PLA 2014

This post is way, way overdue, but March has been a crazy month for me! I had the wonderful fortune of attending PLA two weeks ago, but also the poor luck of coming down with a horrible flu-like bug as soon as I got back to NJ. Also, my director is leaving at the end of the month, which will leave me Interim Director effective Thursday. Exciting, but also a bit nervewracking!

Anyway, PLA was an absolutely amazing experience, and I’d like to write about it. My library was generous enough to pay for both my boss and me to attend, and we flew in Tuesday morning. Indianapolis is a nifty little city, and we had a great time exploring all the different restaurants and attractions. The best part, though, was definitely the different programs I got to attend while I was in town.

This was the first time PLA kicked off each day with a morning “Big Ideas” session. I was lucky enough to see both Simon Sinek and Amy Cuddy present variations on their popular TED Talks. From a management and leadership perspective, I learned so much from the two of them. Who thought body language would have such a direct correlation to success, as Cuddy pointed out? I also plan to start reading Sinek’s first book, Leaders Eat Last, this week.

One of my favorite panel discussions was one on teen programming, presented by Katie, Angie, Kelly, and Drea. No matter what I do, I have trouble getting teens to come out for my YA programming in large numbers. This program reassured me that a) I’m not crazy, and b) it can never hurt to branch out and try new things. I have so many ideas that I can’t wait to implement this summer!

I also saw a really fun program about playspaces in children’s departments. This was perfect because of my department’s upcoming renovation. Unfortunately, we don’t have the money or space to devote an entire area of our Children’s Room to play, but I absolutely want to try Kiera Parrot’s idea of portable play kits. I may actually start stocking my department with these before the renovation.

Another great aspect of the conference was all the networking! It was neat to meet people that I’d previously only encountered on Twitter and/or the blogosphere. I met lots of other great librarians from across the country (and even Canada!) too. I’m a geek and love hearing about how different areas structure their libraries and departments.

In short, this experience, although exhausting, was so, so worth it. I can’t wait for Denver in 2016!

What I wore: story time

I’ve noticed the topic of appropriate programming (especially story time!) attire on a few librarian blogs lately, so I thought I’d add to the discussion and share some of my tips and tricks.

I’m a self-proclaimed fashion junkie. While I don’t always follow them, I love reading up on the latest trends. I firmly believe fashion is a fantastic way to express yourself, and work attire doesn’t necessarily have to be boring. For work, my personal concept is a mix of classic and edgy; I love timeless pieces like my J. Crew sweaters and blazers and Tory Burch Reva flats, but also mix things up with bright colors, fun jewelry, studs, etc. My weekend wear is a bit more on the edgy side (okay, I was a scene kid all through high school, and some of that has stayed with me) but because I work in a fairly conservative community, I tone that down when I’m at work. Our technical dress code is essentially business casual, although there’s talk we may get to start wearing jeans. I don’t know if I will, if that even happens; I do enjoy dressing up a bit during the work week and always have.

That said, my outfits on days when I have story time or other similar programming are quite different than the days when I’m mainly behind my desk or in meetings. I sit on the floor during story time; I think it’s the best way to connect with the kids, and I find it easier to be on their level. That totally drives what I wear. Dresses are obviously a no-no, as are any kind of low-cut pants. Because our programming rooms are on a different floor than my departments, I also stay away from heels. Long story short, I try to stick with either dress pants or other nice pants (colored jeggings and American Eagle’s skinny trousers are great for this!) and long shirts or sweaters. On days when I have a program that doesn’t require sitting on the floor, such as an outside entertainer, I like to wear a cute dress, plus tights and a cardigan if it’s chilly. Regardless of what my day has in store, accessories are always a must to jazz up any outfit! I love statement necklaces, scarves, and hair accessories like headbands, bows, and flowers.

Here’s an example of what I wore for a previous story time day (brands aren’t exact, but you get the general idea):

1.16.14 by chapel1419 featuring a floral shawl

Jigsaw long sleeve tee
$64 – jigsaw-online.com

Rag Bone cord trousers
stylebop.com

Timeless equestrian boots
$83 – pret-a-beaute.com

Lucky Brand turquoise earrings
amazon.com

Floral shawl
chicastic.com

So, what do you like to wear to work?

A day in the life

More often than not, when I tell people what I do for a living, they react with a bit of confusion. (“So you get paid to read books all day? That must be awesome!” or, my personal favorite, “But what do you DO all day?!” See also, “Oh, it’s so nice that you volunteer with the kids!”…but that’s a story for another post.) I’m not, in fact, allowed to read during work, unless I’m prepping for one of my three book clubs, and running two departments by myself gets pretty busy.

So, I decided to take note of what I did on Friday. Note that this day was actually a little atypical because I only had one program, and it required little work on my part. I usually have two or three more active programs. So, in case anyone’s curious, this is what my January 17th looked like:

9:30am – Arrive at work, say hello to circ staff, put lunch away, etc.
9:40am – Boot up computer, fill in children’s room displays, select new “Book of the Day”, pick up stray books and DVDs left on tables, etc.
9:50am – Begin sifting through both work email addresses (the department’s and my own) and responding to messages as needed.
10:20am – Find and pull the I Survived series to recatalog and label for our new series section. Reserve those that are checked out.
10:30am – Virtual committee meeting. Trek over to processing room to use one of their computers (so I can hear what people are saying), and they’re all in use. Trek back to children’s room with earbuds and hope no patrons come in. Attempt to juggle meeting and assuage patrons when they discover the elevator is out of order, simultaneously.
11:15am – Step away from meeting to help patron find books to read aloud to her 2nd grader’s class.
11:50am – Meeting winds down. Jump into another (in-person) meeting about an upcoming literacy workshop we’re hosting. Pause off and on to help patrons.
12:10pm – Print out new labels for I Survived books and attach with our special “series” stickers. Help patrons.
12:30pm – Pull out most of our remaining paperback chapter books and work on recataloging them into the regular fiction section and/or series section. We used to have all paperbacks on three spinners, separate from their hardcover counterparts, and it got really confusing for both patrons and staff.
1:10pm – Lunch
1:40pm – Put new labels on the books I recataloged.
2:00pm – Meet with director regarding this year’s budget breakdown.
2:20pm – Prep craft for Monday’s author visit.
2:30pm – Continue relabeling books.
2:45pm – Set up for our afternoon program: board games.
2:55pm – Director wants separate budgets for juvenile fiction and nonfiction in 2014. Go through all my book orders from 2013 to determine how I should split the two collections, percentage-wise.
3:10pm – Update library Facebook page with program announcements.
3:15pm – After-school rush starts. Help kids and parents while looking at journals and ordering. Supervise board games.
4:45pm – Begin to alert patrons we’ll be closing at 5 and straightening up the Children’s Room.
4:55pm – Close Children’s Room. Head up front to help circ staff close up.
5:00pm – Home free!

New Year’s Resolutions

So I totally dropped the ball on this thing. Oops! I’m not even sure how it happened to be honest, although I tend to do this with every blog I create. Anyway, I’m back! One of my goals for 2014 is to post here more frequently, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

It’s hard to believe 2014 is already here; it feels like I was just writing my resolutions for 2013. I am not normally a big resolution person, but I would like to make some for this year. To be completely honest, 2013 was a horrible year for me personally. On the bright side, though, it was pretty kick-ass in the professional sense. That said, I’m of the mindset that constant improvement is worth striving for, so here are a few of my library-related goals for this year:

1. Network, network, network! I did a lot in 2013 as far as networking with other youth services librarians in my consortium. Now I’d like to step it up a notch and take things outside Bergen County. It’s very interesting to me how librarians in different areas of the country – even different parts of NJ! – handle programming. So, if there are any other librarians out there reading this, feel free to say hey! I plan to get more involved with my professional associations (NJLA, ALA, PLA, YALSA, ALSC) to accomplish this too. Also, I am fortunate enough to be attending PLA in Indianapolis this March, so that will be a huge opportunity for me! Networking isn’t easy when you’re an introvert, but it’s well worth it.
2. Try out new programming. After totally revamping our SRP in 2013, I felt reinvigorated. I’d like to do the same for our year-round programs as well. We’re offering mommy and me yoga starting next week, and I’m excited to see how that goes. I’m also launching a new K-6 writing club at the end of the month. I can’t wait to offer more STEM-related programs as well, which should be easy given this year’s collaborative summer reading theme.
3. Survive my first major renovation. Well, that’s an exaggeration. This isn’t my first renovation. The last one I went through, though, happened when I was in high school and working as a page and circ staff member. We also didn’t renovate the children’s department I worked in because that was completed just a couple years before I got to that library. This will be my first renovation that I’ll actually be helping plan and that will directly impact my actual work space. I can’t wait for the end result, but getting to that point will be a welcome challenge. My goal is to stay as organized as possible and not stress myself out over the details.
4. Refresh story time. This sort of falls into #2, but I really want to reboot our story time program. I’m still sticking to the same basic formula my predecessor used, and while it works fine, I feel like it needs an extra oomph. At this point, I’m not sure whether that will entail adding music, props, iPads, or something else entirely, but we’ll see.
5. Finish my weeding and organizational projects from 2013. I need to find the time to continue weeding our nonfiction collection. Would you believe up until this summer we still had country books whose maps included the USSR in our circulating collection?! That’s just embarrassing. Unfortunately, weeding is not easy when I’m the only one in the department 98% of the time, and we have a small-ish materials budget for replacements. I also need to finish our new J SERIES section. One day…

What are your professional resolutions for 2014?

Planning story time

I’ve seen a bunch of blog posts lately about how different librarians prep for story time, so I thought I’d share a few of my approaches. One thing I’ve learned from talking to a bunch of youth services librarians is that we’re all incredibly different when it comes to planning. Some systems work better than others for certain people. That said, I thought I’d weigh in and share some of strategies.

I generally offer four story time classes at a time: two sections of 18 months-3 year-olds, who attend with a parent or caregiver, and two sections of 4-6 year-olds, who can attend independently if they’re ready. I also offer one “Baby Time” class, which is for babies/toddlers between 6 and 18 months. Drop-ins are offered throughout the year, which patrons don’t have to register for. This summer, I tried doing all of my in-library story times as drop-ins, and people are responding well to it since the summer can be a tricky time to manage several kids’ schedules. In classes that I accept registration for, I usually take up to 20 kids. All of my story times include rhymes/songs, stories (usually 3), a simple craft, and free play with our toy selection. For Baby Time, I usually do 3 songs or rhymes, 4 board books or very simple picture books, and free play.

Prepping crafts is definitely the most time-consuming part of planning story times for me. At my current job, I’m fortunate enough to have a seasonal assistant who does most of this for me. I didn’t have that luxury at my previous library, and a very large part of my day went to scouring the Internet for ideas, cutting, coloring, etc. This was great fun for me, but didn’t leave a whole lot of time to do the other parts of my job!

Every class I offer has a theme. For example, my off-site story time at the town lake focused on dinosaurs this week. Tomorrow’s drop-in will be about the sun. I generally run my sessions for about 8 weeks, and I do my best to have an outline of each week’s theme, books, rhymes, and crafts before the first class meets. This document is saved in Microsoft Word, and I strike through each week as I finish it. If something needs to be prepped, I highlight it in red until it’s ready – then it becomes green. I don’t repeat books or themes during sessions, though I usually do the same stuff for both sections (i.e. all 4-6 year-olds might hear about the farm one week). Since I have a stock of crafts that my assistant makes during her summer and winter breaks, I try to stick with themes that I have crafts for; however, if there’s a theme I really want to do that I don’t have a project for, I’ll come up with my own. As far as books, I have certain favorites for most themes that I trot out fairly often, but otherwise, I try to mix things up. If I’m considering a book I’m not familiar with, I always consult journal reviews before choosing it, particularly in regards to the recommended age group. Of course, I read all the books beforehand as well. The number of rhymes/songs varies each week for story time, and I choose those as I go. Every story time class begins with letting the kids get their wiggles out. This has become somewhat of a story time tradition.

Once I finish a story time class, I add all the data to Evernote. Each theme gets its own note, in which I include the date, age group, theme, books, rhymes/songs (if applicable), craft, and verdict (received well, received poorly, etc.). I tag each note with the age group, verdict, theme, whether it was seasonal or year-round, and any other pertinent info. For example, a recent dog story time I did is tagged “18 months-3 years, animals, dogs, pets, year-round, received well”. What can I say, I love metadata! Seriously, though, I find Evernote to be a wonderful tool since it’s cloud-based and can easily be accessed on my work PC, my laptop, phone, iPad, iPod, etc. The tagging feature makes it easy to browse, and I can also refer to it when making book suggestions if need be.

So there you have it! I’m organized to the point of being anal about things, but this is the system that I’ve found works best for me. What are some of your approaches to planning story time?

A culture of collaboration

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting work on my MLIS, it’s that libraryland is a culture of sharing. The best class I took during my graduate career was called Innovation in Public Libraries, which I was fortunate enough to take as a WISE* student through Syracuse University. My professor, the wonderful Alison Miller, encouraged creativity and sharing not only our ideas, but those we found elsewhere. I literally came away from this class with a portfolio of things I wanted to try.

A lot of my most successful programs – including Blind Date with a Book, Vehicle Day, and teddy bear picnics, just to name a few – have been inspired by offerings at other libraries. How many of you look on Pinterest for programming ideas, or even story time crafts? If you’re not doing this already, you should start. One of my favorite things about librarians is that we’re happy to share our successes and failures without qualms. It’s the nature of our profession; if we’re sharing our love of reading with our patrons and offering them a really nifty service for free, why shouldn’t we help out our fellow librarians?I haven’t encountered many other industries where this is the case. Although I’m a competitive person by nature, it makes me proud that librarians are such great collaborators and are so willing to help each other out. This is part of why I think networking is so important in the LIS world; you never know who you might be inspired by next. In today’s world of small budgets, it also helps that you can ask for advice before jumping into a new venture. For example, I’m planning on adding iPads to my children’s department this fall. The research process leading up to their inclusion would be much harder if I couldn’t consult other librarians who have done this before. It’s a win-win no matter which you way you look at it.Which of your programs have been inspired by offerings at another library?

*WISE is a consortium that allows LIS students to register through their home school to take up to six credits in another LIS program. So, even though I went to Pitt, I theoretically could have taken two classes elsewhere. Although I love Pitt with all my heart, this was incredibly helpful since different programs focus on different aspects of librarianship.
—

Summer Reading update

I find this impossibly hard to believe, but I’ve almost reached the halfway point of my library’s summer reading program. When I was first figuring out our schedule, I set July 17-24 as the week when the kids could come in to get their midway prizes (coupons to Auntie Anne’s and Applebee’s). That’s two days away! It’s crazy to me that we’re already halfway through July.

The passage of time aside, I’m proud to say that I’m still standing at this point. As I mentioned in my last post, Vehicle Day was a huge success. Our story time series at the town lake is going well after two sessions, although today’s weather was a bit too hot for it to be very enjoyable. (Seriously, mid-90’s in NJ? This shouldn’t happen!) Both programs have been great for community outreach and bringing in people who were not previously library users. That’s another reason why I’m glad I visited our local elementary school to do a SRP presentation as part of their year-end assembly; thanks to this visit and the bookmarks we gave out, I got a lot of kids to register who’d never come to the library before.

Registration is now just about even with last year’s numbers, which I’m proud of. We have two more “big” programs left: a live animal show next Friday and our end of summer finale/magic show one month from today. Attendance-wise, I think we’ll probably come out ahead of 2012. Considering this is my first year running the program, and I wasn’t sure how patrons would take to the new format, I’m quite pleased with that!

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer has to offer.

Program Recap: Vehicle Day

Yesterday marked the launch of a brand new program at my library, which I would like to turn into an annual event: Vehicle Day. I really can’t say enough about how worthwhile it was, not to mention how incredibly easy!

So what is Vehicle Day? It was a special program where we brought in various trucks for the kids to look at, touch, explore, etc. When all was said and done, we wound up with a police car, an ambulance, a firetruck, the fire chief’s SUV, and two DPW vehicles: a digger and a dump truck. We were actually supposed to get a third DPW truck, but there was a water main break in town last night and the truck was busy handling that. The kids were allowed to go inside everything except the digger, which we thought was too high and unsafe. In addition to the vehicles, we had the fire chief, a firefighter, a police officer, and two EMTs present, all of whom were great with the kids. The fire department even allowed the kids to test out their giant hose! We chose to run the program open house-style and gave people a two-hour window to come visit., from 1-3pm. This worked out nicely because the town camp gets out at 2pm, and people either stopped by with younger children before having to pick up their siblings or came by on the way home from camp.

To me, the best part of everything was that the whole day was virtually free; the only thing we paid for was refreshments – water and pretzels. My director and I brought coolers from home to keep the water nice and cold, and we were able to do everything on-site since our library has a circular drive out front. This was great since we’re on a main road, and we got tons of foot traffic. Obviously all of our wonderful helpers volunteered, and there was no cost to borrow any of the vehicles for the day.

Actually getting the vehicles was probably the trickiest part, but I got extremely lucky. After struggling about the best way to go about this for a couple of weeks, I was approached by one of our town’s DPW workers. He wonderfully agreed to speak with the police and fire departments in addition to securing his own trucks. The only entity I actually had to follow up with was the ambulance corps, and one of our circulation staff members was able to pull some strings with them since she’s an EMT. All in all, the entire day came together seamlessly. If you’re thinking about doing this at your own library, I would strongly suggestion planning it WAY ahead of time and contacting the vehicle owners well in advance. I got the idea for this in March and began really working on it in April.

We drew a ton of people – both regular patrons and newbies who’d never been to the library before – and I think our volunteers enjoyed themselves just as much as the kids did. I’d say our biggest hits were the fire hose and being able to sit in the dump truck (and honk its horn!). Although I planned this for 2013 based around our Dig Into Reading SRC theme, I look forward to making it an annual program. We’ve already had several requests for an encore! Next year, I’d like to recruit even more vehicles too, such as a county sheriff’s patrol car, a streetsweeper, and maybe even some classic cars/hot rods.

Here are a few photos if you’re curious:

Getting to use the fire hose was a huge hit! The kids got to knock down traffic cones with the water spray.

Summer Reading, Part I

I’ve helped run summer reading programs for about ten years now, but this is the first year that I’m actually running the show. Tomorrow, we’ll enter the third week of our program, which runs until August 15th. I’m proud to say that I’m still standing at this point!

Despite the fact that I started preparing for the initiative in March by ordering decorations/prizes/craft kits, booking performers, making our schedule, etc. it’s amazing how quickly it crept up and how worried I was about everything getting off the ground smoothly. To anyone reading this who hasn’t worked in a public library, June, July, and August are undoubtedly our busiest time of the year. I like to say that libraries run the opposite of retail: we’re busiest during the summer, and slowest from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. Why? A lot of it is the sheer fact that kids need something to do when they’re not in school. Since the economy went sour, I’ve noticed that our numbers have increased incrementally each year; my guess for the reason behind this is that fewer families can afford expensive sleepaway camps, sports programs, pool memberships, and vacations than usual. Since libraries are free, they’re a great place to bring the entire family when you’re looking for a reason to get out of the house.

So, how’s it going so far? I changed up the structure of our program this year. Despite keeping the same three clubs that we usually have (pre-readers, elementary-aged readers, and young adults), each club works a bit differently, and members get incentives for signing up. So far, it seems to be working. We’ve already beat our numbers from 2009 and 2010, and, like I said, we’re only entering our third week. 2011 and 2012 had virtually the same participation levels, and we’re currently on pace to come out slightly ahead of those projections for 2013. Even though this means I’ve worked a million extra hours in the last few weeks and come home exhausted every night, it’s exciting!

I think I’m going to check in here with periodic (either weekly or bi-weekly) summer reading updates for the duration of the program. So far, both the kids and parents seem happy with what I’m offering, and I’m hoping it stays this way. Tomorrow, I start a new story time series at our town lake, and I’m interested to see how that goes. Wish me luck!

The truth about “job hopping” – aka your skills transfer more than you’d think

Despite the fact I’ve continuously worked in libraries in some capacity since I was a sophomore in high school, I took a somewhat roundabout approach to starting my career. When I first graduated college, I was intent on working in publishing or doing some sort of writing. My first writing job turned out to be such a mistake that I only lasted four days before quitting. After leaving that office, I worked at a law firm for a year. It was at that point that I decided I wanted to pursue my MLIS because I really missed working with kids. When working full-time got to be too much on top of grad school, I took a part-time position doing PR at a web design/digital marketing firm. Once that company took a turn for the economic worse, I moved on to work in a sales office, where I stayed until I got my first “real” librarian job.

I have one friend (perhaps “acquaintance” is the better term here) who makes at least one snide comment about how much I’ve job hopped every time I see her. This made me second guess myself for a long time, but I’ve come to see that she’s wrong. Yes, I’ve held many jobs in my lifetime; however, each one has taught me valuable lessons that I’ve brought with me and used to get to the point where I am now.

Despite the fact that I will probably (hopefully?) never again work in insurance law, my year at the law firm gave me a ton of useable experience. In fact, I would recommend this type of work to any recent college graduate looking to gain office experience. Legal writing is very precise and professional; I have utter confidence that I will never struggle in how to phrase an email or letter again in my life. Law firms are high-pressure environments; although some have more interaction with clients than others, this atmosphere has undoubtedly prepared me for those busy days during Summer Reading where I’m being pulled in a hundred different directions and don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. What else did I learn here? Telephone skills? Check. Time management? Check. Being sensitive to privacy concerns? Check. Though maybe not obvious, these are all incredibly transferable skills.

The PR job is probably my most self-explanatory non-library job experience. It was at this company that I learned how to draft a concise, yet intriguing press release, which is another task I perform at my current job at least several times a month. Not only that, but I also learned how to properly practice social media marketing (enough posts to stay on your patrons’ radar, but not so many that you become annoying), SEO (while the keywords sound awkward, THEY WORK), and even some web development (oh hey, WordPress!). I don’t regret this experience at all.

Finally, working in a sales office taught me more people skills than any other work I’ve done. Being a distributor for metrology equipment, I saw things from both the vendor and consumer side. Who would think that vendor relations is a huge part of being a librarian? It is. Those books and media items, not to mention your furniture, print work, and a million other incidentals, all get purchased from somewhere. I know how to talk to salespeople because, well, I worked with them for a year. If I’m not getting my stuff in the timeframe I was promised, I know what to do. I’m also particularly handy now at accounts receivable AND accounts payable, which, again, helps when you buy stuff for a living. Not to mention all the IT work, screening and interviewing potential hires, shipping, and renovation planning I did while I was there…

My bottom line is, a surprising variety of job experience can be applied to librarianship. So you haven’t worked in a library, but you’re finishing your MLIS? Figure out how to make your experience work for you because it’s probably not as irrelevant as you think it is. Continue to build your network too – you never know who knows whom.

To the girl who accuses me of job hopping, I’d like to point out that I firmly believe each and every one of these positions has helped me get to the place where I am today. As long as you’re not switching jobs every three months, you’ll be okay. The main goal is to learn from what you’re doing and apply it to your dream job as best you can.