Look Back, Reflect and Improve

I was at least half a year or more working as a public library director and still doing things the way they had been done for years when I finally stopped and questioned the really odd library hours. They were inconsistent from day to day, and most people couldn't remember them. For three of the five days it was open during the week, I had to shut everything down for a ninety minute lunch break, which I hated because it broke the momentum and meant stopping whatever I was working on. Often I just worked through lunch, but the library was closed.

I finally asked one of the long-time board members why the hours were so strange, and he thought about it for a moment and said, "I think they were set around Mrs. So and So's bridge playing." The librarian he was referring to was at least three librarians ago, or a good ten years since that librarian worked there. I had to stop and laugh, but then I was dumbfounded that nobody questioned the inconvenient schedule or thought about making the library hours more user-friendly.

I started logging the number of people that came to the library throughout the day, and I learned that an average of one patron and the mailman came in during the morning hours before 11:00 a.m. And we were closed 90 minutes for lunch and closed at 5:30 sharp in the evenings, so most of the working folks missed out unless they remembered to come Saturday mornings.

I changed the library hours to open at 11:00 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m., and we stayed open during lunchtime. The mailman used the book drop to deliver our mail, so that wasn't a problem. On Wednesday evenings we stayed open until 8:00 p.m. The Saturday hours - 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon remained the same. I showed the board of directors that we were still paying the utilities for those three 90 minute lunch breaks while the library was closed, and eliminating the morning hours and working through lunch enabled us to save enough on utilities to cover the utilities used by a GED/Adult Education Class we sponsored three evenings a week.

The point is, we should make the time to stop and question what we're doing. Too often we follow routine and tradition because it's always been done that way. When inventory and all of the end of the year responsibilities are done, take a few minutes to stop and think back over the school year.  Ask yourself questions like:

• What worked well with our library services this past year?
• What areas seemed to not work smoothly?
• Could the library be arranged and organized better?
• What part of library services caused the most stress?
• Did the schedule work well?
• Does our technology need updating? 
• Do we need more equipment?
• Is our collection meeting the staff and students' needs?
• Is the lighting adequate?
• Does the library look inviting?

Those are just some examples of questions you could ask yourself, and there are many more. Every library is different. Maybe you know something isn't quite right, but you're not even sure of the question, much less the answer. Something that's proved very helpful for me to improve my libraries is to visit other libraries and see what they're doing right. If you can't visit physically, visit virtually. And every librarian I've met has been more than willing to share their ideas and successes.  

The beginning and end of a school year are the busiest for librarians, so if you can't find the time at the end, make some time over the summer to reflect and think about how you can do things better in your library. The library is not a static entity. It's constantly growing and shedding and changing with the times. And we should, too. 

The Library of American Libraries

My daughter and her family and I traveled to DC to see her brother/my son recently. This was my third trip, but I'd never visited the inside the Capitol or the Library of Congress, so after the Capitol tour, we traversed the underground tunnel to the LoC.

When we surfaced at the LoC, we saw that we'd traveled a longer distance underground than we realized.

All these years, I assumed the Library of Congress looked like any other old library with historical-looking wooden shelving, except that the LoC collection housed a gazillion books.

I was shocked to see that it looked more like something out of a castle or church in Europe. Somebody definitely designed it as a temple dedicated to knowledge.

   

And this was just the first room!

Unfortunately, we never saw the stacks, and they allowed us to walk quickly across a balcony overlooking the reading room, but we didn't get to stop and take pictures. 

Some quick facts about the Library of Congress:

• The collection was founded in 1800 and is considered the nation's library
• The Library of Congress is housed in a three-building complex across from the Capitol
• The collection contains almost 100 million items in 460 different languages
• The first LoC's 3,000 volumes burned in 1814 when the British troops invaded Washington and burned the Capitol, where the collection was housed
• Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his library of 6,487 books acquired over fifty years for $23,950, which the Congress eventually accepted
• A fire in 1851 destroyed 2/3 of the collection of 35,000, including many of Jefferson's books. 
• The remainder of Jefferson's books are on display under glass in the LoC
• The LoC was originally created for Congressional use only, but with President Lincoln's appointment of Librarian Ainsworth Spofford, the LoC was opened to the public

Before we visited the Library Gift Shop, we were quickly evacuated out the back of the building after someone (probably a tourist) had left an unattended package at the front of the building.  I don't envy the huge job law enforcement has trying to keep everyone safe in and around all the government buildings and massive museums in DC.

We visited the Library of Congress and other than Jefferson's glass-covered collection, we didn't see one shelf of books, but looking at the aerial photo of the Jefferson Building from the LoC Web site, we barely scratched the surface.

End of the Year Inventory

Library Elves by Nessa Dee

Inventory. Some librarians think of it as a curse. Other libraries have done away with it altogether. But for some twisted reason, I love inventory time in the library. Maybe it's because for a brief moment in time, the library shelves are in perfect order and all is right with the world. I imagine only a librarian would understand that logic.

But it's more than just putting books in order and attempting to account for every item in the library. Wrongs get righted. The lost is found. Mistakes are corrected. And when a parent tells me that Junior told her that he returned that book, I can confidently say that the book is not on the shelves in the library. Before I send out those invoices for lost books, I know for a fact those books aren't on the shelves because I was the one that put them in order and afterwards, I checked the shelves for those missing books-- usually multiple times. I don't let student aides or inexperienced volunteers do it because I don't want to invoice a book that may be shelved in the wrong place.

Every library is different, but this is basically what I did for inventory towards the end of the school year:

1. Decide when the library will be closed for inventory. Our school district had seven campus libraries and because we were on our own (no aides), we needed a minimum of two weeks before school ended to do inventory. 
2. Several weeks before the library closes, advertise the rounding up of library books (posters, intercom announcements, Web site, parent notes, written notices to students) as well as the date all books are due. I allowed teachers to continue to check out materials up until the last few days of school if they needed them, but not every librarian chooses to do that.
3. On the library windows the day after the library closes, I post the names of students who still have books out. It's okay to post names, but not the book titles with the names. In our school, students could not attend the end of the year field day or a field trip if their library record was not cleared, so most get serious about finding and returning those books.  Good luck if there is no leverage to get those books back. 
4. Print out a list of overdue books to keep at the desk to refer to; mark off students' names when they've cleared their records on the list and on the window list. Make notes if you need to - for example, if a teacher returns a lost book found on campus, etc.
5. Put all the library books in order. This usually takes me two days. 
6. Using your overdue list, check the shelves to make sure the books aren't there. Sometimes returned books miss getting scanned and are sitting on the shelves, but are still on someone's library record. Check the book in and take their name off the sign and list.
7. Call or send (mail or email) invoices to parents for lost books. I prefer sending a written, documentable record. Steps 1-7 take up most of the first week.
8. We used Follett's Destiny program, which made the actual inventory very easy to do. Once you start the inventory in Destiny, it sorts the collection into two categories: accounted for (the books checked out and on patrons' records), and unaccounted for (everything else). You can use a hand-held device to scan the bar codes of all the items in the library, and then download the records every so often into your circ desk computer, or what I prefer is to put a laptop on a rolling cart, log in to your administration account, and use the circ desk scanner to scan the items directly into Destiny's inventory program. Once an item is scanned, it is moved to the 'accounted for' category. 
9. How long it takes to scan depends on the number of items in your collection and the number of times you are interrupted. It usually took around three days to scan everything in the library. Students and volunteers can help with the scanning, which frees you to do other tasks. You can print out a list afterwards of the unaccounted books, which include the books that were missed during the scanning process, which you can correct, as well as actual lost books. After you've scanned everything, what is remaining in the 'unaccounted for' side are the lost items.
10. If your principal requires a report at the end of the year, you can include the results of the inventory.
11. Some librarians go ahead and remove the lost books' records from the catalog at this point, but I usually waited until the fall because books were often returned to the school over the summer or at the beginning of the school year, and that saved me from having to create new records for them. 
12. Our libraries also helped with equipment inventory, so we helped the tech staff check in all of the teachers' equipment, too.

Inventory is a great time to take a quick look at the collection, too. I sometimes found discrepancies when it came to the call numbers on the book spine and what was in the catalog record. If I couldn't take care of that immediately, I made a note so I could get back to it. And with all of the books in, plus the new ones ordered during the school year, you may find that you are out of room in some areas of the shelves and need to do some shifting and re-arranging. 

I never had enough time at the end of the year to do everything I wanted and needed to do in the library. I used to work until I thought I finished everything, but there was always more to do when it came to library work. I finally learned that it's like housework-- it's never ending and will be there in the morning. But unlike housework, I enjoyed library work. : )

Inexpensive Cut-outs for Decorating the Library

On the previous post I showed a couple of the cut-out designs I'd used to decorate the walls above the shelves. The roll of brown paper was given to me, so all it took was an Exacto knife, some cardboard to protect the floor or table where you do your cutting, and some time.     

       

Here are some more of the simple cut-out designs I used in our library, each which fit one of the subjects found in the shelves beneath it.

 

 

I also loved to hit the garage sales for interesting and inexpensive items to place on top of the shelves pertaining to some of the subjects of the books within those sections of shelves.