What are boundaries? Boundaries define functional and effective relationships between people. Librarians need to learn how to recognize their own boundaries before those boundaries are crossed, so they can see when a patron is approaching the limits of the boundaries and deal with the issue before it becomes too complicated. There are boundaries at play in every “helping profession” such as healthcare workers, teachers,and social workers. Librarians are also in a helping profession. Other helping professionals have industry research and standards that help keep their relationships positive but not over-or-inappropriately involved. Librarians need to define those boundaries for their own profession. What are some patron behaviors that require boundaries in the library? Unwanted advances Mismatched expectations Disruptive behavior and many more – you can’t list them all, so you need to know how you will react when they’re crossed. Don’t forget about safety – sometimes setting boundaries doesn’t go well….
Author: Elisabeth Gattullo Marrocolla
“Hire for tomorrow, you’ll get through today” – hiring a stellar staff at #PLA2020
The staff of a library can make or break the patron experience. In an increasingly online world, patrons are searching for interaction and positive experiences at their library. How can you hire the best staff possible, and treat staff departures as an opportunity, not an emergency? Things to consider: This before hiring: Who is your customer and what do they need? You should hire for the person first, the position second. Remember that you’re hiring for the whole library, not just for one area. Depending on the person’s experience, their degree (or lack of a degree) is less important than their skill set. Reconsider your job titles! Do people who are applying to your jobs know what your job title describes? Do they connect with it? Recruit outside the normal channels: look at people who give exceptional customer service, like retail employees, theater workers, hospitality workers, etc. Another big takeaway was…
Avoiding Burnout and Practicing Self-Care at #PLA2020
In a packed MCC Davidson Ballroom, librarians talked about the ways in which our profession can (and frequently does!) lead to burnout. After talking through the environmental, mental, and physical stressors of librarianship, we talked about ways to keep yourself sane at work. How can we practice self-care at work? When you’re feeling stressed and you’re at work, here are three simple techniques to quickly lower your stress levels. Lockbox Meditation – close your eyes and imagine your stress as a physical object. PIck it up and lock it in a box until you have the mental space to deal with it. Muscle Meditation – Lay flat on the floor. Close your eyes and tense and release your muscles, starting with the toes and working your way up. 4-7-8 Breath – Breathe in for 4 seconds.Hold the breath for 7 seconds, and then exhale entirely for 8. Daily deep abdominal…
Furniture Dreams at #PLA2020
One of my favorite things to do at #PLA2020 is walk the exhibit floor and build my dream library – filled to the brim with stylish furniture that’s been perfectly designed for our library users and will last longer than an afternoon in a busy children’s department. My current goal is this cubby, which allows caregivers to work on the computer while their child plays safely beside them. What are your library furniture dreams?
Build Community with an Inclusive Early Literacy Program at #PLA2020
#PLA2020 kicked off officially yesterday, but the first full day of sessions is today. What better way to kick off sessions than with Sunnyvale (CA) Public Library’s discussion on building inclusive Early Literacy Programs? Sunnyvale (CT) is home to many big tech firms, and the city has a population of 153,000 – and only one library! The tech companies bring in employees from around the world, so the library serves an extremely diverse community. The Mighty Beginnings program is for children ages birth to 24 months. The idea is a simple, cohesive program that can be easily replicated at home, and is available for free at the Library for parents who are home with their children. To promote the program to the children of working parents, they advertised it at local daycares and community centers. The Pacific Library Partnership provided the library with an Innovation Grant to fund the program….
Finding Joy and Avoiding Burnout During Summer Reading
Summer Reading has been in full swing for a month, and every Youth Services librarian I know is feeling the effects of burnout. The benefits of a thriving summer reading program are numerous – participation drives awareness of the library among adult patrons, encourages kids who don’t utilize the library during the school year to visit, encourages students to read over the summer, and is a fun, free way to bring children of all ages into the library. But a tenfold increase in the number of reference questions and foot traffic can exhaust even the most outgoing of people. In the Northeast, if you add in 2019’s exceptionally rainy June, you have all the conditions for a perfect, burnout storm. It’s the busiest time of the year, and you may feel you’re too busy to take care of yourself, too. But as a recent ALA discussion proved, burnout is a…
Netflix and #KidLit Adaptions
News recently broke that Netflix had gone on what Publisher’s Weekly called a “buying spree” of book rights. In the past year, the company has purchased the rights to over 50 books. With the imminent arrival of Disney+ (and subsequent exit of all Disney/Marvel/Lucas Film products from Netflix) the streaming giant is on the hunt for original content. Among the titles are several children’s books: Lois Lowery’s The Willoughby’s will join existing adaption A Series of Unfortunate Events.The company also just announced a film based on Erin Entrada Kelly’s Hello Universe, the winner of the 2018 Newbery Award. The film will be produced by Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi, and adapted by the screenwriter of upcoming adult romcom Always Be My Maybe. They’ve also announced a film based on A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting by Joe Ballarini. These are just some of the most recent middle grade adaptations. On the YA side, they’ve had a lot of success…
National Princess Week at the Library
There’s a holiday happening right now that isn’t getting the attention it deserves. I’m speaking, of course, of National Princess Week, which runs the last full week in April every year. Conceived as a joint venture by Disney and Target back in 2013, it absolutely came into existence as a way to push even more princess-branded merchandise on the eager public. Yet librarians would be wise not to dismiss National Princess Week out of hand as crass commercialism. There’s a lot of gold to be mined from this particular tiara. For one thing, the programming opportunities are endless, and don’t need to be limited to the types of programs that might typically be associated with princesses – though those have their place, too. Global interest in princesses has never been higher, particularly now that we have our very own feminist, biracial, American Princess in the British Royal Family. Since today’s…