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Those of you doing curbside service, how are you handling it with the need for keeping distance and other recommended prevention measures? My library wanted to offer it but staff rightly said that if it couldn't be done safely they weren't going to do it.
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Mar 20, 2020 20:52
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 23:54 |
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A former system of mine is doing weekday mornings and evenings that are full on story times with music and finger plays with the books. And all branches are taking turns. Whereas our system is literally just reading a book at a camera. And only one very small chosen group gets to do it while the rest of the children's staff gets pissed at being excluded. Oh it's going to be fun when we get back.
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Apr 4, 2020 16:31
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JacquelineDempsey posted:
Sorry for going off topic, but the librarian in me can't help but try to help. You were evicted? A lot of cities/counties/municipalities passed eviction bans during the current crisis since yeah, it's a pretty lovely situation out there. Obviously not all did and probably smaller/more rural areas were less likely than larger urban areas but it's worth looking into to see if your landlord broke the law and you can hopefully get a bit of help. Okay we can now return to talking about decontaminating books and my favorite eye roller right now, how to quarantine books that people have touched when we let them back inside...
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Jun 29, 2020 11:40
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Captain Mediocre posted:I don't know how you're all managing but my library is getting very stressful during our long period of reduced service. I just resigned my position as a middle manager in a fairly large library system that had moved from curbside to limited reopening on July 6 with self service highly encouraged. Even with being reopen the feelings of stress and nothing to do have not lifted. Administration is having to bend their knee to county officials with the threat of layoffs but refuses to admit this to staff which just has staff not trusting anything administration does. And all of their complaints aren't going where they could make a difference. At my branch my management team decided that this was probably the best chance we would have for getting everyone up to speed on training. Improving customer service, learning the 3d printer, becoming experts on the software and services we offer to the public. We have a checklist for each staff member. Staff can choose what they want to work on first. And we have other staff as trainers to help guide and also to empower staff in leading. And it was easier to get staff excited because they could self direct for the most part. (Some trainings might even have the added benefit of improving resumes.) And if someone feels particularly strong at training, maybe they can make videos for the public about using library services. And our two biggest projects are readers advisory and "outreach" which engage all staff and give them an easy way to feel like they're still making a difference in people's lives. Readers advisory is a no brainer since most library staff do enjoy books and if they can engage the few patrons we have on the phone or in person there's an immediate human connection over talking about a shared joy. And our outreach is about meeting people where they are if asynchronously. So staff prepared activity packets that our homebound service would deliver with books. Or we took some family oriented ones to the shelter next door. And we purchased the materials for a story walk to place along one of the public footpaths. To keep people reading as they socially distanced and exercised outside. We also had monthly article/training discussions (were weekly while we were closed to public) so that staff could read about how other libraries were handling the pandemic and social unrest. We talked about trauma and stress management and empathy and mindfulness. We tried to acknowledge all the difficulties we and our public is experiencing to hopefully help everyone feel heard and better prepared. Was/is any of this successful? I don't know. Maybe it was like so many management projects: well intentioned but hardly effective. But I am a firm believer that having goals, no matter how short a timeframe, can help at least some people. I hate that I had to leave my position and it probably only added to their stress by now being without a branch manager, but like so many other things in this pandemic I didn't have much control over it. I hope some of these ideas help you to think of ways to keep staff excited to come to work and get them thinking about the library's purpose more broadly and seeing their own ways to help the community. Because it is a frustrating time not being able to see your worth. Good luck! a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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Aug 22, 2020 15:20
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Well, if you consider that no one will see any of that marketing/signage despite the fact that it's right in front of them and staff will still get a hundred questions a day, the sign a week before will probably be just as effective. Serious answer: you should absolutely give as much warning and help as possible. Then staff can at least say all the ways you tried to help those people before they got frustrated that you changed everything.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:28
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Parahexavoctal posted:NatGeo's been going for over a century. So my library (public) actually had a full set. Hard bound. They took up a ton of room an no one ever looked at them. They were the coolest thing to sit down and look at but never once did anyone need them or ask for them. I kept trying to figure out something to use them for or promote them. Their covers were green so we did use them to build a book tree every Christmas. Then we migrated ILS systems and they mysteriously didn't transfer correctly. So we were allowed to get rid of them then.
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Feb 19, 2021 11:58
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There is a perennial argument about separating versus interfiling of a lot of subjects/genres. The two sides are a) if it has its own shelf, the people who are looking for those types of books will find them more easily and find other books that they might like/be interested in all in one place and b) if they're interfiled with other books, people who aren't looking for them specifically might find them, enjoy them and expand their reading horizons. Whereas if they're separate they would never go to that shelf and so it reinforces their reading preferences. The solution for many libraries is, as Mr. Prokosch said, displays. They can be ongoing with the same type of books or they can differ depending on what of interest is going on that month, but displays are generally pretty prominent and you can include other resources on the shelf. If you have a bibliography of other titles that may be of interest, you can include those call numbers. You can have a poster listing local events happening on campus. You can recommend other books about the same topic with further information. There are options! Finding aids are also helpful. I like the idea of rainbow flags sticking up. You can have a list of all of the flagged books (though you'd have to make sure they were still there every once in a while probably). Those get people's attention as they're wandering the stacks. So that even if they aren't looking for that, they might pick it up anyway to see what that's about. And yes, the only way to get things done sometimes is to say that you will be the one to do it. If people making decisions know that they don't have to be responsible or find someone responsible, they're more likely to give the thumbs up.
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Jun 29, 2021 00:48
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"Some of them still have the mylar on." Whoa lady. No one is going through and taking mylar off of every book. But pictures and misplaced outrage like this are how library systems like my most recent one end up in national news, with the director resigning and the board deciding they're going to meddle in library details that aren't part of their purview. TBF there were a lot of other things going on that exacerbated the problem but libraries could do to be a little more aware of their image so as to avoid snoops like this causing a stir.
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Aug 12, 2021 11:20
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The people clutching their pearls about this are the same people working so drat hard to take books like Stamped or I Am Jazz out of the curriculum and off library shelves.
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Aug 13, 2021 02:45
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All Maryland public libraries went fine free earlier this year. Some of them are more well funded than others, but all of them are county government based or Baltimore City (with one exception that I refuse to acknowledge) so the funding isn't as tenuous as it would be in a small town. But it also meant that a lot of the fines that libraries took in went to a general government budget rather than straight back to the library so they're not necessarily missing it. But I think in general it's only good. It improves the library's image in the public consciousness, allows patrons who couldn't use the library but desperately need it to come back and most studies showed that fines didn't actually work as a good way to bring back materials. Increasing number of renewals also helps with this. The library I grew up with never had late fees and it seemed to work for them, also in an impoverished area. One public library I worked at in Ohio has a serious problem with theft and never returned materials. However, late fees don't help prevent either of these things either. So people who are going to not return materials on time or ever will keep doing it regardless, so might as well improve standing with everyone else. No part of a library's budget should depend on late fees. Because in a perfect world there would be none at all. So that's a larger discussion that the director needs to have with the funding source. For front line staff, it's almost always a positive move. So yay! Fewer angry people.
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Dec 7, 2021 23:52
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Lord Awkward posted:This seemed like it might fit here: I used to work there. And a previous library I worked at also had someone (not a BoE candidate though) also pull all the books off a kids' pride display. I'm pretty sure every library with a children's section pride display got complaints if not outright hostility of some kind. All I can hope is that the staff were actually trained and prepared for how to handle the situation. Ha, I know that's unlikely.
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Jul 1, 2022 22:57
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value-brand cereal posted:Question for the lilbrarians. Do you care if people not from your area* register for library cards to use online? I have learned this is a Thing which is very controversial. Me personally, I wish everyone had access to all the information, all the time free of barriers. But... capitalism. And that's why most library systems have to care about when people outside of their service area access their resources. The vendors that are providing access to that information/collection of media resources, sometimes have a payment model based on the likely usage. So, if you are a rural county in West Virginia with a service area population of 10,000 (not even the number of people who actively have library cards, but the number of people who could possibly have library cards should everyone remember what a great service it is), they will charge that system a different price than say Fairfax County, Virginia with a population of 1+ million. So if thousands of people outside of that West Virginia county start getting cards there in order to have access to their product, the company gets grumpy because they should be charging more. They would always rather a library pay them than not pay them, which is why they having different pricing models, but they still want to get as much as they possibly can. And while that may seem fair, it's still only a subscription. Which means it can be taken away at any moment for a host of reasons, up to and including allowing access to people outside of a service area, unless otherwise stipulated. And once it's gone, it's gone. Unlike a physical medium, online access doesn't leave anything behind. And not every library is funded the same. So even libraries that have similar sized populations, they may be offered the same deal, but it doesn't mean that their budgets can afford it. And then you get the politicians involved who complain when people outside of the municipality because they aren't paying taxes in the area and therefore aren't also contributing to roads and schools and etc. And they shouldn't get to take advantage of the resources paid for by the hard working individuals who deserve it, etc. It's very othering. Libraries try to get around this when they can with reciprocal agreements that allow people of neighboring counties to get library cards in both places and that helps assuage a little. If you live in some states, you can get a library card at any of the libraries in that state. I've also seen where you can pay a fee to get library card access from out of state and that's your "contribution" to taxes, I guess. So, yes, controversial. But something I think most libraries would like to do away with if they could. Just look at what Brooklyn Public Library did to help teens across the country get ebooks that may be banned in their local/school library system. Not sure how they managed it behind the scenes, but it's still officially a temporary thing and limited to certain ages. But they're trying. a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 9, 2023 13:18
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Waffle! posted:I use disinfectant wipes on books that need it. I can tell some of our patrons smoke, because I have to clean the ash and smoke smell off the covers. Smelly cat books get aired out for a few days and the returner a stern talking to. Please don't do that. Kitty litter works for absorbing all manner of strange smells!
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Jun 23, 2023 11:41
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 23:54 |
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ExecuDork posted:I'm delighted and confused. Are you saying that a person comes to the library every month and reads books to a group of service animals? You mention a lower bound for ages - does that mean the books are written for YA or older? Are the owners of the service animals also present - and are they children? As amusing as this is and after that description I kind of what for it to be true, sadly, that is not the program I think PhazonLink was referring to. Many libraries have a program where kids and other people who want to practice reading can sit down and read out loud to a non-judgmental service animal. It's a way for them to feel more comfortable because they know that the dog is not going to judge them like a teacher or a parent. But it's also just fun and adorable and comforting.
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Jun 24, 2023 13:31
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