Great Job Opening: Head of Reader Services

There are two job openings at my library right now: Head of Reader Services and Circulation Desk Manager.

The Circ Desk Manager will do all the circ staff scheduling, work at the desk, but also manage ILL, book club kits, museum passes, and hopefully be the lead on our Evergreen ILS.

That's all well and good, but just look at the description for the Head of Readers Services:

Do you love answering that age-old question "Can you recommend a good book?" When you sit on an airplane do you find yourself giving unsolicited reading advice to the person beside you? Do you always have a book in your car for emergencies? Are you up on the latest reading devices, social media, book blogs, websites? Do you love to talk about books, write about books, listen to books? Did you go to library school because you love to read?

How about that?

Our Head of Circulation is leaving, and instead of just hiring a straight up replacement for her, we decided to split the position to create two jobs (because the work was more than one person could handle anyway). This new Head of Readers Services will focus completely on encouraging and supporting the use of our entire collection (books, audiobooks, DVDs, etc), through social media, programs, desk coverage, a personal shopper-like reading suggestion service, and anything else we can do.

We're accepting resumes now, so check out the job listing. The Circulation Desk Manager hasn't been posted yet, but should be soon on the Massachusetts Library Job Board. General employment information is also on our website (and I still like my unofficial rules for resumes, too).

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Good Ideas, Not Easily Sold

A couple of totally unrelated really good ideas (I think), before I head to Ohio for a long Labor Day weekend:

Good Idea #1
First, for all you DVD collection development librarians out there, here is a must-add for the library's collection:

A 50-DVD set of The Red Green Show! 300 episodes = ~124 hours of wisdom from Possum Lodge, plus bonus material. Of course, the $299.99 price tag made my colleague who does our DVD selection just say "no."

Good Idea #2
Second, an Apple Store training manual for their Genius Bar employees was reviewed at Gizmodo. From the tl;dr write up on BoingBoing, some great training gems caught my eye:

What does a Genius do? Educates. How? "Gracefully." He also "Takes Ownership" "Empathetically," "Recommends" "Persuasively," and "Gets to 'Yes'" "Respectfully."

From the comments, it appears the existence of this manual met with a large degree of cynicism. However, swap out "Genius" for "Librarian" and this exactly sums up what our desk staff should aspire to.

Taking ownership of a problem can be difficult in a public library, because not everything is something library staff can help with. But when it is within our power - especially concerning a library resource or service - taking ownership is the best way solve a patron's problem. Because if one of our patrons can't use a library resource, then it's a library problem.

And initially I was uncomfortable with the word "persuasively," because it sounds very retail. But after I thought about it, I often actively try to persuade patrons all the time, in the sense of recommending - and leading them to - what I think is the best resource. "Yes, maybe this recently-published book on skin cancer is a better choice, even though that one from 1995 is thinner and has more pictures. Of course, you can always take both." Or, "Instead of trying to figure out how to cite Yahoo Answers in your term paper, how about I show you how to use our journal databases?" Of course librarians persuade - empathetically and respectfully - but don't force or withhold information. We certainly try to recommend the best resources possible, but it's always up to the patron to make their own decisions.

Not that I should be surprised Apple has good customer service ideas - I've certainly drawn inspiration from them before.

I hope everyone has a good long weekend - see you next week.

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Why Support Your Local Library Infographic

One of the creators of the infographic below sent it to me saying,

I worked closely with the ALA and IMLS to create this infographic about "Why support your local library?" We are using this to drum up support for volunteers, donations and legislative actions.

I like that it addresses the counter-intuitive notion that during a bad economy, library budgets need to be expanded because we get so much busier. It's a hard sell, even with the statistics to back it up.

Update 9/12/12: a data error was found in the original infographic, and this version has been updated.

Thanks Dan.

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Reference Question of the Week – 8/12/12

Here's a story about why follow-up questions are important in the reference interview.

An older patron walked up to my coworker at the Reference Desk and asked if we had a list of Massachusetts radio stations.

Instantly I felt a sense of dread - we used to have a book exactly like that, but I think I weeded it when we eliminated our reference collection. I remember thinking, "no one will ever come looking for this - besides, I'm sure it's on the internet."

My coworker also remembered the book, and of course set about searching for it in the catalog. When it didn't come up, she got up to check our Ready Reference collection behind the desk.

At this point I told her I think it had been weeded. We also get a "list of lists" book about the top 10 of everything in Boston, which - I hoped - would also list the top 10 radio stations. So while she continued to search the catalog at the desk, I walked down to our oversized shelves to grab a copy and check - no luck.

By the time I got back to the desk, my coworker was searching online for a list of Massachusetts radio stations. Before she got very far though, the patron - who had been waiting patiently this entire time - said,

Well, all I really want to know is the dial numbers for WODS.

Ha. In a few seconds my coworker located that and gave it to the patron, who left happy, talking about how he likes listening to the oldies.

But it took us about five minutes to get here, and both of us felt a little bad about wasting his time. We let ourselves get sidetracked by focusing on a resource we thought the patron wanted, instead of making sure we actually understood what answer the patron wanted. A good reminder why initial follow-up questions are important.

However, feeling bad about that was quickly curtailed, when few minutes later my coworker recalled this radio station had recently switched formats. The patron was already gone at this point, but I'm sure it won't take him long to figure out - and probably lament - this change.

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All The Library Is A Stage (well, at least the YA desk)

This is one of those things I think people joke about, but it turns out, we actually did it in my library.

My library's floor plan has the Reference Desk at one end of a room, the YA desk and collection at the other, and the non-fiction collection and public computers in between. One problem we've found with this arrangement is that Reference Desk staff, and patrons, could never see when someone was sitting at the YA desk. And conversely, the YA librarian could never see what was going on at the Reference Desk.

For years we said, "we need is to build a stage to raise up the YA desk." Although it does seem like a good and simple solution, I never thought it would actually happen. But I guess we'd talked about it enough, because when we did have some extra money in the budget for such a project, we went and built a stage.

Hopefully the photos show it well. It raises the desk up just enough to make it, and the YA librarian, visible from the rest of the room, and also lets her see if we need help at Reference.

But the great thing about the stage is that it's multi-purpose. It isn't attached to the floor, and was designed to be modular and movable. So, if we have a speaker or performer and we expect a big crowd (which we do a few times a year), we can push the YA desk out of the way and move the front half of the stage to wherever the program will be. It's light enough to be easily carried, narrow enough to fit in the elevator, and if we need a bigger stage, we can always move both sections. Neat.

The whole thing cost about $1500, which I thought was a good price. We also had some carpet left over from some other project, so it matches the library interior perfectly.

It has only been in for a couple weeks, so time will tell if a stage like this really was the solution we were hoping for. I think it will be, but if not, at least we tried, learned something, and we'll try something else.

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Reference Question of the Week – 8/5/12

Some of my favorite reference questions are those that I can answer from personal experience. If a patron asks a question about hiking, knitting, shooting, history, woodworking, seaglass, gold panning, technology, or any of a variety of my other hobbies, I can do more than just find books or resources for them. Personal touches like this can make a good library experience a great community connection.

But of course, the opposite is true. Last week, a patron walked up to the desk and laid this on me:

I won a whole chicken in a Church raffle over the weekend. The women there told me to cook it at 375 degrees, but didn't say how long. How long do you cook a chicken?

Cooking is not one of my hobbies. I know how long it takes to cook minute rice, but that's about it. I felt dumb, but I honestly had no idea how long it takes to cook a chicken.

But I do know where our cookbooks are. To save time, I searched our catalog for "chicken recipes" and The best chicken recipes looked promising.

I gave it to the patron, who didn't look too impressed - he wanted a time, not a book. I made some comment about my cooking abilities (or lack thereof), and with no coworker around for me to ask (and I'm sure any of my coworkers would have known), he sat down with the book.

A little while later, he came up to the desk to return it - he also said he found a great recipe. So that's good - he might not have gotten what he expected, but he did get what he needed.

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