The 7 Links Challenge

Today, I was supposed to post my Day 4 for the fifth round of Library Day in the Life. However, I was out of the office both yesterday and today so that would be a fairly uninteresting post. Instead, I'm going to take the 7 Links Challenge issued by Darren Rowse at Problogger a couple of weeks back. Here goes:

1. Your first post: I started my blog with a post that explained my thought process concerning how I actually arrived at the blog's name. What's So Civil About Librarianship? I hadn't read this in quite a while and it's fun to see where my mind was at two and a half years ago. From the standpoint of my thinking in this post, not a lot has changed for me.

2. A post you enjoyed writing the most: While I was at PLA 2008 in Minneapolis, I attended a couple of sessions back to back that really resonated with me. Afterward, I went right back to my hotel room and banged out a post titled Libraries DO Build Communities. I suppose part of what attracted me to taking the 7 Links Challenge was the opportunity to revisit my thoughts from a while back. This post is a great reminder to me that I am not fully implementing at SSJCPL something for which I have a strong belief. Time to re-prioritize a little...

3. A post which had a great discussion: Generally, there isn't a lot of commenting going on related to my blog posts but, in digging back into my earlier writings at The Civil Librarian, I came across a post, The "Customer" IS Always Right!, that I'd forgotten about that seems very relevant to what is happening in my professional life right now: the difference between for-profit businesses and public institutions in terms of desired outcomes. This debate has generated a great deal of debate in San Joaquin County of late (for obvious reasons to anyone who pays attention to my FB and Twitter presences). If you aren't aware of what's happening in San Joaquin County relevant to his issue, you can read my Media Round-up.

4. A post on someone else's blog that you wished you'd written: Hmm. I read a lot of great stuff but nothing jumped out at me so I spent some time browsing through some of the most well-known library-related blogs (and read a lot of new, interesting things while I was at it). The piece that had the biggest impact on me was The Usable Library as linked to at Jessamyn West's always useful librarian.net. I don't even know if you can call The Usable Library a blog post. It's more just a website with a few very salient but easy to forget concepts about making your library as usable as possible to our customers. I'm definitely going to print out the awesome poster and stick it on my the wall of my office on Monday!

5. A post with a title that you are proud of: Where Personal Meets Professional: A Public Management Framework was written at a time where I was feeling particularly reflective about my work. Written not even a year ago, I feel pretty well removed after re-reading it. In fact, it is interesting to me that this post is the kind of thing I need to be actively thinking about even more in my current position.

6. A post that you wish more people had read: I don't really know how many people actually read 12 Seconds Book Reviews! but, as I browse through my past writings, I enjoyed the idea behind this brief post. I still love the idea of a library using 12 Seconds as a tool to tweet out more interesting news concerning what we have available for our customers. SSJCPL is just now really embracing social media as a means of engaging our customers; I think I'll have to talk to Heather and Rena about adding this to our repertoire. And maybe I'll bring back the beard, too ;)

7. Your most-visited post ever: Aside from hits directly to www.civillibrarian.com, Put the Book In Their Hands (however we can) has received far and away the most hits of any post on my blog. This was a result of the post being featured in an issue of American Libraries Direct several weeks back. The interesting thing to me was that I had no idea the post would be included in AL Direct and I still don't know who read it and decided to include it. Regardless, I think the ideas I proposed in the post are viable for public libraries. In fact, in working at the circulation desk earlier this week, I tried to put the notion into play; I had a teenager who needed either Brave New World or Jane Eyre that day (has that ever happened in a library before?).We had neither title on the shelf and the customer didn't think his mom would drive him down the road to the nearest branch where the titles were available. Both of these titles are available for free online and I saw that the customer was holding a phone so I suggested this route to him but, alas, it wasn't a web-accessible phone. As the ubiquity of smartphones grows, though, I'm going to keep this idea in mind.

More in the Life of a Librarian - Day 3, Round 5

Wednesday was a story of extremes for me. Lots of frustration (small level stuff but frustrating nonetheless) and lots of excitement and gratitude. I'll skip all the email, phone, meeting stuff because that is pretty well documented elsewhere and something all of us do in our work anyway.

My frustration started with something that ought to have been very simple. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've agreed to take on webmaster responsibilities for SSJCPL and, to that end, I had an FTP client installed on my computer on Monday. Yesterday morning provided my first opportunity to update some information on our site (a local educational organization asked to be listed on the page that details the various community services in the region). Easy right? I opened the client and quickly found the appropriate document that I needed to edit. I downloaded it and opened it in notepad, made the necessary edits, viewed the document in a browser window to make sure everything looked right, and then hit the upload button. And hit the upload button again. And again. And...well, you get the picture. I just kept getting error messages. Either "client is locked by another user" or "HTTP/1.1 501 not implemented".

I talked to IT who directed me to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article concerning this error message and followed the suggested troubleshooting steps. No luck. I saw another IT guy walk past my office and flagged him down. He couldn't figure it out, either. So, after what felt like having wasted a bunch of time, I just gave up for the time being. Have to get this fixed soon, though!

That was the frustration. The excitement came later in the day when I headed over to LDA Partners (a great architectural firm) for a first meeting to discuss interior layout for a new branch library! SSJCPL has not opened a new library in a long time (I'm guessing 15 years) so this is really exciting. This new branch specifically will be built by the City of Lathrop just south of Stockton but we will continue to manage the library operations there (just as we do in the current Lathrop branch located in a tiny storefront facility). I and the supervising librarian that manages all of our County branches met with the LDA folks and had a really great conversation. They seem very willing to listen to our suggestions and very willing address our concerns.

The new branch is, at this very early stage of the game, scheduled to open sometime in the Fall of 2011. It should be a great facility for that community as the library will actually be inside a larger building that includes a teen recreation center and a computer lab (that I think the library will manage). All of this will be built in a new park that will have a skatepark, open space, and maybe an ampitheatre of some sort when all phases of development are complete.

The gratitude I mentioned earlier stemmed from my final appointment of the day: the monthly Stockton Friends of the Library meeting. This is just a fabulous group of library supporters; they are very productive in their fundraising, they are very generous in their appropriations to the library (how often does someone say, "I'll just write you a check for $30,000 right now, if you want"?) and they simply have a good time in their meetings, too. What's not to love, right?

More in the Life of a Librarian - Day 2, Round 5

Day 2, Round 5 was a little less hectic than my Day 1. I start work most days at 7:30am so it's pretty quiet around here and I began by winnowing out the in-box (both the virtual and physical ones) as I continue to catch up after a little time away. Just having a little coffee and oatmeal, prioritizing with whom I need to correspond, and scanning the feed reader and Tweetdeck is a good way to rev up for the day.

My first meeting yesterday was "Admin Council" as we call it. It works like this, the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library was, until last year, a department of the City of Stockton. After the previous director left, however, the Library was rolled into a new Community Services department along with Recreation, Golf, the Arts Commission and Art in Public Places. So, in addition to serving as the City Librarian, I'm also Deputy Director of the Community Services department. The Admin Council meeting is the coming together of the folks who manage each of the aforementioned programs. It's interesting to me because I get to learn some about what goes on in the provision of City services with which I've never been involved before.

As soon as that meeting ended, I hustled over to the main Library's Reference/Circ group meeting that had already started. I love sitting in with these functional group meetings to hear what their day-to-day issues are. Plus, someone usually brings some tasty baked goods. Amy let me down yesterday but Amin brought some homemade samosas that were pretty awesome!

I next occupied myself with an assignment that had come out of the Admin Council meeting. Stockton has a new City Manager who came on three weeks ago and has, apparently, asked for overviews of everyone's current projects. I sat down to fire off a three minute email to my boss with the Library info and ended up writing a couple thousand words, I think! At least I've got plenty going on. I did, though, hear someone yesterday mention "putting something on the backburner". My initial thought was that I don't think I have any backburners; everything seems to be bubbling up on high heat right now (in a fun and exciting way, mind you!).

Another good chunk of time yesterday was spent between email and face-to-face conversations with one of our great IT folks, Bret, and one of the Library's superstars, Susan. We're basically working through two issues right now that are proving just a little sticky. Our very recent implementation of telephone notifications has a few bugs to work out and we're significantly changing how we handle fine and fees and the associated account blocking process.

Also, this Library, like many, has a large amount of uncollected debt (disclaimer: anyone who works in a public library knows that these large numbers aren't "real" but mostly represent the value of replacing materials that were never returned 1o, 15, 20 years ago). And, while another project going on right now between myself and the City's Finance, Auditor's, and IT departments is the development of a process for determining what debt is uncollectible so that it may be removed from the books, the other piece of that larger puzzle is improving the way we collect current fines and fees.

Working with Bret and Susan (because they're the ones with the technical know-how), I've decided to implement a fine and fee policy that, at first blush, sounds more conservative than one which I would normally endorse. We're going to try blocking any customer account that carries a fine or fee older than 30 days. Bret and Susan have determined that our ILS can do this by running a couple of reports back to back. My belief is that this will greatly increase the amount of fine and fee payments we receive though I'm absolutely going to monitor the effect this policy might have on overall circulation; I can imagine a scenario, driven by basic economic theory, that results in the "higher cost" of the Library leading to a decline in usage. Like any new policy or procedure, it's just something that will merit evaluation after a period of time. We have, also, just implemented the capacity for our users to pay fines and fees using debit and credit cards so we are doing our best to make paying fines as easy as possible.

I spent the last chunk of my day yesterday working at the main library's circulation desk. I was just passing by and noticed a long line of customers. I'm not quite proficient with Sirsi yet but I jumped in and, before long, felt like I had most of the common processes down well enough. This was a great reminder for me about why I started working in libraries in the first place. Working face-to-face with the customers is a blast and yesterday was no exception (even the part where the two circulation veterans working with me kept laughing at my ineptitude...). It's gratifying to see how often new customers walk through the door for their first library card and how many people just love borrowing from us what we have to offer. Circ desk duty is definitely something I need to do more of; no better way to understand the effects of policy changes than to witness first hand what happens at the point of service!

More in the Life of a Librarian - Day 1, Round 5

Great to be back in the "Library Day in the Life" game! The way this event has taken off is testament to the innovative thinking of Bobbi Newman (aka Librarian by Day). I'm sure at least some of the intent of the idea back when Bobbi conceived of it was to demonstrate the diversity of work that librarianship and LDIF has certainly delivered.

Quickly, before I regale the reader with my own exciting events of yesterday's day in my library life, if you are new to this program, head over to Twitter and search for the hashtag #libday5. Instant streams of library-work snippets to last all day long.

Well, I am the City Librarian for the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library and yesterday was my first day back after a week away from the office. Clearly, then, a good part of my day was spent digging out from a week's worth of accumulated e-mail. OK, almost a week's worth (I'm a compulsive e-mail reader even when not at work so I had maintained some modicum of up-to-dateness even while away). After the email purge, I checked my phone messages and made some follow-up calls regarding a worker's comp issue and a collection agency issue.

Next up, I reviewed this year's e-rate disbursement and did a little research to see what kind of restrictions I have on how that money can be spent (I've never dealt directly with e-rate before). Looks like the restrictions are very few and SSJCPL just might be joining up with the Link + lending group here in California and Nevada. Adding 9 million titles to what our users already

have available sure would be nice!

Another part of my job is preparing staff reports for the City Council concerning actions I want to take in the library with significant fiscal impacts. My first four months on the job were pretty much consumed by budget preparation but now that we're into July, I'm getting ready to undertake all kinds of projects. To that end, yesterday I began drafting four different staff reports. I suppose I'm feeling a little ambitious but my goal is that, come twelve months from now:

• SSJCPL will have brand new, reliable, and flexible self-checks (in sufficient numbers) at all locations
• we'll be borrowing through Link +
• we'll be very well on our way to completing an ILS migration (I'm looking at Evergreen - just want to see what version 2.0 looks like come October), and, lastly
• we'll be full bore into an RFID conversion.

I also proofed a draft of our annual report that our wonderful publicist Heather is putting together. Here are a couple shots at what she's working on:

Later in the day, our Tech Services guru Susan and I met with a couple of folks from the City's IT department to work through some issues surrounding our newly launched telephone notification service. We also talked about some the same things library folks everywhere are talking about: how to redistribute staff responsibilities in light of new budget constraints. SSJCPL is unlucky in that we don't have 100% dedicated, in-house IT folks but we are very lucky in that those IT people who are assigned to the Library do fabulous work and are as excited about improving services as I am.

On both IT and "redistribution of staff responsibilities" fronts, the last thing I did yesterday was install an FTP client on my computer. Yep; because our IT staff honestly is swamped, I somehow found myself volunteering to serve as the Library's webmaster in addition to being the City Librarian. It ought to be interesting juggling everything going on here but I've done web work before so at least I don't have to learn anything new (except HTML 5...)!

Media Round-up

Many people both in my area and out of it have recently become aware of the fact that my employer, the City of Stockton, and as well as San Joaquin County (the two agencies representing the lion's share of revenue that funds operations at the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library) have issued a joint RFP soliciting proposals for the possible outsourcing of the management of SSJCPL.

Simply to provide a brief one-stop collection about some of what has appeared in the local and national press about this issue, I provide the following links:

• From today's Library Journal.
• From yesterday's American Libraries
• From Tuesday's Tracy Press
• From Monday's KCRA news
• From the 6/27 edition of the Manteca Bulletin
• From the 7/16 edition of the Tracy Press
• From the 7/18 edition of the Stockton Record New!

If you have an opinion about this issue, I'd love to hear!

The Future is Finally Here!

Yes, I do understand that the title of this post doesn't immediately make sense. What I'm referring to is the excitement I'm feeling about the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, where I'm lucky enough to serve as the City Librarian. I've been on the job now for four months and, in that very brief period of time, the Library has gone through some changes that have proven fairly traumatic for many of us here.

Stockton, like most cities, is experiencing serious fiscal challenges. How has this affected the Library? We've had to close a branch that had served its community for a century. That's traumatic. We thought we were going to have to close another branch, the busiest in the entire system, but we avoided that calamity (thanks to the City Council and a great many very vocal library lovers) at the last minute. That caused untold stress among staff and the community. We lost staff due to lay-offs. Not nearly as many as we originally anticipated but the loss of even one person is tragic. Lay-offs affect everyone; not just those who actually lose their jobs. All of this adds up to a lot of stress for a team of employees who have lived in stress and uncertainty for several years due to uncertain management techniques (from a now-departed Director) and the negative press that naturally accompanies that.

The combined effects of a staff that had come to feel some measure of distrust (and are only now beginning to relax after a year of competent management) and a severe budget crunch that has reduced hours at our branches by a third over the past two years has fairly stymied any forward momentum. SSJCPL has simply not been able to effectively assess what we do, how we do it, and how we might reorient our services to most effectively provide meaningful services to our communities.

The great news is that this is all about to change. The budget cycle is behind us and the Library is gearing up to undertake a lot of exciting activities and projects that will result in greater focus on what we do and greater efficiency in how we do it.

First and foremost, we will, very shortly, embark on the development of an plan for implementing our recently completed strategic plan. Library staff did a great job of creating a plan that reflects an understanding of our communities' library needs; now we'll translate our recognition of those needs into actionable steps. Ours won't be a strategic plan that collects dust!

Another milestone event for SSJCPL coming over the horizon is a complete website redesign. Our current online presence is serviceable but nothing more. Along with the process of redesigning our website so that it is more useful to our "virtual branch" visitors, SSJCPL is also making great strides in integrating the use of social media as a way for engaging with fans of the Library even while they aren't inside our buildings. (Hint: check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube!)

Three more tremendously exciting changes at SSJCPL are a result of the staff reorganization that we undertook at the start of our brand new fiscal year. First, we now have a dedicated Youth Services Coordinator that will work toward developing consistently excellent system-wide services to two of our most important demographics: emerging and teen readers. Second, I'm thrilled that we now have a library trainer! Any public library that intends to embrace the mantra of continual improvement must start with staff. How can any library expect to improve its services if it doesn't make an investment in providing opportunities for staff to continually learn and evolve? Third, as of July 1, 11 of our 12 library locations are now open every single Saturday!

SSJCPL is also undergoing less transformational changes this year that, nonetheless, will have an extremely positive effect on the way we do business. With all of our hard-working staff serving ever more library visitors, we will deploy in the coming months self-check machines that are truly functional: reliable and providing the same range of activities that a library user can conduct in a face to face transaction. One of the most important of these transactions is the ability to pay for fines and fees using a credit or debit card. Another new service we will be rolling out (beginning in just a week or so at our first two locations) will be the ability for our customers to use credit and debit cards at our circulation desks.

From a slightly longer term perspective, SSJPCL is actively investigating the potential benefits (both operationally and fiscally) of migrating to an open source ILS (the software we use to manage collection and customer records) and converting from traditional barcode inventory management technology to radio frequency identification (RFID). The former would not sacrifice functionality but could save SSJCPL tens of thousands of dollars each and every year. The latter transforms check-out and check-in processes (not to mention regular collection inventory activities), greatly enhancing the speed and ease of customer transactions whether at the circulation desk or at our self-checks.

Overall, this is a very exciting time to be at SSJCPL. The staff who work here are extraordinarily dedicated to serving the communities in this region; being on the cusp of so much positive change along with them is a great privilege for me!