Library Day in the Life Round 4

I thought I would add details of my working day to the PBWiki which seeks to capture a typical day in the life of a librarian.

I work as a Customer Services Development Librarian in a large county library authority in the UK. I am based in a district where there are 5 static and 2 mobile libraries. There are two Librarian posts in the district plus the District Manager who also happens to be a professionally qualified librarian.

My day? It began with me dealing with a comment card from a customer at one of the libraries regarding a specific area of stock.

I then had a meeting with the other senior staff in the District i.e the Manager and the Community Development Librarian. We meet on a monthly basis to go through the District’s Annual Operating Plan and monitor where we are with the various outreach activities that have been organised. As we’re approaching the end of the financial year we have achieved most of our targets. We discussed preparing an annual report on the year’s activities to share with our partners on the local City Council (and with other library staff in the district). We work closely with the City Council as our biggest library is in shared premises with the local Museum (or rather it will be when we move back once building work is carried out) so it is vital we are informed of one another’s activities.

The remainder of the day was spent preparing this annual report and dealing with emails from colleagues in the District about various other matters, organising a meeting, and making sure that staff in the library were carrying out activities for today (Blue Monday) asking customers for inspiring messages to brighten up the day.

I left early today, since tomorrow will be a long day as I am going on a visit to Hampshire Record Office with other staff from my authority. We will be able to see how libraries and archives can work in shared premises in an innovative way. which is something of great interest to me as I am leading on a joint-working project with our local Archive centre.

So, a typical day. Most of my work involves thinking strategically and helping to develop customer services in our libraries (as my job title suggests). It is a challenging but very rewarding role and one which I enjoy!

Publicity, publicity, publicity….

Although I have been a member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals for many years, I have not been actively involved in the organisation. Until today, that is. I attended my first committee meeting of the Kent sub-branch of CILIP. I came away from the meeting having been appointed to (well, I volunteered) the honorary post of Publicity Officer!

That poses a number of challenges, not least that the members of the branch are spread across such a large county as Kent, in a great variety of libraries. With Chartered Librarian status not always a pre-requisite for professional posts, many librarians simply do not see the value or need of being CILIP members. Part of my challenge will be to promote the work of CILIP and the activities we organise locally for members and non-members alike (currently an AGM/visit plus a one-day study school). I intend to use some of the new forms of social media to generate a wider awareness of CILIP’s activities, such as by setting up a Twitter account or Facebook page for the branch. Interestingly, this mirrors something I am also involved with at work, in exploring ways of reaching new library users via social media. So watch this space for more details.

I would also be interested to hear from other librarians in Kent to find out what activities you would like YOUR professional network to provide for you. You may or may not already be a member of CILIP, maybe I will even be able to convince a few people to join! Please drop me an email me at hall62c[at]googlemail.com if you would like to know more.

To tweet or not to tweet? – that is the question

One of the problems that has been bothering me lately is how Twitter can be so easily misconstrued. I only discovered Twitter in February this year but since then have become a prolific Tweeter with 4181 tweets to date (well, they say converts are more Catholic than the Pope!). I have come to see the immense value of Twitter in engaging with library users (and non-users).

Unfortunately, my library authority doesn’t have an official Twitter presence (nor Facebook which is banned in the workplace). We have recently begun using Yammer, but this has drawbacks as it is an internal medium, excellent for sharing ideas and best practice amongst colleagues, but not a great deal of use in engaging with the public “out there”. So thereby arises a dilemma. Do I tweet events and happenings in the library via my personal Twitter account?

I have tended to do this, being careful to do this in a positive way, “on message”, to coin a spin-doctoral expression. For example, our library held a major promotional activity earlier this year which I was able to promote and then receive valuable feedback on, via Twitter. The problem arises, and the boundaries become blurred, when these work-promotional tweets become mixed up with my own personal tweets voicing my political views or views about libraries in general, which may not necessarily accord with those of my employer.

My Twitter profile makes it clear where I am located, but doesn’t specify my workplace and my Twitter bio states “librarian, trade unionist, left of centre” etc, making it clear that my tweets might reasonably expect to reflect these views. Yet in my professional life, I have to maintain political neutrality. Colleagues, who are now aware of my Twitter account, might read my tweets and misinterpret them. Or even worse, could accuse me of bringing my employers into disrepute.

One way round this might be to include a recognised #hashtag to indicate that my tweets reflect my personal views. Better still, persuade my employers to set up a Twitter page for individual libraries/districts so we can promote and publicise our own activities. I’m working on this one!

I would be interested to hear how others have dealt with this dilemma. I have come across various official library presences via Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, and it does seem that you can reach out to many more potential users that way. Surely it is only a matter of time before all library services adopt this method of communication. I hope so, anyway.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum

As requested from some of my readers yesterday, I’ll try and set down a few thoughts about the library staff forum which I facilitate in my district. I’ll try and do this in general terms without getting into specific details.

Each district in my library service has a staff forum chaired (usually) by the District Manager. The forum membership is comprised largely of the front-line library assistants (“Customer Support Assistants” in our terminology). The policy behind the forum is that is allows these staff a voice and enables them to suggest and discuss ideas. Senior staff in the district (manager, librarians and Customer Services Officers – these latter are responsible for the daily operation of library service points) have monthly meetings but the CSAs are necessarily excluded from these. We also have weekly staff briefings in most libraries but these are mostly for line managers to brief staff, as the name suggests. So the forum provides a “voice” for these staff.

I was asked by the District Manager to facilitate and chair the forum on her behalf. It consists of representatives from all grades of staff as well as from all types of service point – town centre, branch and mobile libraries, plus archives – but predominantly, the forum members are the front-line CSAs. Part of the challenge of my particular district is that there are three separate town centre libraries; historically these have always worked quite independently of each other. So the forum is a way of melding the district closer together as it allows staff from different libraries to meet, share experiences and best practice, and develop positive ideas for district wide projects. We’ve also arranged social functions e.g. quizzes, to forge closer links within the district.

Ideally, the forum meets quarterly, we rotate the venues of the meetings around the district which gives the members a chance to see other libraries and archives as, amazingly, some had not seen other service points only a few miles from their workplace! We have an agenda and proper notes from the meeting, which individual members are reponsible for disseminating back to staff in their workplace. We also rotate the forum membership from time to time to allow everyone who wants the opportunity to participate.

When I set up the forum I was quite clear I did not want it siimply to be a meeting where staff could whinge about problems – there is far too much of that already in the workplace – but to seek practical solutions to problems. We’ve discussed things such as coimmunication (which has led to some improvements e.g. individual libraries’ staff briefing notes are now circulated to other libraries in the district – they weren’t before; reader development – ideas which led to a tatty back yard at one of our branch libraries being turned into a Reading Garden; and promotion in general – a lot of ideas came from this and contributed to the major district promotional activity earlier this year – Lark in the Park when we held a family fun day with library activities, archive and museum activities, crafts, football and poetry in one of the local parks.

So staff are empowered to contribute ideas and then help to carry them through, and I feel the forum provides a valuable staff development opportunity.

If anyone has further questions, I’m happy to answer.

A good day at the office

Well, out of the office, actually, but still a good day!

One of my job responsibilities is to facilitate and develop the staff forum for my district, which includes staff from five static libraries, two mobile libraries and one archives centre. I have been carrying out this role for around 18 months and the forum seems to be working well, despite the challenges of engaging with staff from such a diverse range of service points. I was asked to design and deliver an interactive presentation to staff attending the annual staff forum conference, which took place today. This was attended by representatives from the staff forums in all the districts of the county.

It is fair to say that the thought of delivering this session had been stressing me out for a number of weeks, as I have never addressed a staff conference before. I decided to just “tell it like it is”, eschewing any fancy gimmicks such as PowerPoint as a) I’m no expert with PowerPoint and b) I feel PowerPoint is over-hyped and not necessarily appropriate in these situations.

I was allowed an hour for my session and thought initially that this would be far too long. However, the time just flew by! I started off by giving a bit of background to my 25-year career in libraries (that might well be the subject of another blog post!) and emphasising the variety of posts I have held which have covered all the main public library “specialisms” – I can bring this experience to my work with the staff forum. I then explained a bit about the set-up and challenges of working in my particular district, before going into more detail about how I set up the staff forum, its terms of reference, what we’ve talked about, what we’ve achieved, and some of the challenges for the future. A simple presentation but it seemed to be what was required. One of my forum members then said a few words about what she got out of attending the forum, and I did the same – from my point of view it gives me some much-needed managerial experience and the chance to mentor and develop staff to, in turn, enhance the services that we provide to our customers. After all, that is why we are here!

I then divided the delegates into three groups and got them to each discuss one particular question, then report back at the end. The topics I asked them to discuss were as follows:

1. What do you think the aims and objectives of a staff forum should be?
2. What do you think are the skills and knowledge needed to be a member of a staff forum?
3. How would you ensure that staff at branch libraries are involved in, and informed about, the work of the staff forum?

These discussions generated some good ideas, some of which I had considered and others which were new to me and which I can take back to my own forum. In any event I will be collating all the feedback from the discussions and circulating it round the county – and I hope the other forums will find it useful.

To my surprise, as I drew the session to a close, I found we were 58 minutes into the hour! It was a great development opportunity for me to have delivered this session effectively and has done wonders for my self-confidence! At any rate, I could then relax and enjoy the delicious lunch on offer!

If anyone else has any experience in facilitating or being a member of a library staff forum, I would be very pleased to hear it.

A national public library service for all?

The recent announcement by the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) regarding customers of one public library authority being entitled, on production of their home library card, to register as a member of another library service, has sparked an interesting debate, not least among some of my friends and followers on Twitter! This arrangement, as announced, in many cases formalises existing reciprocal arrangements in library services. My own service for example, has long permitted temporary membership of those visiting the county (e.g. if on holiday) and allowing them to borrow books during their stay.

Where the debate seems to have really sparked into life, is regarding access to online resources. Many public library services, my own included, provide access to a great variety of online information resources for our customers (e.g. the Times Online, Britannica Online to name but two). Many of these resources can be accessed remotely from home or office, using their library card number and PIN. What is to stop people from joining other library services across the country, and accessing those services’ own online resources in a similar way? What implications does this have?

Firstly, different library authorities may subscribe to more online resources than neighbouring authorities. Many library services allow people to register as members online and without formal ID thus allowing them to access their online resources. Therefore, one library authority may be “subsidising” access to the whole country! Other library authorities may then decide there is no need to subscribe, if authority X is doing it for them! It has been suggested to me that Manchester Libraries is now, effectively, providing online resources for the whole country!

Does this matter? Well, presumably the online resource providers may have views on licensing their products to such a potentially wide audience, and this could lead to an increase in subscription fees and the possibility these might be passed on to the end-user in the form of a charge for access. An “open to all” policy, could, in the worse case scenario, actually lead to a restriction in access.

The second implication of the SCL’s announcement, and one which they appear to be discussing, is the possible introduction of ONE public library membership card, valid across the entire country. Does this in fact mean that a NATIONAL public library service would be a better concept than the current postcode-lottery, unequal provision of public library services that we currently have under local government delivery? As usual, Scotland seems to be acting in a much more progressive fashion than other parts of the UK, with its National Entitlement card acting as at least a first step towards this.

Would this idea work in other parts of the UK? Given our current government’s ridiculous fixation with ID cards, would people see a national entitlement card as an ID card “by the back door”? Even if this card wasn’t introduced, would it be possible for a library card from your “home” authority, to be recognised by library issue systems in other parts of the country. Surely the technology ought to be developed enough for a library card with a barcode to be recognised anywhere, with a little bit of joined-up thinking between library system providers and library authorities.

Are public libraries too important to be funded and delivered locally? At least a national public library system would, perhaps, avoid the current spineless behaviour of ministers refusing to intervene in areas where libraries are threatened with closure and their inept response that closing libraries is a local matter.

It seems to me that the SCL’s announcement doesn’t actually go far enough – we need to be much more radical in widening access to libraries for all.

Is this all a pipedream? What do others think?

(Many thanks to my Twitter friends (especially @mickfortune) for the various links and sparking ideas to help me formulate this blog post)

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

It was with some despondency that I read the report in the Boston Globe recently about the school which has decided to ditch the traditional bookstock of its library in favour of providing information and literature solely in an electronic format.

The headmaster (note, not a librarian) states : “When I see books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books”.  Whilst his approach may well work for his school (though I’m not convinced of that), I can’t help feeling his view is a little extreme.  I think that he is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in that by ditching traditional print-based material, he is denying access to information, rather than widening it. Can electronic means really equal, for example, the thrill of studying an art book in detail or turning the pages of a classic novel? I can well understand that school librarians are very worried by such moves; surely our role as librarians is to provide access to information via the widest range of possible means, not via one medium only, and to encourage and develop in our students a love of books. Surely books are not as obsolete as all that?  Can’t books and electronic access co-exist happily together?

Also very worrying is the information in the report that the reference desk (staffed, presumably, by a librarian) is to be replaced by a coffee machine!  Although the report does not mention whether, in fact, library staffing has been affected by the changes, the signs are not good.  And in my experience, coffee machines in libraries add nothing to the general ambience but are merely an embarrassing (and expensive!) add-on, tacked on by managers who should know better, to meet so-called “customer need”.

Perhaps one cannot draw any inferences from what an exclusive, privately funded school does in the USA, to what the publicly-funded, public libraries would do in the UK.  But I would certainly be very, very alarmed if  our public libraries were to adopt this model of service any time soon. There is certainly scope for a gradual increase in using electronic formats, but to complement traditional print formats, not replace them.

Supporting Independence

Earlier this week I attended an interesting and inspiring Disability Awareness Day, along with around 80 other staff from my library service.  This day was split into four parts, with workshops on deaf awareness, dyslexia, learning disabilities and visual impairment and sight loss. I could not recommend the day more highly to my colleagues. All the speakers were people who had first-hand experience of suffering one of these disabilities, thus we were told it like it is.

From my own personal standpoint, I should state that under the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act, I class myself as disabled, in that I have a limiting and long-term physical condition which has a continuing adverse effect on my ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.  In my case, I suffer from a severe hearing loss which has been developing since I was in my late 20s.  It’s difficult, and I do struggle at times, but on balance think that I cope reasonably well, given the provision of various adaptive devices both at home and provided by my employers.  I found it humbling when listening to some of the speakers at the training day, to see how they coped so cheerfully with much more severe disabilities e.g. a deaf lady who had been born with no hearing and had to learn to speak without ever having been able to hear human speech. (Can you imagine what this must be like? I certainly can’t. And never being able to listen to music?) And the young blind guy (whose sight has varied from 10% normal to total blindness) who was amazingly independent and cheerful in the light of what, to me, must be an horrendous situation.  To all intents and purposes, they were living a normal life, by our own feeble definitions of “normal”. What is “normal”?  Who are we to judge who or what is “normal”?

What effect does this have on libraries and their services? We learnt that 1 in 10 people could be classed as dyslexic. That’s 10% of our borrowers. And 250, 00o people in my authority are classed as having impaired hearing.  Again, that’s a lot of our customers.  We should be doing everything we can to make our library services inclusive to all, providing suitable materials and equipment to support independent living, and not least making sure all our staff recognise diversity and make this a principal focus of their service to our customers.

It’s also increasingly clear, and I speak from my own personal viewpoint here, that technology has revolutionised the way in which we can support independence. Textphones, email, subtitled DVDs, are all things which have improved my quality of life.  And there are a vast array of adaptive devices allowing blind people to communicate.  The dyslexic speaker, who could not read or write and was told never to bother looking for a job, now earns £2K aweek running a successful business from home, made possible by the advent of laptops and email, spreadsheets and other software.  At the very least, libraries can provide computer facilities, with suitably adapted software available on all pcs, and not just dedicated to one ghettoised, “Disabled” pc as may have previously been the case.

All in all, an inspirational day which has given me much food for thought.

Patience and Fortitude

To my mind, these are essential attributes for librarians.

They are also the names of the two stone lions who guard the entrance to the New York Public Library, which I visited on Monday.  It was a fairly brief visit as I only arrived in New York that afternoon and after experiencing the architectural delights of the cathedral-like Grand Central Station (and the gastronomic delights of the dining concourse there), it was getting on for 6pm and the library was soon to close.

The Library opened in 1911 and is similar in scale to the Boston Public Library, which I have visited previously.  Its chief glory is the vast reading room which stretches for two full blocks.  According to my guidebook there are 88 miles of shelving holding over seven million volumes, and the library has over 100 staff.  Lending services are located just across the road at the Mid Manhattan branch library, while this building is principally a reference and research library.

To gain admission, bags were searched (and also on exit), as well as inside when entering and leaving the reading room. Half the reading room is devoted to provision of public pcs, and despite the scale, there were obvious similarities with our set-up at home – computers can be booked for specific time-slots and accessed via one’s library card.  There were also catalogue terminals at which you could also access some of the library’s online resources – again these seemed familiar with such resources as EBSCO and Oxford Reference Online. The reference desk itself reminded me of a counter in one of the larger post-offices or banks.

I picked up a couple of brochures advertising forthcoming events for children/teens and adults – which are many and varied and cover the 82 libraries within the New York library system.  A far cry from back home where we have had to scale down our promotional activities because of reductions in staffing, even allowing for the differences between a vast city service and a rural county service, where our resources are spread more thinly.  It does seem (to me) that Librarians in the US are more highly-regarded by politicians, chief officers and the general public, than is the case in the UK. Whether that’s because the American Library Association has far greater “clout” than my own professional body, CILIP; or whether this is because of other factors, I don’t know.  It would certainly be an interesting exercise to “job-shadow” an American public librarian and explore the differences and similarities in greater depth.  Maybe I am completely wrong in my assumptions?  Whatever, to return to the title of this post, I must have Patience and Fortitude!

A Busman’s Holiday?

Whenever I am on holiday, I have a strange compulsion to seek out the local library and see how it compares to what I am used to back home.  As I have just been spending a few days in Washington DC whilst visiting close family living in the US, I thought I had better scope out the Washingtonians’ local.  You can’t get much bigger than the Library of Congress!

Having earlier paid a visit to the US Capitol Visitor Centre, I was able to enter from underneath, so to speak, via the tunnel directly from the Capitol.  Presumably this is the way that senators, congressmen and presidents also enter the building.  The general hoi-polloi, such as myself, can only visit a very small part of the main building, the Jefferson Building, which was erected in 1897.  The Library was however first established in 1800, but burned by the British in 1814 (yes, we were at war with the Americans then!) and Thomas Jefferson offered his own collection as a replacement.  You can still see part of Jefferson’s collection on public view.

On entering the building I was blown away by the ornate decor – marble columns, grand staircases, stained glass and all manner of mosaics decorating the walls.  Fitting for the world’s biggest collection of books and special materials.  Although there were rare books on display, such as Gutenberg Bibles, other media were not neglected and there were special exhibitions of early maps of Latin America, George and Ira Gershwin (including original scores and their piano), and Bob Hope and American vaudeville/variety (including film, theatrical posters etc).  I was also able to glimpse the main reading room, and took a sneaky photo (you weren’t supposed to!)

I particularly liked the “Passport to Knowledge” which you could pick up at the start of your visit, scan the barcode into a slot and enter your email address and then at various interactive touch screens throughout the building, you could add items (e.g. information about the treasures on display or about the decor) to your “myLOC” collection.  You can then view your collection at home by logging on to myLOC.gov and entering the barcode on your passport.

Oh, and now I’ve been there – I’ve got the T-shirt!

It was fascinating to visit the Library of Congress, although it is years since I studied the classification scheme and have only recently become reacquainted with it whilst working temporarily in Canterbury Cathedral Library.

I am now in New York, and you’ve guessed it, I had to visit the New York Public Library! But that’s a blog for another day.