Director’s Thoughts – 3/23/2023

It’s all about staff training! And at a time when public libraries are actively under attack with book challenges, staff training has never been more important. Due to COVID, our usual staff training was put on the back burner. But I felt like this year, we were finally able to come together as a whole staff.

I know a lot of libraries will try and bring in a speaker for something like staff development. But, before I had become director, our library had never had a staff training day that involved the entire staff. There were only department meetings for individual departments. I wanted to bring the staff together to learn together and work better together.

In the past, we’ve held staff training on President’s Day. We weren’t typically closed to the public on President’s Day. But we decided we wanted to close on a day that we might have been closed anyway, which just makes it easier for us to communicate with the public.

Homemade Goodies & Treats

I expect the entire staff to participate (minus our high school pages) and pay everyone to come in if they aren’t typically scheduled to work on a Monday. I also bribe my staff with homemade goodies – coffee cake or muffins and a fruit salad for breakfast treats and we offer lunch too. Lunch is super easy – a salad and pizza, plus a tray of brownies too. I was joking with my staff that if their mouths were full of food, they’d be less likely to be talking and not paying attention to training.

Training

I try to balance staff training with some lectures because I have to convey some knowledge and fun activities that the staff can participate in to learn more but in a different way. We start with a PowerPoint presentation to go over pertinent information. I choose a presentation with slides so that my staff can hear what I’m saying, read it, and also take their own notes as well. I typically go over “housekeeping” items – the little reminders to tell staff. Then I get into the meat of the presentation. This year, we focused on two different areas.

Online Resources

The first was our online resources. Much of my staff aren’t super comfortable with our online resources and our ebook resources as well. I spent a good amount of time going over what we offer and what it means for our patrons. I also encourage our staff to spend time exploring these resources while on the desk when they have time.

In fact, a few years ago my staff training was focused solely on online resources. Then I had “mini-tests” that I required my staff to complete by the end of the year. But, this year, I needed to spend more time on going over policy, so all the staff were on the same page.

Materials Challenges Policy

We went over a few policies that I wanted to make sure my staff was comfortable with. And also knew where to find them on our website and how to work with patrons in regard to these policies. We spent a lot of time going over our book challenges policy and procedure. With book challenges happening at libraries across the country, I wanted to make sure everyone on the staff knew what our policy is and how to work with a patron who has a concern about materials in the library.

Scavenger Hunt

After our lecture, the staff broke into teams to go on a scavenger hunt throughout the library for 15 clues. Each team had the same clues (color-coded), but they were in a different order. That way each team didn’t follow the same path. I have a number of competitive staff members who love doing this activity and a lot of staff learn something new! Especially since our library is limited in space, we’ve been moving collections around a lot to try and optimize the space we have.

Staff Tie-Dye

And finally, we tie-dyed t-shirts for our summer reading shirts this year! I wasn’t super excited by the colors or designs for the Summer Reading program this year. So instead, we decided to tie-dye our own shirts and with our new Cricut, we’re going to create our own design for summer. A lot of my staff had never tie-dyed before, so it was a really fun experience for everyone! My bathtub is still slightly turquoise from rinsing all the shirts in it, but the staff loved the activity and it was a fun, low-key way to spend time together!