Looking back at 2010

2010 has been a busy and eventful year at APL. Looking back, here's a few of the things that jump out:

1. Changing of the guard: new leadership, or APL:TNG -- Colleen Rortvedt has been tapped as the next Library Director -- I probably list this first because looming retirement somehow seems like a big deal to me. But after I've been gone for six months, it'll either be "Terry who?" or "this is great -- why did we never do it before?" I appreciate the extensive hiring process our Board went through to find the next Director: they made a great choice. Colleen will bring some great new energy and innovative ideas; she is poised to make positive changes. 2010's accomplishments testify to her vision and effectiveness. In any case, fifteen years of me in this chair is enough.

   Last May, Brian Kopetsky succeeded Meg Shriver, our longstanding reference supervisor with whom I worked for 30 years. Meg was well loved for many reasons, nonetheless Brian has begun making some positive changes as well, showing leadership in social media, marketing, technology, and the Wisconsin public library community.
   

2. Friends Executive Director & board bring new activism and energy -- After our Friends and Foundation merged last year, they spent some months getting organized and hired their first Executive Director -- Janice Daniels Quinlan -- who then set up a great annual meeting, recruited new board members, and has greatly expanded fund-raising and advocacy. With Jan's leadership, the Friends are increasing their visibility and effectiveness while fostering increased connections with the community.


3. RFID sparks massive weeding, slated for complete implementation in 2011 -- There are four great things about the way RFID is going. First is the concept of tagging the collection mainly with volunteers, making the process shorter and cheaper to implement. Second is the tight teamwork of the group that planned the details of implementation, and went through the RFP and vendor selection process. Third is the totally massive weeding project that saw tens of thousands of marginal, worn, or outdated items pulled from the collection, buying us some needed space and making the tagging faster and more cost-effective. And finally, the bold plan to complete the project next year with sophisticated self-checks, security gates and automated materials handling. The Library Board, Mayor and City Council all approved the $400,000 capital project, which will transform many tasks when implemented in 2011.
   
   
4. Meeting room changes -- We had several responses to increasing meeting room use, with associated workload issues as well as supply and demand problems. We created a new small meeting room, permanently set up as a conference room and thus readily available with minimal effort. We implemented the Evanced meeting room booking and calendar software, allowing anyone to check on room availability and put in a request 24/7 without staff mediation. Lower level rooms are now available to community groups on Saturdays. We set up a new color-coded directional signage system on the lower level, clarifying room information and eliminating confusion.
   


5. New long range plan -- Beginning with a staff retreat in February, through meetings of a staff task force in the Spring and a Library Board/community committee in the summer, we revised our long range plan. While the new plan did not represent a radical departure (only prudent in the midst of management transition), it includes a redefined mission, a serious update and some useful new directions. Some of these were already underway with building recommendations, RFID, changes to the Friends and updated marketing efforts.
   


6. Marketing plan & social media -- After a long evolutionary process, we have a new marketing plan with some good mechanisms to maintain communications. An active team has made our Facebook page into a great information source and opportunity for community conversation. We are poised to integrate calendar feeds, improved email communication and other social media, along with a re-branded Friends organization, to possibly re-brand the library and finally bring home the oft-delayed website revamp.
   


7. Program attendance & meeting room use jumps -- Our annual program attendance is pushing 40,000, an increase of 16% over last year. This is related to marketing efforts and to hardworking and innovative program staff, putting together cultural and educational offerings for all ages. There's also been a huge increase in use of our meeting rooms. Both these changes reflect the increasing community center role of the library.
   


8. Monitors depart and “Maintenance” turns into “Operations” -- We significantly tweaked, rather than transmogrified, our former Maintenance Clerks to provide some increased security and oversight backup for public services staff. We had done this with part-time Monitors for after-school hours nine months a year, but had been unsuccessful for years in getting funds to expand the Monitor hours. Instead we eliminated a few part-time unbenefited jobs, folded those duties into the Maintenance job descriptions, and gave the full-time, renamed, Operations Clerks additional training on policies and Black Belt Librarian techniques. As city Facilities Management staff has taken on more of the maintenance duties here, our Operations Clerks have used the time to start some new routines, checking in with service desks while doing their regular rounds, and provide public assistance for the increased meeting room use.
   


9. Ebook platforms and discussions proliferate -- While a bunch of have been excited by the iPad this year, we continue to have supply, demand, format and DRM issues with eBooks. Through our system and a statewide consortium, we are able to offer downloadable eBooks in our catalog, and these can be read on Sony Readers and Nooks, as well as Androids, iPads, and iPhones. There are not yet enough titles or copies, and they're not perfectly easy to use, and they don't work on Kindles, but it's a good start. There's been a lot of conversation with much more to come.
   


10. Building project stalls with ongoing economic concerns -- The City Council referred the Library Board's building request to a special Capital Facilities Committee, which met for some months, and is currently on hiatus until late winter or early spring. Community Development Director Karen Harkness summed up the situation nicely, saying she:

    "believes the Committee would be in agreement that the most prudent way to proceed would be to build a new library. However, she also believes the Committee would be in agreement there are too many unknowns such as stimulus dollars, fundraising and the economy."

    Stay tuned!
    

DC libraries waken controversy

There's a tough dance between being a good librarian, compassionate, progressive, inclusive in providing service -- and yet tough-minded and aware that we're always making choices about scarce resources.

Proposed Rules Would Ban Sleeping in Library

By Martin Weil and Elissa Silverman

Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 29, 2008; Page B03

New rules have been proposed for D.C. public libraries, including a ban on sleeping and a limit on bringing in bags, in what library officials called an effort to make the system more welcoming. [full story]

The coverage is in the Washington Post, but the more interesting story is in the online comments posted, which constitute a fascinating debate about the role of libraries and the problems of homelessness. Seems to be a polarizing issue.

Our approach to date at APL has been to evaluate situations on the extent to which they cause a problem and interfere with library use. The occasional (non-snoring) sleeper has not been a problem, someone passed out in a chair in an alcoholic haze with a booze bottle in his pocket is a problem. If all our chairs were occupied by sleepers it would be different, but where's the line? It's tempting to be black & white: "sleeping is forbidden!", but for now that seems more unjust -- if simpler -- than the more difficult gray of judgement calls.

Phishing Scams in Plain English

Common Craft scores again! This one should be mandatory; sophisticated users may know it already, but this is a great presentation of a problem that manifests among library public access Internet users, as well as in our work and home email accounts.

Read a swimsuit ad -- go to jail

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that a Saukville librarian contacted the Department of Corrections to report that a patron was using the Internet to look at pictures of models wearing hosiery and swimsuits. The patron, James Lala, was sentenced to three years for his library Internet use.

The patron was to go to trial on child pornography charges, and was already on probation after serving time on other child pornography. He was violating the terms of his probation, a condition of which was that he not go on the Internet. A key sentence in the article:

The librarian was familiar with Lala because he had been kicked out of the Saukville and Port Washington libraries numerous times after patrons complained of him viewing objectionable material.

Unfortunate, but this was the right thing to do; patron privacy doesn't extend to the right to defy the law -- even to look at a swimsuit ad. I'm surprised they even let him into the library.

Black Belt Librarians

Thanks to OWLS, our library system, and an LSTA grant, we’re having two days of Black Belt Librarian training with Warren Graham, the author and library security consultant. An unsolicited endorsement: he gives a terrific presentation, entertaining, full of common sense wisdom and useful ideas. Feedback from dozens of staff is uniformly enthusiastic.

Graham describes library security in broad contexts: library staff and users are human, with all the inherent strengths and weaknesses. He teaches us to approach problems by understanding ourselves, being self-affirming not self-defeating, and responding than reacting. He teaches good communication techniques and ways to keep improving. He shares good ideas about using our organizational structure to make our organizations and our libraries better places to be. He teaches how to be "all about communication, rather than confrontation".

Listening to Warren talk, I had to think about pros and cons of current practice at our library.

Things we’re doing right:

• We have a security policy and procedures -- developed with staff input
  
• We have communication mechanisms, we document problems
• We use progressive discipline and ban people from the library when we need to
• We orient new staff to security concerns, policies & procedures and specifically tell them:
• There’s nothing more important than the safety of users and staff
• Anyone on staff is authorized to call the police any time – you won’t be wrong
• Anyone on staff is authorized to throw people out of the library
• Every one of us is responsible for maintaining the library environment

Things we might improve:

• Some of our procedures are a bit black and white. But in a gray world, our rules will never cover every problem, so maybe we should have fewer rules
• Some staff areas need locking doors, and it’s possible we need to do some construction work to build a doorway or two
• We need to keep talking about the security gate / book alarm and how we respond. Much of this is driven by our space design and how materials are processed in other libraries before we get them. Nonetheless, more talk is in order.
• We should talk about visibility and mirrors in out of the way corners.
• We should have a security review process – we’ve done this with Police and we’ve done it with staff, but we need to plan to keep doing it.

To people not in our area, I strongly recommend getting Warren Graham to do a presentation. This would make a great preconference program for a state association. Or at least read his book

To APL staff, trustees, friends, whether or not you made it to Warren’s program – let me know what you think – comment here or drop me an email. A program like this does not resolve issues – it helps start new conversations.