Folks-
Melody Kellogg passed this along to me last week, and I thought it touched on many of the issues and questions we've heard from staff as we've discussed the Alignment. It was written by Laura Sikes, Assistant Library Manager at the Patience Latting Northwest Library ... thanks to her for permission to share ...
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From: Laura Sikes
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2017 8:32 PM
To: Northwest Staff <[email protected]>
Subject: What's it all about?
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2017 8:32 PM
To: Northwest Staff <[email protected]>
Subject: What's it all about?
Hey guys,
In light of our most recent staff meeting in which we discussed an overview of the Alignment, I wanted to share with you some thoughts I've had about why we as a library system must undergo such a transformation. If you study and keep up on news about libraries as a profession, you will be familiar with questions and concerns like: Are libraries still relevant to the current culture? Will they continue to be? How do we, as library and information professionals, ensure that they are in the future? (And some related questions like, Are people still going to be reading (in the way that we currently understand that term) in the future? etc. etc.) I could include dozens of articles arguing in the affirmative and the negative for all of those questions. As people who work in a thriving library, they seem kind of silly to us. And yet...
We don't know, not really. And we can't be certain of the future health of our libraries, no matter what positive evidence we have right now. A library system in Oregon will be closing all of its branches this spring due to the community deciding that they no longer wanted to be taxed to fund the libraries, with no alternative sources of funding available to keep the doors open: (http://www.nrtoday.com/news/douglas-county-libraries-slated-to-close-april/article_1058ca57-7ebf-5356-94ca-461c5fbfe935.html)
That's not one teeny-tiny little city library - it's a whole county library system. The people who pushed to bring the issue to a vote declared that the members of the community no longer saw their libraries as vital community services. Pretty sad...but fair, if the statement that the library does not provide a vital community service is true (which I have my doubts about, but whatevs.) It is important to note that there is a very powerful, very well-funded anti-tax super PAC called Americans for Prosperity that is actually going around nudging communities in this direction - kind of putting the bug in people's ears that their hard-earned tax dollars are paying for library services that they don't need or use. This library system in Oregon is not an isolated incident - it's happening all over the country right now.
Our charge, then, is to demonstrate our value. And to do it over and over again, year after year, so that if the same thing were to happen in our community - if Americans for Prosperity starts robo-calling Oklahoma County residents about how they should fight to get their tax dollars back from the library - no one would listen. Everybody would go, "Not fund the library? Are you nuts? I LOVE the library, I use it all the time, and I get a lot of value from its services." How do we do that? How do we do that long-term? I think we have a really great foundation to build on - we have interesting programs that are usually well-attended, we have front-line staff that provide excellent customer service every day, we have collections of materials and e-resources that get used fairly well, mostly nice and usable spaces...but we are also dealing with the future, here. A future we can't predict, not reliably or well in most cases.
The Alignment we're going through is meant to provide us with a better structure, more support, and new tools to use to reach more members of the community (Market Penetration) and to keep those members coming back to the library regularly (Member Retention). The service model changes will likely be the ones that affect us most at the branch level. As front-line staff, the best way I can think of for you to get aligned with the Alignment is to start leveraging your relationships with our members. What does that mean? Even if we don't do anything else - we can provide real, meaningful, human connections for the people we help every day, and that is something that is sorely missing in our world. Introduce yourself to people, ask their names (try to remember people who are repeat users), be curious about what they share with you & provide them with information about related library services they may not be aware of, and give them a reason to come back and talk to you again.
"I really hope you enjoy that (book, CD, DVD) - let me know what you think about it when you visit next time."
"If you make it to that program we talked about, tell me how it goes the next time you're here." "You can access that database from home, but give me a call and let me know if it works out for you. There are some others that might be helpful too, and I'm happy to go over them with you."
We don't really know what libraries will be in the future. But look at this Alignment as a way to position ourselves to act on whatever it is that our community needs. We may always circulate books and movies like we do now - and that would be great because we're pretty awesome at that. It may also turn out that as we engage and develop our relationships with members, as we work to say yes to them as often as we can, that we will learn a whole slew of other ways that we are needed and wanted, and we can have even more of a positive impact on the people we serve by designing new programs and services that meet those specific needs and wants. And "the library" as we know it will become a totally new, different, thriving thing. That's what this is all about. Sounds pretty cool to me.
Change is hard, and I know we're all feeling it right now. Please know that you have the support of all of the managers and supervisors at Northwest - we're here if you need to talk things out, bounce ideas off of someone, or if you've got a problem that you need help solving. We're going through this together, and I hope you get some solace from that at times when the waters seem a little rough. I'm excited to see the ways our library is going to grow and evolve, and I'm super excited to get to do it with such a great team of people. (If you're still reading at this point, you won a prize, hooray!)
Laura Sikes
Assistant Manager
This is a really great perspective. The idea of a anti-library super PAC campaigning here is something I honestly hadn't even thought about (even with that EveryLibrary training at FOCUS). Thanks for allowing it to be shared, Laura :)
when I read this, it sounded to me like a scare tactic. Unless you're Nostradamus or can see the future, no one knows what the future holds and that has always been true with libraries. But is it really a fair comparison when you're talking about a library system in Oregon that only has 8 full-time employees, 28 part-time employees and 12 on-call employees compared to our system which has about 500 employees. Yes, change is hard and difficult and those of us who've been with MLS for any long length of time know that it takes perseverance and determination to overcome any fears, frustrations and apprehension that any new changes bring about and we do overcome it, but we do not follow blindly...we will ask questions, sometimes difficult, sometimes annoying, sometimes frustrating questions. I can only speak for myself, but I want to know how decisions were made and why they were made because it directly affects me. I want to understand the Alignment because it will help me do my job better. I think that's what everyone wants, to be able to do their job understanding what is expected of them in their current and future careers at MLS.
As a recent hire from the private sector, public service is new to me. However, as part of my brief (so far) time here, I've had the privilege of getting to represent the library system at the eight G.O. Bond Workshops that the City of Oklahoma City has been hosting to gather input from the public about what projects they want to see included in the bond election this fall. I have really enjoyed what could have been a boring, draining experience because I have gotten to hear from the public just how much they love and appreciate our Library System. In a room full of complaints about drainage, potholes, contentious economic development incentive programs, and the potential for rising taxes, our booth (the Library and Public Facilities Booth) is a beacon of hope and positivity. We have received very few negative comments, in fact, we receive requests for new libraries, enhanced library facilities, or people simply stop by to tell us that they appreciate the work that we do.
As part of this, I’ve made an effort to ask people which library they visit most often (it’s usually more than one), what service they use (it’s usually more than one), and then ask them if they know about our many digital services. More often than not, they learn something new about what the library has to offer. They remark “I’ll have to tell my granddaughter about this” or “My husband would love to listen to e-audiobooks on the way to work”. Every new service, initiative, or effort that we take as part of this Alignment will be to reach those that don’t currently use our libraries.
While the threat of economic uncertainty might cause some of the public to want to reign in our taxes, I think our community has seen the value of public investment (particularly through the MAPS programs), and is unlikely to pull our funding. That being said, don’t we want to show our community that we value them and want to provide value to them by providing relevant content and experiences?
that you're mentioning have been going on for decades here at MLS. As a public library system that has been around for decades we have always put forth the effort to let the community know about the services that we provide. Sometimes as I read comments about any significant change that MLS will be going through, I read things like how we should engage our members in the communities and that we should tell them about our services, but we've always done that, we're a public library system it's just what we do. One of our missions is always to get as many people as possible in our communities to use library services and come to library programs and events.
Kim, thank you for your response. It was not my intent to imply that we weren't currently doing those interactions, but to emphasize that all of our new initiatives will provide additional opportunities to reach more people in new and exciting ways. My examples were merely meant to illustrate the depth of interaction I've been trying to have with our members at the G.O. Bond Workshops to try and get them to "engage" with me; rather than them simply stating "I love the Library", I wanted to get them to verbalize how they use our libraries and why they love them.
With our focus on the changes that are coming I sometimes feel that what we've done so far up to this point can sometimes be overlooked. Once again, thanks for responding and those experiences that you've had where someone marveled at services we offered is something that I've experienced also. I had a teacher come in Sunday who was looking for specific biographies and when I told her about the availability of ebooks, she was ecstatic and wanted me to show her how to get ebooks. When I first started working in the system, patrons would ask how much it was to check out a vhs tape (before dvds became the norm!) and when I would tell them it was free, they would be surprised. There are many people out there who know what services we offer and they use those services but some don't and we just have to get that information to them.
I took solace from the perspective of a veteran MLS employee who I spoke to soon after the Alignment was announced. They said that they had been here long enough to see the pendulum swing from side to side time after time. Sometimes we focus on one mode of service, and other times we shift to focusing on another mode. There have been times in the recent past when Librarians focused on a certain age group, and then times more recently when we didn't emphasize that so much. There have been times we embodied "Library Members First" (although without that phrase) by really focusing on holding people accountable for their usage of the physical collection (charging for damages, etc.), and now we are shifting away from that to a certain degree. The priorities haven't changed - just the mode of interpreting/delivering them. And the words we use to describe them. When a past mode of service worked fine, and a new one is introduced, it seems to imply that the old modes were somehow incorrect. It's not that what we did before was inherently wrong, and our new direction is inherently right - it's just a reinterpretation of our goals. And providing a new framework upon which to lay our vision, values, and objectives.
We are lucky that Metro is beloved in the community. The challenges our institution faces are perhaps greater than ever before, but librarians have ALWAYS innovated. I'm very excited to be able to take the excellence that we have established for 50+ years and build upon it. To constantly surprise and delight our community by the depth and breadth of our services. As we always have, and always will!
You make excellent points, Mark, about how we have always innovated and always will. I remember when I first started working in libraries, ebooks were the next big thing, and I was asked EVERY DAY by customers, people already familiar with the value of their library, "How does it feel that you'll be out of work soon [because of ebooks]?" But we demonstrated our continued value, and libraries are still thriving, while all around us, less adaptable industries--video rental chains, newspapers and other print media, traditional record labels--failed or are failing.
It has now been a long time since I've been asked that question about ebooks. But that doesn't mean that there won't be something else just around the corner, so we must continue to be adaptable. I think that's all Laura was saying. It wasn't meant to scare anyone.
I have to agree that library members in Oklahoma clearly value their libraries. Bethany members voted to build a brand new library; a new library is anticipated in Edmond, BI is getting a remodel, CT just opened recently and then there is CH....need I say more!