I spend a lot of time thinking about how to prepare my staff and community for change. I’m a big believer in trust, transparency, feedback, and letting the experts be the experts. As a trained librarian I wonder if we don’t give our profession enough credit for how intrepid we have been in the past and certainly can still be. For example, the MARC record would have never been introduced unless someone had realized that computing could greatly improve the way we locate and share resources. The Gates Foundation chose public libraries as early adopters of the personal computer because of their mission to equitable access to information.

I don’t believe library employees are any more reluctant to change than they ever have been before. I believe change-reluctance is human nature and as leaders we should always factor that reality into our plans. One way to address reluctance is to be clear that a new idea is not a judgment on past success or failure. An article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter from the Harvard Business Review states, “When change involves a big shift of strategic direction, the people responsible for the previous direction dread the perception that they must have been wrong. Leaders can help people maintain dignity by celebrating those elements of the past that are worth honoring, and making it clear that the world has changed. That makes it easier to let go and move on.”²

Change is simply an evolution of our current situation, whatever that may be. When we take good past practice and combine it with current technology and opportunities, we make something even better. This is something libraries have been doing well for a long time, and isn’t any different now. It’s time we brand ourselves as the innovators we have always been. Let’s reclaim this narrative and tell our story of transformation. We’ve done it before.

References

1. “From Change Management to Change-Ready Leadership,” Leading From the Library, Library Journal, Leading from the Library, Steven Bell, March 1, 2018, accessed 5/7/2018.

2. “Ten Reasons People Resist Change,” Harvard Business Review, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, September 25, 2012.

The post We Are Never Not Changing first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Much like enthusiasm, pessimism is also incredibly contagious. To turn the tide, it’s important to surround yourself with colleagues and employees who are eager to seek solutions rather than point out problems.[1] “Seek out positive and competent individuals who also recognize their top talents and passions. Agree to give each other candid, concrete feedback – and a boost. Then enthusiasm is more likely to erupt, endure and be contagious.”[2] Another thing to keep in mind is that enthusiasm builds when even greater challenges are tackled. Momentum is key to maintaining a culture that eagerly tackles new challenges and opportunities.[3]

Often when we come across an idea we’re excited about, it reminds us that enthusiasm is regenerative and restorative. Being constantly bogged down in the daily grind distracts us from the North Star that is the why behind our chosen profession. Luckily enthusiasm has a way of reorienting that focus. The word itself derives from enthousiasmos, the Greek expression meaning divine inspiration.[4] This etymology speaks to that feeling of surprise and realization that this capacity is inside us all the time, we just need to access it. We also need libraries and supervisors that recognize the value and will support our effort in pursuing new and exciting ideas.

A few years ago, I came across a recommendation that library staff set a few hours aside every week to work on something new. The work didn’t have to fit into an overall plan or complement current programs, and it didn’t even have to pertain to their department. Allowing that free time to explore gives us the capacity to think differently and seek new avenues for collaboration. Another recommendation I read about recently was from Salt Lake County Library who created a, “What if we…” board. Staff can submit ideas to a management team to break through the real or perceived barriers to program and service proposals.[5]

Gaining access to the magic enthusiasm fosters is a key strategy to building effective teams and sustainable libraries. The good news is that its not hard to replicate once you’ve found it. I encourage you to go and do just that.

References

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kareanderson/2015/05/11/cultivate-productive-enthusiasm-in-yourself-and-with-others/3/#64bcdef23307

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kareanderson/2015/05/11/cultivate-productive-enthusiasm-in-yourself-and-with-others/3/#64bcdef23307

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kareanderson/2015/05/11/cultivate-productive-enthusiasm-in-yourself-and-with-others/3/#64bcdef23307

[4] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00318/full

[5] http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2017/11/library-services/straight-source-innovation/#_

The post Our North Star: Finding Our Way Back To What We Love first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The library workforce fails to reflect the increasing diversity of our communities. No matter which study is looked at, the demographics of the library workforce remain largely white and female. In 2005, Keith Curry Lance showed the public library workforce lacked diversity.² Over a decade later, the AFL-CIO recognizes “persistent lack of racial diversity” as an issue for library workers. Our circulation and reference desks do not reflect our communities.³ So how can we move toward providing services to audiences our staff does not represent?

This is not a new challenge or a challenge unique to libraries. But it is an essential one for 21st century public libraries to tackle. According to Pew Research, “by 2055, the United States will no longer have a single ethnic majority.” Obviously, our past efforts are not keeping pace.⁴

According to the Ithaka study we “need look no further than professional development initiatives and growth pathways for MLS-holders to begin diversifying librarianship.” As professionals, we have a duty to take this recommendation to heart. As individuals, we can expand our knowledge of diversity and bias. We can seek perspectives different from our own to expand our understanding. We can use this knowledge to reshape the public library workforce.

An effort we can take as individuals is to better understand our own implicit biases. As librarians, we take pride in offering unbiased service and providing equal access to all. However, our own upbringing in communities less diverse than those of today means we have inherited bias. A tool to help understand your own implicit bias can be found from Harvard University. Project Implicit is a study measuring social attitudes related to race. It takes only a few minutes to complete, and is a window into understanding bias impacting your own unconscious decisions.

Meeting people where they are at is also an important step. It’s easy to slip into assumptions about programming offerings, displays, or collections that “should” be interesting to diverse audiences. Talk to the people in your community as a first step before developing programs and services. Just because a program worked at another library doesn’t mean it will work for your community. Focus groups held in venues outside the library is one way to reach new audiences. Consider the roadblocks to participation as you plan. Is time of day, venue, or location a barrier for the people you are trying to reach? Find members from the specific neighborhood to help you plan culturally responsive outreach.

One initiative from the Public Library Association recently attempted to tackle this issue head on. The Inclusive Internship Initiative grant placed high school students from diverse backgrounds into public library internship roles. Students worked with a librarian mentor and got a chance to meet other interns from around the country. Efforts like these are exactly what is needed to energize the next generation of librarians and recruit them from a broader community.

Some libraries are going one step further and creating specific positions to attract a more diverse workforce. Rethinking job descriptions and position requirements can open the door to a more diverse library workforce. Hennepin County Library developed grant-funded positions that required bilingual skills rather than a library degree to develop services to reach Hmong, Somali and Latino people. The St. Paul Public Library was part of a citywide Racial Equity Initiative taking action to reduce inequity. They altered their hiring practices and job promotion structures to recruit a more diverse workforce.⁵

A diverse library workforce is essential for public libraries to effectively serve their communities. We each have a responsibility to take action. It is time to change our workforce demographics to better reflect the people we serve. Individual professional development, improved outreach efforts, or restructuring job opportunities are steps we can take today. If we are effective in our efforts, measurable results will follow.

References

1. “The White Face of Library Leadership: Survey reveals overwhelmingly white face of leadership in research libraries”. Accessed October 29, 2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/30/survey-reveals-overwhelmingly-white-face-leadership-research-libraries.
2.  Lance, Keith Curry. “Racial and Ethnic Diversity of U.S. Library Workers.” American Libraries. May 2005. Accessed October 29, 2017. https://www.lrs.org/documents/workforce/Racial_and_Ethnic.pdf.
3.  “Library Workers: Facts & Figures.” Department for Professional Employees – AFL/CIO. October 24, 2017. Accessed October 29, 2017. http://dpeaflcio.org/programs-publications/issue-fact-sheets/library-workers-facts-figures/
4. http://www.ala.org/tools/sites/ala.org.tools/files/content/Draft%20of%20Member%20Demographics%20Survey%2001-11-2017.pdf
5. Cohn, D’Vera, and Andrea Caumont. “10 demographic trends that are shaping the U.S. and the world.” Pew Research Center. March 31, 2016. Accessed October 29, 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/03/31/10-demographic-trends-that-are-shaping-the-u-s-and-the-world/.

⁵Reworking the Workforce | Diversity 2016.” Library Journal. December 06, 2016. Accessed October 29, 2017. http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2016/12/diversity/reworking-the-workforce-diversity-2016/.

The post Diversifying Librarianship first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Reading an article about a staff member who had more than fifty years in on the job in the same library system intrigued me enough to put out a query on our state listserv as to whether or not there were any staff in our state that held a similar record. The response was surprising. Not only were there several staff members, there were also board members who had served on the same library board for more than fifty years. There were even responses of staff and board members who were in the same system, or on the same board, for over sixty years. The unique perspective held by a staff member or trustee who has seen fifty or sixty years of change in a system is almost impossible to fathom.

These career library workers are part of a small but growing segment of Americans who remain in the workforce into their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Although the average retirement age for Americans is 63, the portion of people 75 and older in the workforce has more than doubled since 1985 — from 3.6 percent to 8 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) at the University of Minnesota. For those working full-time, the increase has been even more dramatic: From just over 1 percent in 1993 to nearly 4 percent last year. A major reason is 75 no longer represents the very extreme end of life it once did, as life expectancy in the United States has steadily risen over the past century.[ii]

Ruth Ann Reinert, for example, currently serves as the head of Circulation Acquisition and Technological Services at the Hoyt Library in Saginaw, Michigan. She celebrated fifty years of service in October of 2015, prompting local Senator Ken Horn to declare October 13^th as “Hug a Librarian Day” in Saginaw County. Reinert said the biggest change she’s had to get used to over the years was automating the circulation system. “Instead of drawer after drawer of paper –  applications, patron cards, overdue notices, and catalog cards, all of the information is now contained – and yet more accessible”.[iii]

Long-serving staff members have seen sweeping changes in policy, lived under many directors, gone from collecting filmstrips to streaming video, and watched the world of information expand exponentially while simultaneously making the world smaller and available at your fingertips.

Perhaps my favorite response about long serving staff members was from a young woman named Lindsay Gerhardt who works at the Salem-South Lyon District Library in Michigan.  She shared this – “I’ve been at my library for 15 years and I am only thirty! That is kinda fun, but not 50 yet.” [iv] Wouldn’t you love to have a crystal ball to see what changes she will see in her fifty years?

References

[i] Swindler, Samantha  “Portland’s Longest Serving Librarian, After 50 Years, Isn’t Quitting Soon”, The Oregonian/OregonLive , February 27, 2017.

[ii] Bahrampour, Tara” ‘If You’ve Got a Good Life, Why Throw It Out?’; More Very Old Americans Are Working Full-time”, Washington Post, March 16, 2017.

[iii] RuthAnn Reinert (Circulation, Acquisition, and Technological Services) in a telephone interview with the author, March 2017.

[iv] Lindsay Gerhardt (Public Relations Coordinator) in e-mail interview with the author, March 2017.

The post The Aging Library Staff first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

It’s important to attract up-and-coming librarians with their minds focused on the future, knowledge of trends, and the latest technology. These folks reflect our patrons, and the patrons who will come after them. They have recent educations and they are sometimes aware of the needs of a changing landscape of younger patrons with younger families. In many ways, this Millennial Generation (yes, I’m one of them) is also a reflection of the success of librarians in the 1980s and 1990s. The amazing work done by librarians in those years paved the way for the newer breed of librarians with an updated focus. I’ll be the first to say the reason I became a librarian is because of my experiences with librarians between 1985 and 1995. They made me the librarian I am today, point blank.

Before I go too far patting myself and my millennial colleagues on the back though, there is a lot to be learned from our more seasoned staff members. Essentially every experience we crave and seek out, to develop our careers and our motivations, has been experienced by our older colleagues. Ideas and energy are great, but a real opportunity is lost when younger staff don’t consult their older colleagues, who have carried the torch in this field, to keep our libraries a sought after destination in our community, during many years of change and technological advance. There is no substitute for experience, and it’s the experiences that have already been had, that can teach us about the future.

The staffers we are talking about have seen more changes in libraries than we can imagine, and possibly more than we will have coming down the road. The experiences they’ve seen are ones to be asked about and studied. They saw the rise of the technological era, and every step along the way someone would ask them, “Do we even need libraries anymore?” and they would shout, “OF COURSE WE DO!” There would not have been jobs for us to earn, if not for the work done by our older colleagues before we arrived.

Times change, and the library changes with them. It’s very easy to pigeonhole staff members of a certain era, and say they “hate change.” This frankly is a very short sighted point of view. Some might, but perhaps it’s because they’ve seen success in what works, and have let older processes guide them through successful careers.

The next time you are pondering the point of view of a colleague from a different era, step back for a minute and reflect on all they could share with you, whether younger or older. We are all on the same team, and can utilize our strengths, whether it is experience, new ideas, time tested practices, or a knowledge of new technology, to make our staffs strong, and varied. No one group has everything we need to be successful, because it’s each other that we truly need.

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