AGENDA
CAL Adult Services Interest Group
Wednesday, July 9
9:00-12:00
Meeting facilitated by Sheila Kerber
Present: Laura Craig, Arapahoe Library District; Sharon Lauchner, Douglas County Public Library; Victoria Boone, High Plains Library District; Jeane Ward, Westminster Public Library; Penne Ramsay, Westminster Public Library; Kathleen Kase, Estes Park Public Library; Polly Tagg, Jefferson County Public Library; Katharine Phenix; Rangeview Library District; Lacey VanRemoortere, Aurora Public Library; Melinda Mattingly, Boulder Public Library; Kathy Kelly, Louisville Public Library; Anne Feiler, Lafayette Public Library
After the break Kurtis (EstesPark) and Claudine (EstesPark library manager) joined us for the second half of meeting
Initial Question: Which library systems use subs? How are certain details managed?
Library / Use Subs? / If yes, are there different levels? / If yes, how contact? / Budget? / Minimum # hours must work? / Misc.DouglasCounty / No / Establishing a sub system now.
Arapahoe / Yes / One level—paraprofessional, used to sub for both the professional and paraprofessional vacancies / When2Work if advanced notice. Also, email and phone calls / Separate sub budget / No / Subs are trained and expected to take ongoing professional development classes
High Plains / Yes
Westminster / Yes / 2 levels / Email subs with available times; call if short notice / Separate
Sub budget / No / Hire subs every 6 to 12 months
EstesPark
JeffersonCounty / Yes / Circ & Info Services / Email or call / Separate sub budget / No / Training; alternate hiring, even years hire info subs, odd years hire circ subs
Rangeview / No / Katharine mentioned that Mamie Dowd Library uses subs – and it provides training
Aurora / No / Lacey mentioned that Bemis Library uses subs
Boulder / Yes / Must offer sub times to in-house staff first / Began in 2007, used JCPL sub system as model; provide off-desk time to subs with longer (6-7 hr) shifts
Louisville / No / One location
Lafayette / Yes, but much more limited than in the past / Yes – professional librarians and library techs / e-mail when we have lead time; phone when it’s an emergency (someone calls in sick) / Part-time staff budget & full-time staff budget with sub $ coming out of part-time staff budget / No / One location; several subs work both at the Ref desk and the Children’s desk.
How do other acquisitions/collection development librarians handle requests from self-published authors that the library purchase their title?
Lafayette: if not in Ingrams or B&T don’t purchase; may pass off to the subject selector; may put on shelf and then if not circ’ing after 1 year pull it
Douglas: Makes a point of collecting local author works. Try to get them from vendors and authors sometimes donate. Jamie LaRue has a local authors radio program. If material is not popular then it is weeded. Allow authors to set up a table in the library to sell their book(s) – provides a way to build community
Rangeview: don’t take if not in their collection development policy; inform authors that Ingrams and B&T provide shelf-ready books
Westminster: Offer authors the chance to give a talk and sell their books
Louisville: Also offer authors the chance to give a talk, don’t necessarily purchase / Kathleen Kase
What types of professional level special projects are adult services librarians involved in? In other words, what are they doing in addition to helping patrons out on the floor?
Answers included programming, teaching computer classes, sitting on committees such as a Readers Advisory committee and the Reforma Committee; being involved in Collection Development, being involved in the community, becoming members of community organizations. Douglas County is finding ways to benefit the community by assisting local government and organizations with targeted research reports: for instance, they prepared a report on Douglas County foreclosures particularly focusing on local foreclosures (in the Castle Rock area); they also researched local historical names of people and places for a group developing the Meadows area (as the latter wants to use those names in the development). They are calling this Community Reference with the criteria that it benefits the community.
Lafayette provides patrons the opportunity to schedule reference appointments for up to one hour with a staff member who is not scheduled to be on the desk; one example was helping a customer find resources to write a business plan. They try to set up the appointment within 24 hours of the request. Typically the info services staff member will reserve a public computer for an hour, where they will work side-by-side on the customer’s info request.
High Plains is currently challenging their staff to go out into the community more. One example is applying to the Weld leadership program.
The mention of the Weld leadership program led to a sharing of other such programs. Sheila and Sharon (DouglasCounty) just completed a similar 10-month leadership program in DouglasCounty. They are now part of the training team for the next Leadership program in DouglasCounty. They found this to be an invaluable way to meet community leaders, to set up relationships, and to further develop their leadership skills in such areas as communication, negotiation, motivation (particularly motivating others), understanding (for example, understanding what police officers go through when in volatile situations that call for split second decisions); monitoring your own assumptions, learning leadership styles; and the importance of being aware and being observant. [Motivation: are you in the stands or on the court?]
Arapahoe: Laura said they are asking their librarians to develop web content, to write original articles, to provide business outreach, to start interest groups based on CAL interest groups that are led by librarians for librarians and parapros; to provide input for their centralized programming and collection development, and to create programs. Parapros can look at the ‘menu’ of programs developed by centralized programming and choose one to schedule locally. They are also establishing a “book a librarian” service that is similar to Lafayette’s service to schedule a reference appointment. – i.e. a customer can schedule a ref interview with a librarian.
Many of our libraries struggle with ways to differentiate the responsibilities of their parapros from those of their librarians; to give librarians more opportunities to be creative and to be leaders. In redefining the roles of their parapros there is the desire to not “diminish” those roles.
As an aside, someone mentioned a possible interview question for librarians: what blogs have you created? / Laura Craig
How do other libraries build their collection of computer books and keep it current. Review sources? E-books?
Answers included subscribing to databases such as Safari and ebrary; to leasing current computer books (similar to the McNaughton program of leasing); to employing a staff member who is a former IBM programmer; to purchasing patron requests (as long as those requested titles are not too specialized); and to purchasing titles suggested by the IT department. Boulder does not hold on to older material - 90% of their collection of computer books was published within the last 10 years. / Kathleen Kelly
Professional Education of Librarians. Does the curriculum prepare librarians to enter the profession and what if anything would you add?
Comments included the need for classes on leadership, the value of a practicum, and the value of leadership programs. / Sheila Kerber
What are you doing that is new and different to market the collection?
Examples included power walls, face outs, displays, using web & “focus on” themed display, “book letters”
Question about whether power walls, etc., actually increased circ or just changed what was checked out. Anne said when they ran the numbers it showed their overall circ increased, and that when, for instance, there was a display on sports books, customers checked them out and then sought out more books on sports in the stacks. She also said their stats had shown that material on shelves that are not stuffed checked out more than material found on crowded shelves. In Lafayette a committee decides what the monthly display themes will be, and then staff carry out those ideas. Anne mentioned they notice that customers are sometimes reluctant to ‘spoil’ the display by removing a book to check out, so they add a “Take Me Home Today” bookmark to each item
DouglasCounty doesn’t put items into display status (too high maintenance) –rather, staff is expected to know displays; and the material handlers can refer to the dry erase board in the circ workroom to see the what the current display themes are. Having a title listed on a bookmark increases the circulation of that title. At Lone Tree, the far right section of the power wall is for cookbooks, and patrons have come to expect that that subject will be in that section.
Arapahoe creates colorful, double-sided bookmarks with the header “A Good Place To Start” at top for groupings such as Gentle Reads, Adventure Fiction, Historical Mysteries, Steamy Mysteries, & Chick Lit.
Using props purchased cheaply at thrift stores within the display makes the display more fun and appealing
Boulder has found that using a rotating set of banner ads on their homepage is useful promoting various services and titles. For instance, currently they are highlighting their Overdrive downloadable audio service. Evidently Denver PL also uses banner ads, as does Westminster.
Arapahoe is using what Laura is calling passive reader’s advisory. Using magnetic strips that could be considered magnetic tape as the strips have adhesive on the back, and the strips can be cut with scissors to the desired length. She uses the adhesive side to add a strip of paper with a phrase such as If you like Nora Roberts you may also like authors Suzanne Brockmann, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Barbara Delinsky. This particular strip would then be stuck (magnetically, if the shelf is metal) on the bottom edge of the shelf that has books by Nora Roberts on it. / Sharon Lauchner
Is anyone using hands-free headsets on the floor?
We just briefly touched on this topic.
Lafayette uses headsets that can answer calls but cannot dial out nor can a call be put on hold – they find them very useful, when not busy Lafayette staff are to rove 3 times per hour; Louisville also uses headsets
DouglasCounty is using pagers – whoever is actively working on the floor wears a pager. When a signal goes out, the first digit in the page sequence alerts the staff as to what is needed. For instance, if the first digit is 3, then those with that job (perhaps circ) would respond. DouglasCounty is also asking staff to wear blue lanyards so that customers can readily identify staff – finding that nametags can be too small for customers to easily notice / Sheila Kerber
What have you learned about how to react to and manage change?
To be put on a future agenda / Sheila Kerber
How do you measure success? How do we know when our innovations and changes have succeeded?
To be put on a future agenda / Sheila Kerber
Anything you want to discuss that is not on the agenda?
As the meeting drew to a close we had a quick discussion on what our libraries are doing to provide voters information about the upcoming elections.
Douglas County Library has been promoting the use of mail in ballots – sometimes volunteers hand them out and sometimes staff does; they are also inviting members of the League of Women Voters in to register voters at their locations. They have created a bookmark with relevant book titles on one side and relevant websites on the other. And they are planning a program by the League of Women Voters on “Voting 101.” Douglas County Libraries will also serve as polling places.
Estes Park Public Library projected the debates live on a screen in one of their meeting rooms. They served popcorn, lined up some chairs, added a few small tables with chairs so small groups could sit together, and provided nerf balls (which they call rebuttal balls) which the audience could throw at the screen when they disagreed with what was being said. They plan to project the 4 presidential debates the same way.
Set the dates and times for 2009. Can we shift to another day of the week? For 2009 we will meet quarterly on Tuesdays rather than Wednesdays. The second Tuesday in January, April, July and October