Recently, I re-read the ALSC Blog post, Why Children’s Librarians Should Run the World (or at least the library), which asked why more children’s librarians weren’t moving into management positions. One explanation was that they prefer not to give up the job satisfaction received by working directly with children. I’ve certainly heard that reluctance from children’s librarians who would make excellent supervisors.
If you are on the fence about testing out a leadership role, know that you can shape your job to still feel linked to your original mission. I know firsthand – I was a children’s librarian for nearly seven years before deciding to explore supervision. I’ve now served as an assistant managing librarian, the children’s services coordinator, the youth services manager and a managing librarian. In that time, I’ve learned that you can support children’s services in a meaningful way even as job titles and responsibilities change.
Give your staff planning, prep and reflection time needed for high-quality children’s programming. Knowing that your families are in good hands makes it easier to not be the one regularly sharing stories.
Substitute for storytime. Staff absences (planned or unplanned) are an opportunity to provide that much needed dose of kid time.
Mentor future children’s staff. Learn more about their interests, share your experience, write recommendation letters or offer to speak to students at your local library school.
Become a simultaneous translator. In my organization the leadership team speaks in the language of outcomes and quantitative data, while the children’s staff tends to tell stories using more qualitative measures.
Offer yourself as a training resource. Since moving back to a community library (and away from centralized children’s services), I’ve led multiple trainings for our library district’s children’s staff.
For those of you who are in a supervisory or administrative role, what else has worked for you?
Andrea Vaughn Johnson
For several years as a middle manager in a large urban system I was mostly working in an office, but I found great satisfaction in being an advocate for our children’s librarians. I worked on grants for the kind of programs the librarians wanted to do, and offered training topics that they requested. Instead of serving patrons directly, I was serving my fellow librarians and community behind the scenes. Once I even abused my power to get facilities to fix an annoying buzzing light in a children’s library that had been ignored for a while. 🙂 I hope your article inspires more youth librarians to serve in a leadership role. It can be very rewarding.