Librarian by Day

David Lee King knows a lot about digital service, he’s the Digital Branch Manager at the Topeka Shawnee Library (and an author and a speaker).  If you are interested in digital services and aren’t already reading David’s blog, add it to your feedreader right now, go on, I’ll wait.

This wee he shared his Digital Branch Style Guide and it’s definitely worth passing around.  He covers

• General Guidelines for Blog Posts
• Citing/Attribution
• Featured Section
• Comments – What to do with them
• Creating a “Voice”
• How Can I Get a Conversation Started?
• I have a suggestion/problem. What do I do with it?
• Staff Responsibilities

Go read the whole thing.

I’ve seen many news articles and video lately about usage of libraries increasing during a recession. I’ve personally noticed my library seems busier.  While many have celebrated the increase of use and the public attention we so rightly deserve, we also need to consider the down side.  Our funding might be cut, the public is less likely to approve bonds or tax levies to increase services, in some cases staff may be laid off.  Libraries are masters of doing more with less and we are really going to need that skill now.  

The other side of recession is that is causes stress.  Patrons are likely to be less happy about paying their fines and, in general, be a little more on edge.  Staff are aware of the news and what is happening, even those who feel secure in their jobs, have family and friends who have been affected.  

So why am I asking management if they are ready?  All of this stress means an increase in irritable, angry, demanding, stressed out patrons who are rubbing up against your irritable, angry, tired, stressed out staff.  See where I’m going with this?  

The one thing you can do is try to decrease the stress level of your staff.  Happy library staff makes everything run just a little smoother (not to mention they are healthier and less likely to call in sick).  So given the hard times how can you do this? You probably don’t have the funds to hire a masseur to be on call in the break room. I found a great many articles on workplace morale, some things kept popping up :

• make sure staff feel appreciated
• encourage open communication
• training (almost any it seems)
• provide clear goals and expectations
• encouraging a sense of team
• empowering staff
• be flexible with time and schedules.   
• And  there is always the fish books

These are great general principles for all workplaces.  Oddly enough I couldn’t find any article or recommendations that were specific to libraries.  I can think of a few library specifc ones and a few general ones:

• ensure employees get break time away from a service desk
• make sure they have a clean, comfortable place to take that break 
• make sure staff feel supported by management in customer issues
• empower employees to waive fines or make other concessions that will smooth patron interactions
• cross train staff so they are comfortable working all service desks and understand what each point of serivce does
• pay attention – just being aware of employee attitudes will allow you to intervene to boost morale faster and more appropriately when/if need
• be ready – have a plan, know how will you boost morale overall and on a case by case basis
• take action – don’t wait to see the need before you put your plan into place 

What suggests do you have?  If you’re a manager what steps have you taken with your staff? If you’re staff what things could management do to boost morale?

Further reading:

• Libraries Are Used More in Recession
• The library – a recession sanctuary
• The Public Library Renaissance
• Library usage increases with the recession
• Library usage up in wake of recession
• Obama Warns of Severe Consequences Without Stimulus Package
• Foster Success for People: Two Musts for Employee Motivation and Positive Morale
• Eight Leader Behaviors That Increase Motivation, Morale, and Performance…And One That Won’t
• Downturn in economy increasing stress in the workplace
• Top Ten Ways to Retain Your Great Employee

Remember how last month I blogged about using a wiki for the library’s  Readers Advisory Site?  It looked like this.  Well we ran into some issues, the IT department was having some problems with the input form and the other Librarians didn’t like it (I’m not gonna list their complaints), so I started rethinking it.  Since I was going to be building a new one from scratch I knew I wanted patrons to be able to print out the lists as well as be able to use it to see the record in the catalog.  I also wanted something other staff were comfortable and familiar with.  I knew many of the staff set up a blog during our Library Learning 2.0 program.   I’m very familiar with blogging & WordPress, and I knew I could tweak the pages and post to make it function the way I wanted.  The library already uses WP for it’s main blog so it was a simple matter to have another blog set up.  I got to work and it worked out even better than I’d hoped!  See it here, read on for the how I made it happen.

First I created 7 Pages,  including “About” & “Local Lists”, which has links to locally created lists for adults.  I set the Home page of the blog to “Local Lists”.

I then used Posts to create the individual local lists, each Post is a different list.  Once the Post is published to I grap the URL and add the link to the appropriate page.  Since the homepage is set to the Local Lists Page, the blog posts don’t show up.

For example when I was creating the “If you liked Harry Potter” list for children, I wrote a new post post, titled it, added the content (title, author and call number) in the body of the post, hyperlinked the title to the catalog, and added some tags.  When it was complete, I published it, grabbed the URL, went to the “Local Lists for Children” page edited it by adding the new list title and link.

Other staff can be given a their own user name and password and WordPress allows me to set their administration rights individually.  After they’ve created a list, then let me know it’s ready and I add it to the appropriate page.

A couple of very cool things that I hadn’t considered, happened once I started posting the lists.  First I realized I could assign tags to the lists, which make another way patrons can find them.

Secondly because it’s built on blogging platform people can leave comments, and they have! Patrons can leave feed back or suggestions or authors can plug their books, which is fine if teh ocmment matches the subject of the list.

Right now I’ve chosen a fun theme, the library is in the process of updating the website, so in the future I may change it to something that more closely matches the main site.

Pros:

• Easy to add new pages as the site grows
• Easy to Post new lists
• tagging makes finding a list even easier
• Patrons can leave comment
• Lists can be used in the library & from home
• Links to the catalog make is easy for patrons to check the status of an item or place a hold
• Lists can be created using mostly copy & paste
• I get good stats
• Each staff member gets their own username and password and administration rights
• Theme is easily to update

Cons:

• Staff need to be comfortable with creating hyperlinks
• There is no “undo” button is something gets accidentally deleted
• WordPress needs to be updated pretty often
• It does look like a blog, although I know it could be further tweaked so it doesn’t.

One of the first things we started when I came to MRRL was create online Reader’s Advisory lists for patrons.  We’ve used a couple of different services for this in the last 3 years, but they cost money and were controlled by outside vendors.  Earlier this year I was looking for funding to be able to add some new services and it occurred to me that the Library could save money by using a wiki to provide What to Read Next list.  I got the go ahead from the director, we installed Mediawiki and  I’ve been busy coding.  So I’m pleased to announce the new Reader’s Advisory wiki.  It is pretty “bare bones” looking, as wikis are hard to customize, but our logo is there and it has a nice clean look that matches our blog.  It includes links to lists created internally, pdfs, and lists other places on the web. I’m still working on it and in the spirit of 2.0 it will always be changing.    

Remember wikis are the platform for the content your patrons are looking for. They don’t care how it gets delivered as long as they get it.  Using a wiki just make your life easier and seamless integration makes your patrons life easier.  I’m not sure how many of our patrons will realize this is a wiki but they will be able to find the next book they want to read.   How are you using wikis?  How could you use wikis?

The first Online Picture Sharing class was last week and the second is this week, we only have 15 laptops for the patrons to use so we have to have multiple sessions.  I choose to focus on Flickr vs one of the many other online picture sharing sites inpart because MRRL has a Flickr account and because of the Social aspects of Flickr. 

I’ve started working on the next set of classes, one of them being Online Safety, this is a hard one for me because it’s important to me to teach people to be safe without making them feel like the internet is full of dangers.   Any suggestions?

I’m taking a break from the video game (PS2) I’m playing, to write this, because even though I tell myself the hard parts teach me patient and perseverance, they really make my head want to explore.   

Last night I finally taught the rescheduled Introduction to Blogging class I was supposed to teach in May.  I really love these classes and even better, patrons love them too.  They get hands on experience and one on one time with a library staff remember.  I usually spend the first half hour explaining things and giving demonstrations, then for the last half  we do hands-on.  Nikki teachs half of the series so when we’re not teaching we’re assisting the other person, because hands-on time for 15 people really does require 2 instructors.  The last half hour always turns into an hour and sometimes an hour & half.   The powerpoint and handouts only tell part of the story, the rest is demonstration, answering questions and assisting people with account set up.  Being flexible is the most important part, you don’t know the skill level of the people in the class and you can have a wide range, you’ve got to be able to cover enough so everyone feels like they are learning. 

I’m really curious, are other libraries teaching classes like this?  How are they going?  If so what subjects are they teaching?  How are they received?

I taught this class last night as part of the series of Internet classes I’m teaching to patrons at MRRL. I was a bit worried going into it, as almost all of the people at previous classes were seniors so I on the handout I added the websites I learned about at Internet Librarian last year.  It ended up being a very interesting mix.  I had some moms with their teenagers who wanted learn about Facebook to monitor their kids profiles, a lady interested in setting up a page for a Non-Profit, and some seniors.  I’m not sure I’ll teach this one again, probably I’ll cover it in Internet Safety that I’m doing later this year or I’ll redirect specifically to parents who want to know what their children are up to. 

It’s hard to teach people about Facebook, I think it’s just one of those things that is really hard to explain.  This is probably the least well done of any presentation I’ve put together.