May is Mental Health Awareness Month, as my Executive Director reminded us in her daily e-mail to our staff this week. As such, I thought it would be a good time for us as professionals to pause and check in to our mental health.
Mental Health America (MHA) is an organization whose mission is to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness. Their website offers many resources, but one I’d like to focus on today, is their section on Taking Good Care of Yourself. Specifically, in relation to how to work towards goals with mental health in mind.
Public libraries, in particular, are working towards many big goals and milestones. Most of us have been closed due to the pandemic since mid-March. Some of us are already opened for curbside pickup and delivery, while others of us are still trying to figure out what that will look like for our individual library.
MHA offers these two tips when working towards goals:
Focus on your strengths
What are your goals for your library in the next two weeks? The next month? The next three months? Keep in mind small steps, such as scheduling staff to come in to the building, will need to build together to help accomplish bigger goals. Celebrate those small steps as you go!
Public libraries have staff that are excellent at customer service. Remind your staff that our patrons are missing us, and when curbside pickup and delivery begins, seeing them will be just as exciting as receiving that book or movie they’ve been hoping for these last few weeks. We are all feeling lonely and are craving social interaction.
Remind staff to tap into that strength of smiling and warmly greeting patrons!
Focus on solving problems
There are bound to be problems, right? A patron is bound to be sitting in their car awaiting materials, and it turns out there was a technical glitch and we don’t actually have their materials request.
Tap into the problem solver within! Handle the situation in front of you first. Apologize and ask them to let you know what they’re looking for (via a phone call)–and run around your library finding materials for them. Then handle the next step, of talking with your supervisor or IT Department about what could have gone wrong, and problem solve from there.
Getting upset that there isn’t a perfect system in place won’t help us succeed. The truth is–this is new territory, and there will not be a perfect system in place for awhile! And guess what else? Just when we do find that sweet spot of everything curbside and delivery going smoothly– we will return to normal operating procedures and this will be an image of our past.
Be ready to be a problem solver! Whether a shelver, a Reserves Assistant, an IT person, a Librarian, a HR professional, we library workers are in this together. Let’s work together and keep positive for our patrons. Put your mental health first so you can be there for coworkers and patrons.
Be easy, everyone!
This post addresses ALSC’s Core Competencies II. Reference and User Services & V. Outreach and Advocacy.