LIBRARY LOUNGE

The following is an excerpt from a post by Leslie Burger, the current President of ALA, on her Blog “Burger’s Blog” back in January of this year. It is titled Leslie’s Tips for Transforming Libraries and you can read the whole thing at http://burgerforala.blogs.com/burger_for_ala/

3. Step Outside the Box

Determine what it will take to change the way people think about and react to your library
Identify ideas for excellence, a laundry list of items that will help transform your library
Evaluate your current practices — are they customer friendly?
Consider the practices of other successful libraries and competitors to determine what might work in your library
Challenge the status quo

I posted this because I think it goes along with our dicussion of “sacred cows” and how and what we do at the library. I believe that now is the time for each of us to evaluate what we are doing, how we are doing it and how well it is working. We can then take this information, and the opportunity we now have by being a District with a Mil Levy, and build an incredible library district that will be the centerpiece and heart of our communities.

Mindy

I have quoted again the last part of the article that Melissa posted because it is exactly what we talked about for a week at PLA Boot Camp 2. I hope that each one of us will ask ourselves these questions and re-think exactly what our libraries will look like. We have a great opportunity now to really make a difference in how we do business and I hope that we take it! Mindy

“But, just how much are the differences between bookstores and today’s libraries worth to our customers–those who have to foot the bill?

This is not just idle speculation. These are the real costs we ask our customers to pay every day to run our libraries per the status quo. But would they concur with our judgment if they were aware of the alternatives?

Here are some highlights about a library that decided to work on its Service Priorities and get rid of some of its sacred cows!

“With students shunning its 28 stories and opting to conduct research by mouse click, the library is on an outreach offensive, shelving once-forbidding rules and replacing an old circulation counter with a coffee bar, where hot drinks and soda are for sale and an assortment of pastries are on display behind the counter. Chicken wing deliveries are allowed, along with other previously banned activities, like cell phone chatter.”

“In the place of old furniture, there are now lime green arm chairs and bistro tables. ”

“In its old form, the Du Bois Library, like many of its contemporaries, had strict rules of conduct that forbade food and drink, and talk was typically frowned upon. But now, conversations are largely unrestricted, except in designated quiet areas on upper floors, and students can take food from the café to a bustling new study area on the garden level, dubbed “The Learning Commons,” where reference books and rows of library tables have been cleared out in favor of carrels and computer stations. The library now has wireless Internet access.”

“The changes appear to be having an impact. With 149,859 people walking into the library last month, use is up 27 percent over October 2005. More students are taking out books as well. Circulation as of June 30, the end of the most recent fiscal year, was up 84 percent to 435,524 from the same time the year before.”

Other libraries that make these types of changes have similar results. If you want to read the whole article you can go to:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/11/25/coffees_on_dusty_books_are_out_at_umass_library/
Coffee’s on, dusty books are out at UMass library [The Boston Globe]

Mindy

I have competed my first tutorial for the staff and uploaded it to esnips. If you have not been invited to view the esnips “Intranet” for employees please let me know and I will send you an invitiation so you can view these files.

The first tutorial is step by step instructions on how to set up Open Office so that when you save documents they are saved in the Microsoft format. What this does is allows those documents to be opened by Microsoft programs. For example: If you were to write a letter in Open Office Writer and you save it in the Microsoft format you will then be able to open it in Microsoft Word and Open Office Writer.

Click here to access the How To Do It Tutorials for Employees.

Please let me know what you think about the tutorials as you do them.

Thanks,
Mindy

One of my favorite places to visit is a bookstore that has a cafe. Yes I love sugar and caffiene almost as much as I love books and to have them both together at the same time is like heaven. I happen to be a taxpayer and if given a choice I would ask for new/renovated libraries in Garfield County that offered a more inviting atmosphere. A small cafe and lots of comfortable seating would make me want to actually hang around at the library. It won’t be long before there is a Borders or Barnes and Nobel in Garfield County. Most of my friends have expressed a desire to have the library become more like these bookstores. And given a choice, even though I work at the library, you would find me at the local B&N in my spare time sipping my Chai, munching on my cookie and browsing through the latest new novels in a big comfortable chair. And I’m willing to bet that I would see a lot of my friends and neighbors there too!

Mindy

New Castle and Silt both hosted meet the author Amy Krakow and Sparky (the mutt) for Children’s Book Week. She’s written a series of easy books of Mutt and the Monster.
Thank you Diane for forwarding the photo and information.

Mindy

Printing: Your customers now (or will soon be able to) print in COLOR! We are going to charge .25 cents right now for color copies. It is going to take a little experimenting to determine how a customer prints in color.

In Open Office it appears that the user must select: File: Print: Name: and then there are two to chose from Color or Black and White. I am not sure yet about printing from other programs/pages on the DiscoverStations.

We are also still working on scanning. The installers will train you on using the machine and show you how to scan and e-mail the scan to your e-mail address.

Mindy

I have been so pleased to see that the youth librarians are using this forum to communicate their thoughts on story time and other issues that affect how the library reaches customers - How about the rest of the staff?

What about our sacred cows….

How do fines help (or hinder for that matter) us to achieve our service priorities. How does staff feel about fines? What do the customers tell you about fines? How effective are fines? Could there be a better way to protect the publics funds and provide excellent customer service?

What about reference books? Do you know that the Internet (Google in particular) is answering BILLIONS of ready reference questions every year while libraries reference questions are declining at a steady pace all over the world and are only in the Millions now. Our own statistics show that every month we are answering fewer reference questions than the same time a year ago. If the information is on the Internet and we are spending lots of dollars on Databases, why are we also putting reference collections in every branch? Should we be spending our time and money on teaching information literacy (so we and our customers know how to find and assess information), and less money on reference collections?

What about food and drink in the library? Do you think our customers would be happier with or without this rule?

Now I know you all have opinions about these sacred cows - so let’s hear them!

Mindy

I received the following from the County:

Hello Fellow County Employees!

I know many of you have still not received your flu shot and it is important to us that those of you who wish to get one do! So here is some information on when and where you can do just that:

We will be doing a walk-in clinic on Tuesday November 21st from 11am – 2pm in the BOCC room at the Court House Plaza in Glenwood so please pass this information on.

In the Rifle area, you can walk-in our office at the Health and Human Services building between 9am-12pm and 1pm-4:30pm Mon-Thurs. Or if this time doesn’t work for you please call our office so we can make arrangements that will work (that goes for both the Glenwood office and the Rifle office).

There is no charge for County Employees. Spouses and children do need to pay, adult flu shots are $20 and children flu shots are $15.

It is true that there is not a shortage of vaccine this year, but shipments have been delayed, making it difficult to set days and times of flu clinics. If you have questions please e-mail or call me. Thank you, Sara Harter

Sara Harter RN, MSN
Garfield County Public Health
Immunization Program Coordinator
Ph: (970) 625-5200 ext. 8107
Fax: (970) 625-4804
sharter@garfield-county.com

Emily is right, Garfield County Libraries can and should be proud of the work that their Youth Librarians do reaching out to our community. Our Summer Reading program is VERY successful at reaching a large percentage of a population in our community. I believe if we were to ask the taxpayers of our County what they would like to see us do, one of the things at the top of the list would be to foster a love of reading and learning in children.

One important part of the hypothetical situation that I outlined regarding story time earlier this week is that we are talking about INDIVIDUAL children. How many different children attend story time in a given time period? For example, if 10 children attend story time every week and there are 52 story times per year that would be 520 attendees. If it is the SAME children every week attending we have only reached 10 children in our community – not 520. 10 is a much smaller percentage of our target market than 520.

So the next step in determining if a program is REALLY reaching your target market or not is to determine what percentage of your population in Rifle is preschool children. Then determine how many INDIVIDUAL children are attending story time. What percentage of the preschoolers is this? If it is less than 50% can we say we are being effective in doing what our community has asked us to do? Are we using taxpayer money in an appropriate way?

I am certainly not advocating change for the sake of change – change is way to painful, difficult and time consuming to do it for no reason at all. But to change a program or process so it is more effective is the only way to be successful and to survive. If by taking our wonderful story times on the road we were able to reach more than 50% of the preschoolers in our community we should think about this type of “change”. Also it is important to remember that to add a program we must often take away from somewhere else. I am sure all the youth librarians would agree that they are very, very busy and to just keep adding programs without taking away other less effective and time consuming duties would just not work.

Mindy