations, the service desk sits equidistant from the public entrance and the school entrance, near the school entrance sits a row of 40 computers for access)

(the far left picture shows how open the section is, most of the shelving is on wheels, the top row of all shelves have books that face out, all the DVDs face out)

The shelves state the Book Industry subject on the side, my understanding is that the signs will be on the top of each shelf. You can see the big FICTION sign all the way across the building.



You can see from one end of the library to the other from any part of the library. Center picture shows children's section and 100 person community room through the double doors. Self-check units being used on the right.

Cool Tech Toys

A tablet PC provided by Polaris. It's called the inventory manager and has the full Polaris ILS on it. You can check-out, check-in, and check inventory. The far right picture shows the self-check-in station, again a 3m product. Set-back here is that you can only return one book at a time. The book is placed on the conveyer belt, checked-in, and pushed to the "Willy Wonka" machine.

A table displays best-sellers and new books. A plasma tv screen displays library news and program updates.


On the left, the periodical room with four study rooms on the far left. They won't have many periodicals until January because Ebsco only cycles the magazines January to December. New subscriptions are not sent out until January. The middle pictures shows the large bank of computers. The far right shows the service desk. (almost hidden)

The Teen room, six computers, comfy chairs, and a very cool (but didn't appear to be too functional) bookshelf.

How books are shelved

This is the fun part. All the spine labels for non-fiction only indicate the subject area that they go in. So if it is a Psychology book, the spine says Psychology. The books are then shelved by title order. So a page would take the book, go to the psychology section and shelve the book where the title is.
The money shot

(if you want to see all of the pictures, click here)
Analysis: What works and doesn't work for this system

What works

The 50 subject headings work for a small popular collection library. The Perry library houses 27,000 items and their capacity is 30,000. Therefore, they are not planning to get any bigger. Furthermore, the non-fiction collection is also relatively small. As Marshall Shore states in his interview, on a small scale this works, for a bigger collection, it requires more fine tuning. That fine tuning would be housed in the many sub-genres provided by the BISAC (as stated there are about 100 for each category, leaving a possible 5,000 possible categories). The emphasis at this library was to keep the big 50 and to not touch it. I can tell from the tour that many of the librarians were itching to sub-genre, but were instructed not to. This is a smart move as I think the patron reaction to it is very critical to the success of this plan. The point of it is to make it intuitive, History is History not 979, no system is required of patrons. The best line during our visit came from a grandmother there with her grandson:

Grandmother: "What's Dewey?"

Staff Member: "It is the category system most libraries use to organize their books."

Grandmother (looking puzzled): "Oh, why do they do that?"

For a patron, they just want to find a book, in a small collection, the 50 subject headings work. However, if you need the exact book, you need to know the title to find it. In the back room, there is a possible lightening of the load as the dewey decimal number is removed, instead, the book industry decides where it goes and it is displayed on the spine label and in the MARC record. MARC accuracy needs to be maintained, but with bigger subject headings, less definition is required. The bigger the collection, the more sub-genres, the more complicated things become.

What doesn't work

Some set-backs would be the collection size. For a smaller collection, 50 subject headings work, but a library would have to break it down if they decided to change course and provide a strength in a particular collection, or if they became bigger.

For instance, if I wanted to find the book The Civil War by Geffrey C. Ward I would look in History and look for titles beginning with C. What if I wanted to find all the books on the Civil War library had? I would have to go over to the catalog, search for Civil War books, then scan the entire History section to find three or four books. If I wanted Civil War books in a Dewey Library, I could find all of them in 973.7. If I wanted to find them in a BISAC library, I would go over to history then search by title.

By contrast, Brady's Civil War , A new birth of freedom : Abraham Lincoln and the coming of the Civil War, The whirlwind of war : voices of the storm, 1861-1865, and April 1865 : the month that saved America, would all be in 973.7, the same section. In a BISAC library, I would have to walk over the entire length of the section to retrieve the books. Furthermore, serendipity is lost since the same books are not in the same section. This patron may not find Lincoln's men : how President Lincoln became father to an army and a nation, when looking for the books. In a dewey library, they would see it right away.

However, a patron who doesn't know Dewey, wouldn't be able to find the dewey section. They would have to learn the system first, then they could go right over. Often I will take a patron to a section of Dewey if they are looking for books in general on the topic to the section since I know Dewey.

Furthermore, if the BISAC library had that section sub-genred, they would find Civil War books in the Civil War section. I don't know a bookstore that doesn't have it sub-genred. So a BISAC library would have to unfurl the sub-genred section after a certain threshold. How many books are too many to scan in one section? That is what Perry Library will find out.

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One Dimensional Society: Library Talk and Michael Gorman

I read this post through Library Talk this morning.

It pointed to a post by Michael Gorman ranting about 2.0 thought is the sleep of reason. It is a blog post in two parts, and a third related one on wikipedia due out soon. Here are some of the highlights:
Part I here:


SNIP
These reference works were not only created by scholars and published by reputable publishers but also contained the paratextual elements (subject headings, indexes, bibliographies, content lists, etc.) also created by professionals that enabled me to find the recorded knowledge and information I wanted in seconds.

This small example typifies the difference between the print world of scholarly and educational publishing and the often-anarchic world of the Internet. The difference is in the authenticity and fixity of the former (that its creator is reputable and it is what it says it is), the expertise that has given it credibility, and the scholarly apparatus that makes the recorded knowledge accessible on the one hand and the lack of authenticity, expertise, and complex finding aids in the latter.
END SNIP

and Part II here:

SNIP
Publishers, developers of publishing projects, editors, fact-checkers, proofreaders, and the other people necessary to the publication of authoritative texts are all mustache-twirling villains to the digital collectivist. Such people see “gatekeepers” as antidemocratic agencies that stunt human development rather than as persons or entities seeking to promote intellectual development by exercising judgment and expertise to make the task of the seeker of knowledge easier.

The flight from expertise is accompanied by the opposite of expertise—the phenomenon that Andrew Keen has called, in his new book of the same name, “the cult of the amateur.” This cult, says Keen, “worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone—even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us—can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.” He is referring to the impulse behind Web 2.0, but his words have a wider resonance—a world in which everyone is an expert in a world devoid of expertise.
END SNIP


I have my own opinions (of course) on this topic. I agree and disagree with what Michael Gorman is saying and understand where he is coming from. However, there are some very true statements here and very false statements and assumptions here.



True:


The hive mind may not always be the best mind.

There is a subtle difference between the crowd shouting that you are wrong, or just shouting.



Expertise is lost

This is true; someone who thinks they are an expert can become more popular than the actual expert. This would be the difference between a Google search and a librarian. You can come across any old site and the information may or may not be true; the average person doesn't know the difference. A librarian will make sure the information is as accurate as possible. There is a difference.


You are not an expert, artist, whatever because you say you are.

These items are proven. There is an undeniable level of what good is. This can be found in looking at a library's collection. People can pick good books from bad. The good ones circulate without any promotion or attention; good is good, and most people can determine that. Bad is bad and most people can determine that.


False:
Our current society is undergoing a sleep of reason from web 2.0 concepts.

We may have a sleep of reason due to other things (depending on your politics), but 2.0 is not doing that. 2.0 is awakening the minds of many who may have thought something, but have never expressed it. This is good; more opinions and thought provide a great dialogue. One could also find a "diamond in the rough" within all the cacophony of 2.0 tools. Individuals posting their opinions is healthy for a democracy. Sometimes they are wrong. Well, we all are at some point, even "experts."


Wikipedia is inaccurate.

This is strange, but the more I look at articles on Wikipedia, the more amazed I am. At first I thought, it's not verifiable, you shouldn't trust it. I still think that. However, every piece of information is cited, just like any encyclopedia entry. There is a source to every statement; it is footnoted and linked to the bottom. If nothing else you can find great resources you wouldn't even find, even if you knew what you were looking for. The information is fast, not necessarily 100% accurate at first. The point is to get it up fast, then hone its accuracy later. Often times for the latest news, Wikipedia will have the quickest information (on major news stories).

Wrap-up

Our society is a one-dimensional society
I still subscribe to Herbert Marcuse's theory on society. There are trends that come which would seem to change the whole make-up of our society, but they don't. These ideas become absorbed and part of the culture. Think of someone with a mohawk; in 1982 they were changing our culture. Now, it doesn't really surprise anyone. Think of how many times people said "this will change our society," or "this will destroy our society." It didn't.  It just became absorbed. Not even revolutions really change our society; it helps spark a slow evolutionary change, usually for the better. Think about the 1960s; it brought about great change, but not overnight, and not due to the protests.


Today you can take youtube for example. People were creating their own videos and putting them up there. Now big companies are figuring it out and putting up their own content on their websites. Before you would not see tv online as much; now it is becoming part of the mainstream. Many blog writers are being picked up by the big industry; these are the diamonds. They are being absorbed; it is a natural evolutionary process. You have a revolution, people react, it changes nothing at first. Later, it is slowly absorbed into our society, making it better. That is our society today, in my opinion.

Twitter Update or how I was able to exploit the latest social networking site without really trying

So I posted last week about how my library is using twitter. A few people didn't see how twitter could be useful for libraries, but there are several benefits to using twitter for your library. When twitter originally came out, I did not see much use for it. I did not want to keep track of the every move of strangers. However, when several twitter tools came out, things began to materialize.

My library puts out a lot of RSS feeds using a subscription through http://bookletters.com. They produce newsletters, reviews, and other information about new books. It sends an update on new fiction, new non-fiction, mystery, romance, science fiction, and many more newsletters. Right now it produces over 20 newsletters that are preset and are produced without staff intervention. It also produces staff developed newsletters. Most of these newsletters are produced by staff and deal almost entirely with events. Again, the neat thing about these newsletters is the fact that I can dump the calendar of events into it and the old programs go away once they have expired. Once we plan out three months of programming staff only need to click a button to update the website for the newest program. These newsletters can be followed by going to the website, by getting the rss feed, or by subscribing via email. The majority of information produced is performed by this subscription. You can see it here.

Another piece of information we produce is information through our google calendar. This is a way for patrons to review all of our events at a glance. They can subscribe to our events through their own google calendar. I also set it up so the calendar sends the daily agenda to our library blog.

I established a blog through blogger and dump all of the feeds into the blog. It continuously updates without any staff time. I had some trouble with spam at first when I tried to automate the updates. I was able to develop a filter through gmail to send the update to the blog. I have not had any problems so far. An advantage of the blog is that one can subscribe to it, or follow it all they want. It also highlights all of the library newsletters so patrons don't have to subscribe to every single one, they can just subscribe to the blog. The daily events are also sent to the blog so patrons can see what we are doing that day, or if we are closed.

Polaris creates a feed for all new materials added. New books, videos, audio, and large print all have a separate feed and is updated as soon as the book is on the shelf. This is neat because you can follow the new materials in real time. I am attempting to develop a custom feed so that adult fiction, non-fiction, juvenile, easy, and Spanish books all have separate feeds. These are not dumped onto the blog, but can be followed on our website.

We also established a flickr and photobucket account. I have a direct link to flickr on our main page, and it has an rss feed. We use photobucket just to establish our library gallery page. The library gallery also has a feed as it is developed through the bookletters content management system.

So all this information and it can be dumped anywhere. What to do with it other than push it to subscribers? After reading about twitter and investigating the other tools with twitter, it became easy just to dump all of the feeds into to twitter using http://twitterfeed.com/or http://www.rss2twitter.com/ rss2twitter is an easier interface since twitterfeed requires an openid. However, there is more control at the twitter feed site as you can tell it how often to update. So I just starting dumping the feed in there.

My plan is to advertise the service in the local paper and one the website. I would have liked to advertise that anyone can subscribe to library news, events, and new books just by texting "follow cglibrary" to 40404. However, when I attempted the experiment myself, it didn't follow. I am investigating as to why. I set up the account and tried it with my own phone. It seemed to work fine when I texted. It prompted me to set up an account, and then it told me that whenever cglibrary updates, I would be notified. It didn't work. Of course, the side affect of trying this is that people who are just using the twitter interface online can follow the library quite easily that way.

From the trends I am seeing, I think only the truly dedicated would use only their cell phone to use this service. This also calmed my fears about just using it for cell phones since if people were following us via their cell phone, they would get at least six text messages a day, that can get a little expensive. I also thought that I might customize the feeds depending on the user. I am developing that now, but not sure if I will have a separate twitter account for adults, children, teens, and Spanish users. More investigation is required.

Another bright side is the incredible attention the library is receiving by developing the twitter feed. Really, it's not much different from many news organizations dumping their news stories into twitter. I think the discussion on how useless it was led to the attention since I found a simple practical use. Thanks to all the bloggers who brought it attention, Shifted Librarian David Lee King,Steven Cohen at Library Stuff (sorry had Thing originally), and to Daniel Cornwall at Alaskan Librarian for sending the information to the For Immediate Release Podcast. It's great to see libraries mentioned in non-library settings. This also helped produce an interview with Bryan Person via Twitter for his New Comm Road Podcast

Other libraries are twittering as well: Cleveland Public Library, Ada Comm Library, and the Lunar Planetary Institute Library. I am sure there are more, just not enough attention is being paid to them. If your library twitters, send a comment over to David Lee King. I will keep you posted on the twitter progress.

The Manager Questionaire

Some questions asked of me for a management project from a student at the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science.

1. Can you give a short account of how you came to be a manager? Was it a
conscious goal of yours to become a manager, something you wanted to do from
the start?

I have always been a reader, but the idea of becoming a librarian came later, management later than that. I have always been interested in management, but it didn’t become a conscious goal until I worked for some terrible bosses. I came into management with the idealistic goal of caring about workers and creating an organization that creates impact on the community. The former is always a moving target and takes constant care and attention, the latter can be done rather easily, but doing both will affect one or the other. For example, a great service for patrons may take a huge amount of staff resources, straining library services, but if you don't change services to meet patron demand, then usage suffers.


2. What traits, skills, and experiences do you feel prepared you for being a
successful manager?

Reading and experiencing bad bosses prepared me for most work situations. The book that had the most impact on me was On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors by John de Lorean. It talked about his experiences at GM and how he turned the Pontiac division of cars around despite management decisions that made it almost impossible to do so. I think this inspired me to think that with persistence, change can occur and in spite of negative forces working against you.

3. What could have prepared you better? (If you could, is there any advice
you would have given your past self when you first became a manager?)

I don’t know if there is more advice I could have given myself. I probably would have told myself to wait on management because of my family. It is hard with all the time commitments that take me away from my family. You have to take opportunities as they come. This was a big opportunity to run this library and I took it. Looking back I don’t know if I would have done anything differently, but my general advice it to make sure your family commitments are in order and that they understand the pressure and the time it will take away from them.

4. What's the most rewarding thing about being a manager? How about the most
difficult thing?

The most positive thing is knowing that you are making an impact on your community and on the organization. I love it when people come to work who are passionate about their jobs and about the library and when the community is just as excited. The most difficult thing is finding enough money to meet both the internal and external needs. Our city is not that wealthy and its priority is not with the library. Luckily, we were able to get a bond initiative for a new library on the ballot and it won by 66% this past November. This guaranteed library support in the community, a branch library, more staff, and more resources to handle our growth.


5. What do you like and dislike about being a manager as opposed to a
frontline staff member?

Any specific field of work is different from management, and management is essentially the same no matter the field. Librarian work is very rewarding as you are providing services right there and get a response from the patron right away. You can see the impact you are making from each patron. As a manager, you don’t directly see the changes you are making, and usually you only hear about the bad decisions. No one states that they liked a change, but you can tell that people do by the increase in usage, statistics, and general chatter.


6. What principles and theories of management have you found most effective
and accurate? How has strategic planning benefited your organization?

Strategic planning has been the most effective approach to demonstrating the library’s impact on the community. The strategic plan was also rolled into performance based budgeting which justifies budget expenditure by how well you are meeting the goals and objectives set by the community. We were the first to do this in our city’s organization and the response has been phenomenal. We have had major increases in usage from a general circulation increase of 20%, to an increase of computer usage by 50%.

7. What is the most difficult situation that you have had to deal with as a
manager? And how did you resolve it?

The most difficult situation was dealing with a major problem employee. In all situations, I would prefer to provide advice and guide the employee back to compliance and to become a productive member of the staff. When they flat out refuse to do so, the process is very stressful and demanding. I think that is why many managers simply refuse to deal with the situation. However, this hurts the organization dearly, and the removal of the employee in the end has helped the organization.

8. What was the most successful change you helped facilitate or implement as
a manager? Was there a least successful?

The most successful change was the re-establishment of adult literacy services at the library. Previously, the library used the Western Pinal County Literacy Council to provide Adult Literacy in the area. In 1998, that program was disbanded leaving hundreds of students to fend for themselves. In 2005, the library began its strategic planning process using PLA’s Planning for Results. This process identified Adult Literacy as the most important service. The establishment of that program took a great deal of creativity and reallocation of resources. Once established, we hit the front page of the local papers stating that Literacy concern Library with a positive article on what we were doing. We received 12 tutors just from the newspaper article. The program recently took the next step in establishing a bookmobile last month. It was a great accomplishment to create something out of nothing and to change the landscape so that Adult Literacy is not only on the radar screen, it is a major concern.

The least successful change has been in staff training. I had some success in December with two training programs on customer service and managing the angry public. I need to do a better job in training staff on technology and the changing world of libraries. We have the double digit growth and changing environment so it is hard to keep on top of all the changes and training staff for them.


9. What kind of relationship do you seek with the employees you manage? What
is your ideal?

I would like to have one that is professional, yet light. I want them to be passionate about their jobs, but not to take things too seriously. I would like their relationship with me to be a good one. In the end, I just want them to be excited to come to work every day and hope that they can approach all situations with a sense of humor. A sense of humor is essential when working for a public library. Some situations can be quite extreme and if you can find a way to laugh it off, it helps dealing with it. I just hope I encourage that.


10. Lastly, what is the key to keeping your team and yourself motivated?

I think they key is rewarding employees for doing a great job. I say thank you and tell them I appreciate them. I try to get treats for them on occasion if it has been a tough week. We have several staff events throughout the year, the Friends of the library provide a volunteer luncheon which staff can partake, they provide a staff appreciation reception, they invite staff to their annual dinner, we have a Pizza party in April for staff (usually indicates the end of the busy period, winter visitor season), and I have an employee of the month program in which the awarded employee receives a certificate, a $20 gift card to Walmart, and eight (8) hours of comp time.


Overall I have really enjoyed running my library. The changes being made in the community and the value the community has placed on the library has been fantastic. I am always excited since there is so much more that can be done and it is within reach.

Why I Became a Librarian

From Blog Pictures...

This is why I became a librarian!
I have always been a reader. My first full length book that I read was the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I chose it because the cover of the book featured a huge spaceship that reminded me of Star Wars. I was 11 years old and going through the Star Wars craze. It seems to be something most American males go through, almost a requirement to have an obsession of Star Wars.

As a child, I did not have the calling to go into libraries or public libraries. However, I did use libraries as a child. Libraries were how I got hooked on Harlan Ellison, was able to catch up on 50 years of Isaac Asimov's writing, and discovered my love for science fiction. However, most of my elementary school years were spent participating in the local Parks and Recreation programs like Flag Football. And so, even though I was a reader and used public libraries, it never occurred to me to become a librarian until I moved to Arizona.

I grew up in California and played football in high school. I was a good student with good grades, though nothing fantastic. In fact, in order to pay for college, my plan was to get a football scholarship, which I almost did. The school told me that if I started, then they would pay for my tuition, not a full ride, but tuition. That was good enough for me. I ended up starting center for a division IAA college team at 250 pounds. If you follow football, that weight is rather anemic, and so I had to try really hard to get that position. However, even though I started, they didn't give me a scholarship. In fact, they pulled me and wanted to red shirt me. That was the kiss of death. (A red shirt means you can't take more than 6 units of school. This is so the college can keep you longer and beef you up.) I was NOT going to sacrifice my education to play football. Football was supposed to pay for college. I quit and moved back home.

I still felt the urge to go away for college. The colleges where I lived were either not very good, or were very expensive. And so, when my father offered for me to move in with him and go to ASU, I went. In order to get in-state tuition, I had to establish residency for six months. It was the longest six months of my life (well, almost.) I couldn't stand just cooling my heels; I needed to find something to do.
Luckily, my father lived a few blocks away from the Ironwood branch of the Phoenix Public Library system. Everyday, I would walk over there and check out books to keep myself sharp. Even though I had previously been using libraries for quite some time, it had been a while before I had stepped into one.

I remember the first time that I set foot in there. I remember the whoosh of the automatic sliding doors. I remember the smell of the books. I felt like I wanted to live there. I spent hours there everyday, mostly in the history section. I checked out Will Durant's Story of Civilization. It was fabulous! I was a history major as an undergrad, and I have loved studying history since junior high school. The storytelling in these books was amazing. Every single aspect of history, culture, and social life was discussed in these books- the way civilization was interconnected from one region to the next. I studied these books intensely, carrying half of the volumes home in my arms in the few blocks to my house. (If I wanted to be more dramatic, I could say it was five miles and it was snowing, but it doesn't snow in that part of Arizona, and it was less than a mile. :) It was not the only set of books that I checked out. I went home with new books almost daily, but that particular set made an impact on me. I was able to keep sharp in my history studies. It gave me a background of civilization and filled in my cultural memory so that when I was finally able to register for college and take classes, I was ready.

A few weeks ago, my library weeded part of the set of the Story of Civilization. It had not been checked out for some time, and of course over time a book set written from the 1930s to 1975 becomes out of date. So when I saw a few of the books from the set on the floor to be weeded, I asked for them. I was so excited to have these books which had such a profound impact on my life. It was the core of the reason I became a librarian. The experience of these books, and the Ironwood library, made me realize how one could learn, become educated, or keep sharp by using the public library. Any public library, no matter how small, can educate in so many ways. I also realized how much I just wanted to be around books all day. I was all set to go on ABEbooks or E-bay to get the rest of the set, but someone beat me to it.

This past Monday, I came home after work and my wife asked me, "Will you look at the bookcases? I think there might be something wrong with them." Now, the bookcases had been having problems; they were inexpensive and really cannot stand the weight of the books. When I walked over to the bookcase, I saw the above picture, the whole set of Will Durant's Story of Civilization. The antique set, in pristine condition. What a wonderful Valentine's gift. It is one of the most special gifts anyone has ever given to me. (The most special is when my wife creates art for my birthday, Valentine's Day, or Father's Day). My wife is an amazing person; I love her so much. Thank you and Happy Valentine's Day to you!

Successful Saturdays: Hiring First Rate People or Excellence is a Moving Target

Today's Successful Saturday will focus on hiring good librarians and how what is defined as good changes.

The ultimate question of any librarian fresh out of school is what do libraries look for when they are hiring. There is no right answer to this question and unfortunately many good librarians don't get hired because they are just not the right fit for the organization. As an administrator, sometimes you wish you could hire two or three people from the list, but alas there are only so many jobs. One time I was very lucky and I could hire two people at once and they both turned out to be a great boon for the library. I have also had openings where I could not believe we could not find one good candidate. Since I began as manager at my library, the pool of candidates have gone from anemic to a horn of plenty. I can open almost any job and I know that I will get many good applications. The close proximity of a great library school also helps, but even the paraprofessional staff pool is very diverse and talented. It can be very difficult to choose when you have several people that can do what you need them to. That is where the situation of the library plays a factor in the final decision.

The situation of the library can be the greatest determinant as to whether you will be hired. If the library is under transition, they may be looking for more experience, if the library has had the same administration for some time, they will just be looking for someone who can do the job in the description the best. I have been in both situations where at one point I needed someone who knew what they were doing since I didn't, and at other times I could hire the smile and train the skills. The latter is what I would usually prefer since it is easy to train skills, but it is very difficult to train good customer service. Even the delivery of a reference question can determine whether the patron had a good interaction or a bad one. I have witnessed the exact same question answered by two difference people and the delivery from the person with good customer service skills, particularly when bad news is delivered, it the critical difference. If you cannot find the answer or need to refer a patron, good customer service tells the patron that you did all you could and they appreciate that. Treating a patron less so tells the patron I don't have time for you, don't bother me. You can send this staff member to customer service training again and again makes no difference, they just can't change their personality. So if you are a manager and you can handle it, you should try to hire staff with better customer service skills than training.

Before I became manager, I was on the hiring committee for our new youth librarian. Our manager was leaving the position while we were in the midst of our ILS conversion. We also had an extremely high turnover rate with librarians and some general staff. Considering that situation, we would most likely hire someone with experience. We did not really get many great applications, and of those almost no experience. We ended up hiring someone without their Masters in Library Science because she had experience as a youth librarian, the only one of the bunch. Considering the library was about to be put into a tailspin with no manager and what would eventually become a year of having really no one at the helm, choosing someone with experience that could sustain existing programs was the best choice. After the mess that was at the library with the ILS transformation, having no one in the leadership position for a year, she left for a different library in the same county. She left for less money too.

Back to square one, only this time I was the Manager. I had to hire two positions within a six month period. I had to hire someone for my former position and then the youth librarian resigned a few months later as I mentioned. I ended up hiring two fresh recruits almost straight out of library school. Both had no experience as librarians at a public library. After some time at the library, I felt that I could hire two librarians that were fresh out of school with fresh ideas. Our first year with no manager left the library in limbo with no direction, the second year resulted in having to hire two new librarians where we already had a hire turnover rate. A lot was riding on these two librarians since we had to completely change the course of the library and move it from the 1980s into 2005 and neither had any experience.

What they brought was ingenuity, passion, and drive to their jobs and the library. They were dedicated to making their library the best it could be. Our adult librarian came on board in the midst of our strategic plan right in the middle of our winter visitor season, our busiest. The youth librarian came on board about one week before Summer Reading was to begin. This is the worst time a youth librarian can come on board because they have to hit the ground running. Both librarians changed the way we did programming and ordered materials for the library. They were both good customer service people and they immediately made great relationships with our patrons. The most often compliment that was mentioned to me was the great selection and the great programs both put on. Both of their collections were flying off the shelves. Their great programming and collection development led to a doubling in participation in programming and a 20% increase in circulation.

We are getting a large influx of patrons from bigger cities with bigger library districts. Normally, these patrons would expect lesser service since we are a smaller system. Surprisingly, it is not the case. Patrons are noticing that they can get the same level of service from bigger cities because we have great employees who know what they are doing. One great compliment came from a patron, she had come from one of the best systems in the state and mentioned how it is great that she can find such a great selection for her children and that she can always find a great read at the library. She specifically mentioned both librarians as doing a great job at selecting materials and helping her with her questions.

It didn't come from years of experience, but creativity, drive and passion for the job. That more than makes up for experience.

Fix-it Friday: Your Portal to Nothing Or a Prisoner to the system

To cap off my thoughts on the catalog and where it is going, today's Fix-it Friday will cover my struggle with the catalog.

Before I became the Manager at my library, I was a librarian. For a time, the former manager retired and with troubles getting someone hired, we had no Manager for three moths. During that period, we had to select a new Integrated Library Service (ILS) vendor and implement it. We ended up select the same vendor we had and just upgrading the software, mostly because it was the cheapest one and also because we knew all the staff. We also were only allocated $80,000 for our Capital Improvement Project, which also forced to buy the cheapest one.

The obvious lesson is that you should allocate more enough for your highest bidder and get the software that is best for the library as opposed to doing it on the cheap and being stuck with something that will take years to rectify. I was just happy to get an ONLINE catalog since the previous one was DOS. I remember asking them in my interview, “Where is your catalog.” The reply, “Oh we are stuck in DOS.” DOS what the heck is DOS you mean that stuff that was on my computer when I was like in elementary school? I remember afterward being a little confused about how that worked and then I used the catalog after my interview and it was indeed a green screen with green letters. (The Horror!) It was not available on the web so of course you could not access any databases unless you used the computer specifically for it in the library (and they were wondering why it got so little use.)

Getting the library online was a major goal of the library and mine. Once I was hired I realized that they had made an attempt to go online the year before, but it did not get funded. I was never sure why. The worse part was that the county library system was already online. They had been online since 1998 and this was 2002. The city could have easily paid to get in with the system. The major costs of upgrading a system, cleaning up the DOS, and all that fun stuff could have been partially paid by the county, with their help and expertise guiding us. I never knew why we never did that, but my hunch is that it came down to politics and control. The ironic thing is that when I did a TechAtlas technology assessment it recommends investigating joining our catalog with the county or with other libraries in the area, doh!

So we began implementation with no one in charge and just myself and another librarian. Both of us had been on the job for six months and the third librarian, the youth librarian, had just quit. Essentially we had no organizational memory of how things worked. Implementation was rocky, but it worked all the same. We still did not have web access within the first three months since we did not give our city IT in on the project early enough. Once enabled it worked fine, however we soon learned of a consistent problem with web access, we could not control any of the content.

We had accomplished our goals, online web catalog, check, better way to catalog books, check, ways to access databases from home and within the library, check, but we were stuck with the vendor’s name on the top of the webpage and this fresh out of the box look for several months, and now years.

We used to have the catalog search function as the first page you see when you went to our catalog. It was very boring and not useful unless you just wanted to search for books. We changed it to the “portal page” so that users could see we had databases, show our top ten lists, and provide information on the central page. We took several trips to a larger library system that was able to manipulate the system. We crashed the webpage a few times since we had no back up. We attempted to make changes to pretty up the main page. After many attempts, training sessions, and requests for help, we were still stuck with this blank page. The ironic thing is that it states “Your portal for more information” and immediately after that a big white blank space, right in the middle. It’s like having a library with nothing in it. I go online and read about Library 2.0 and all these functions, and I can’t even get events or library information in that spot. I realized too late that I couldn’t manipulate the data on this page because if I change it and screw it up, the ILS vendor will charge me through the nose to change it back. I don’t have the knowledge or the expertise to change it and the system is very strange to work in and manipulate. However, I do see this same page across the country with the same fresh out of the box feel. The vendor has provided many Library 2.0 items; book images, patron account management, RSS feeds, more intuitive search functions, a google-like search page, and a search by popularity. However, most of the neatest Library 2.0 functions are beyond my reach because I don’t know how to use their system or change the information. I have to have the knowledge of the code or software PLUS knowledge of their propriety software that only a hacker or someone totally dedicated to the project could do. So I am stuck with a blank page and am a prisoner to my ILS. I need to pay someone to fix this J

Successful Saturdays: Moving on UP or The Paperback Book Club

Successful Saturdays: Moving on UP or The Paperback Book Club

Today's installment of Successful Saturdays will focus on how we increased circulation at our library.


My library has a strange configuration. It is a split level building built in 1975. It is three stories tall, without the space. It has 16,000 square footage, but none of that is on one floor. 2,000 is in the downstairs area (which could also be referred to as the dungeon), and 2,000 square foot in the upstairs area (for administration, technical services, and other behind the scenes work), and 12,000 square feet on the main floor. We also have one elevator that connects all three that can often breakdown and mostly results in children playing in it. If you talk to most consultants about library building space, most of them will say that you don't need to consider multiple floors for a library until you reach 30,000 square feet. It is a simple question of access. Having multiple floors results in staff going up and down stairs and elevators to do their job, and requires patrons to do the same to access collections. This is an obvious problem if you choose to put anything downstairs, no one will know it is there.

Paperback books, audio books, music, and videos are typically your highest circulating materials. By rule, you should have these materials easiest to find as they will have the highest demand and the highest circulation. However, all of these collections were on the bottom floor out of site, which resulted in lower than average circulation for the entire collection. Money spent on these collections was also spent sporadically which is no way to promote your collection. If your materials are old, dusty, and in the basement with nothing new added month after month, your patrons will stop checking. I still remember a patron complaining that we did not have the Bible on audio book and asking what kind of library were we not to have that.

It was not that the collection development budget was inadequate, it was just that it was not properly spent. Before my employment at my library, the librarians were configured different so that only one librarian ordered all of the materials for the collections and none of the funds were spent consistently. It was a little here a little there. Money needs to be spent consistently on all collections with strengths in the highest circulating collections. You should not spend entirely based on circulation statistics, because then you will just be a bookstore, but circulation should be a major factor in how you spend money. When I became the Manager, we devised a formula that added up the number of volumes for the year and the number of circulation then divided each collection by the whole of the circulation. This allowed us to get a percentage of the circulation for the entire collection, we then multiplied the percentage for each collection by the total allocation of funds for the fiscal year. We then got a ball park figure as to how much to spend for each collection based on popularity. Another good resource is Collection Development Training for Arizona Public Libraries. This is a fantastic resource and if you are ever thrown into collection development with little or no formal training, this will make you look like you know what you are doing.

Even after spending funds consistently, we still had the problem with collections downstairs. It became an access issue since when the elevators were broken, those who needed it could not get the paperbacks and videos they needed. We decided to move the collections upstairs.

Now the library does not have an infinite amount of space and this project would involve the library closing for two days, they help of our City's Parks Crew, and the ingenuity and sweat of library staff. We got rid of our seating that was by our magazine section. (I touched on this in another post where we got rid of our resident transients by getting rid of this seating.) We placed all of our video collection by the magazine rack so when patrons walked in, they did not see a row of transients, but a row of videos, audio books, and music. Some people did not even know we had this collection. As a result, circulation jumped dramatically going from 16,000 circulations last year, to over 32,000 circulations this year and a turnover ratio of only six circulations per item to over 15 circulations per item per year. A great success, but the other collection, the paperbacks, is where we ran into trouble.

The paperback collection always had low circulation, to the point where we were not sure we were going to keep it at all. After discussion, we found that some of the collections did have high circulation, and after a heavy weeding to make space downstairs for our former upstairs seating, we received a lot of flak from patrons. We reduced the collection from almost 10,000 items to just under 8,000 in two months. Patrons were furious, “We can't find anything to read.”. I still remember a patron coming up to one of our librarians with book bag with only one paperback book in it, “This is all I could find today.” she said in an angry tone. We were playing with fire now.

Initially, we intended to move all the collections at once, but there was not the time or the space. Early the following year, we were able to use impact fees to buy tall shelving for an area in our Adult Fiction Collection (that was upstairs) to house our paperbacks. (Just another note, you should always put similar collections together so that patrons can find everything they are looking for.) We broke down the old half shelving and installed the new full shelving (the vendor provided the labor, thank goodness). Then we moved the paperbacks upstairs.

We still had to weed the collection even further to get the collection to fit in the upstairs section. We received additional flak as we reduced the collection from 8,000 items to 4,000 items. I thought the patrons were going to riot, but we never ended up weeding anything that was actually used. The turnover rate was less than 2 on average, whereas most libraries have double that rate for their paperback collections. Once we moved the collection upstairs, we discovered something, people began to find the paperbacks who had never used them before. “Where did these paperback collections come from!” Circulation ended up going through the roof going higher than it was even with almost 10,000 items and we ended up with a turnover rate of almost 5 circulations per item. Looking back, we discovered that our patrons wanted the paperbacks downstairs because they developed their own little paperback club. No one else knew about the collections so it was like their own personal library, which is great for the individual, but bad for the community. It is better that the majority of people could find the books, and discover new books, rather than a few people have their own personal library.

As a result of our moves, we increased circulation throughout the collection, but particularly in the collections involved in the move. We provided additional space for more computers, going from 11 computers to 30.

Successful Saturdays: Why Literacy is Important or Adult Literacy is so 1990s

Today's Successful Saturday will focus on Adult Literacy. I have posted a couple of times on the importance of Adult Literacy. This will document how my community changed its perception in 18 months.

When I first worked at my library, many patrons would come up and ask if we had a literacy program. After multiple inquiries in just a few weeks of working there I discovered that we had a literacy program several years ago that was volunteer run. It failed due to lack of support, no new blood, and volunteers just getting tired. The problem still existed, but no one was there to solve it. I always wanted to find a way to restart the program, but never received support from administration. Once I became the administration, I wanted it to be my first goal. The local United Way helped pave the way by releasing a report that states Adult Literacy would be one of their major goals in their strategic plan. This goal was one of three. When domestic violence and services to seniors came up, hoards of people came from everywhere and took up the challenge, but when Adult literacy came up, only the sound of crickets were heard.

Finally, a handful of people met with the United Way to discuss ways to combat Adult Illiteracy. Most of the people and organizations were actually early literacy experts or family literacy, no adult literacy people. What was shocking about our discussion was the fact that Adult Literacy was not funded or supported any longer. Family Literacy and Early Literacy were the big buzzwords. Adult Literacy hasn't been funded since the 1990s and is not a good path to go down. After some research, I found that many Federal Adult Literacy Programs were getting cut as part of No Child Left Behind. I got the general impression that Adult Literacy wasn't cool anymore.

It is difficult in a library when you have so many patrons grasping for any way to find help. We had some old videotapes for Adult Literacy- hooked on phonics type things. I found it embarrassing that a library that is supposed to introduce people to the joy of reading couldn't help an adult who need to learn how to read.

The United Way did a study of the entire county. I felt that this was really a cause of the people, but it would still be difficult for me to cram it down everyone's throat. This is another reason we did our own strategic plan. Again, with people from the community, they came to the conclusion that the library's number one priority should be Adult Literacy. The plan provided attention for the problem and spread the word about what we were doing. Other agencies began to contact us about their needs for Adult Literacy programs. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy came out with a study the summer after our Strategic Plan that stated 19% of our adults could not read at level 1. They could not read instructions on a can, fill out a job application, or read a simple story to a child. With the help of the United Way, these stats, and the help from a host of community members, we formed the Adult Literacy Task Force.

The Task Force meetings hashed out all the things we had discussed before. It will be a hard project. We won't necessarily get support from above or necessarily from funders. It will be difficult to reach the students since we can't advertise and can only do word of mouth marketing. It will also be difficult to hang onto tutors. It was one of the problems with the previous literacy councils. A tutor coordinator would be supposed to work 20 hours, but would really work 40 or more. There was a really strong aversion to doing something that burned out so many people before.

In the end, we decided that we needed to hire a coordinator. They needed to be a people person and highly dedicated. Eventually, they will probably need some sort of vehicle or bookmobile since transportation is a problem in our community. Very big needs here.

After getting shot down in trying to hire a grant person, I decided to reorganize staff so that a staff member would be the tutor coordinator. They would also need to be a master tutor trainer since we are far away from any volunteer literacy program. After inquiring into several programs, we decided on the Literacy Volunteers of Tucson. They trained our librarian for a small fee. She also received further training online at the Verizon Literacy Campus. One year after we finished our strategic plan, we had our first big project, we were ready to accept tutors to train for our Adult Literacy Tutoring Program.

The kicker is that our librarian completed the training right before the library's annual report was due. After the report to City Council, the big banner on the paper was “Literacy Concerns Library”. I touched on this last week so I won't rehash it, but afterward we received several calls from people wanting to be tutors. We ended up with seven tutors. After some further contact, we received four students.

It gets better. We then received a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act providing us with a Literacy Mobile. This will allow the tutor to go into the community and provide assistance remotely. Again, this was covered on the front page of the local paper. The editor to the local paper even wrote an editorial on the importance of Adult Literacy. We announced the program to other organizations. We then received calls from the local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs to provide talks on literacy since it will be one of their initiatives. In the end we received an amazing amount of political, monetary, and people support for our program. A year before this, it was said that Adult Literacy wasn't the way to go, but with some hard work, determination, and luck, we were able to change the perception of the entire community. After giving several talks to groups, we are raising the awareness of this need and how it affects the community on an economic level. If you have a business in town and can't hire workers that can comprehend instructions, you have poor production and accidents on the job. The need is definitely sinking in.

Last week, a gentleman came in and asked about the program. Our librarian came and talked to him, then sat down in a room and did his assessment. It was nice to feel that now, people can come to us and get help. The best part was happened yesterday. I was on the reference desk and I could hear a literacy tutor session. I could hear the student identifying her alphabet, “A...B...C..” and then reading some words from flash cards. It was a great moment.