Director’s Thoughts – 1/17/24

Today I want to talk about trying new things. It’s still the beginning of the year and I thought that it made sense about making changes at a time when a lot of people are resetting for a new year with resolutions, words of the year, and goal setting.

Librarians and library staff fall into two camps – those that are excited to make changes and jump in wholeheartedly to new ideas and cutting edge technology and those that work best in tradition and the expectation that what’s happening is the best way to do things.

As a library director I’m always looking for ways that either make my staff’s job easier and safer or that help to benefit the patrons and when an idea happens to achieve both of these goals, I’m always ready to jump in. I was in a unique position when I became a library director because I had already been working in this specific library for eight years before I became the director. I took over from a director who had worked in our library for 40 years and was supportive of the staff trying new things, but kept the general state of the library at a status quo.

Beginning as a Director

So, while most people would suggest taking an entire year before making any changes in an organization, I waited about 5 months before starting to make changes. I’m sure for my staff it was a lot to handle after having done things the same way for so long, but for the most part they were really great about trying all my hare-brained ideas.

I tried to make a point, and still do, to talk about these changes with my department heads so that they know what’s happening and can also give me feedback about the intricacies of how to make some of these things happen. Once, I get the department heads on board, I send out a staff-wide email to talk about what is changing and why. And that’s the important part, I truly believe that while a lot of people struggle with change, it’s taken better when they understand the why behind the change.

I knew when I became director that for some people the change would be really hard and I asked a lot of questions, and if the answer was something along the lines of, “Well, we’ve always done it that way,” then I knew it was something I could look into to make it better. If there was a specific reason for it, then by all means continue on, otherwise let’s talk about whether or not we can change to make it easier or is there another way to do it.

Easy Changes

A perfect example of this – a month or two into my directorship, I asked what I thought was a very simple question. “Why do we stamp the top and bottom of each new book before it’s gets put on the shelf?” My staff were flummoxed and basically told me that “Well, so-and-so taught us that way and so everyone else has been taught that way.” And so I asked, “Do we have to?”

After a quick conversation with tech services, circulation and reference, we decided to stamp only the top of the book. While this might not seem like a huge improvement, for my tech services staff who cover every single book that comes through the library, it saves time and energy from having to stamp both the top and bottom.

New Changes

Over the past 4-5 months, I’ve been working with my circulation and reference departments heads to combine our front desks. Right now we have an information desk and a check-out desk and unfortunately with limited space and less staff, we don’t really need to have both desks covered. Plus, it’s super confusing to patrons because they’re unsure of where to go with specific questions. So, we’ve spent months looking at the budget, figuring out the layout, talking through logistics and in the next month or so, we’re going to combine the desks into one.

We’ll still have circulation and reference duties, but the staff will be expected to help each other out (something they’re already doing, it’ll just be easier to do when everyone’s sharing one desk.) Eventually, as staff members retire, we’ll begin hiring more general library assistants who can work both at circulation and reference without the clear delineation between the tasks.

It’s definitely a chance, but with less in-depth reference questions and more questions about basic technology skills, printing, and the like we need more staff to help with these regular tasks and also help with the fact that our circulation numbers continue to rise and we need all the help we can get to check materials in and out.