Family Talk Information
Risa Sargent, Assistant Manager of the Downtown Library, recently shared some valuable points on communicating with the public about the Family Talk section:
The first thing to know is remember the LEARN model.
In order to help you with the “React Now” part of the model, here is some information that you can share: The next Commission Meeting is on October 20th at Southern Oaks beginning at 3:30pm.
If members are wanting to talk to a Commission member, the normal procedure is to forward their call to Maria Watkins (DIR) at x3725. Maria handles all of the communication between library members and the Commission. Because of the volume of calls right now, they are working on getting a link up on the metrolibrary.org webpage to a form where the public can send an email, which will go to Maria. As soon as we have that link, we will forward it out to you.
Also, if members of the public want to speak at the Commission meeting, they will need to bring the attached form and turn it in prior to the meeting. You can find the form also on the Intranet here. You can always email the form to anyone wishing to receive it as well.
If you are unfamiliar with the Family Talk collection, please talk to Risa or Teresa about it for more information. Here are also a few places to review information about what the collection is and why we have it:
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Comments
I'm really curious to hear from front-line staff about the FT collections at the varying libraries. Do members come in and ask for these materials? Are the sections policed by staff members? Do members even know these materials exist, since they are kept in segregated sections? Any responses would be great!
Great question, Aaron! Hopefully we'll hear from the front line staff how they do this.
Hey Aaron,
At Edmond the Family Talk section mostly sits untouched. I feel like I most often help customers to it when they are approaching talks about puberty or grief. I don't think most patrons are aware of its existence or purpose. Family Talk books come coded for that section and librarians don't police the section. I've always understood our access policies to still apply, so if a child managed to get one of these books from the higher shelves, no one would prevent that child from checking it out. At the ED location and MC locations, these books are in the children's section, just on shelves at least 5' off the ground. I don't know where other libraries have these items located.
People might not notice your question here. You might try emailing the Child Programmers list. Everyone is typically fast with feedback :)
The talking points that Risa put together are great. I'm looking forward to hearing what sort of conversations come out of this and if it means that we might be able to integrate these books back into our collections.
When I started to work for NW a few years ago I was informed about Family Talk, but I forgot about it and didn't re-learn where it was for many months. I recall shelving in that collection once while at NW. I have only just started to help shelving in the Children's area at DN very recently. At DN we have a school inside the lib. and we are the school lib. for the John Rex charter school. We also have other programs to get groups of children into the children's area to use the books in the lib. and to circulate the books out of the lib. In these few days I have never shelved or seen one of the books in that collection out of the collection and on my cart or in the hands of a child or left out in the lib. I'd say that the circulation is pretty low for this collection because the materials are literally kept out of reach of the intended audience and short persons.
At DN Risa started a spreadsheet so that we can view statistics on circulation. In Sep. we had 3 circulations of FAMILY TALK with 16 returns. I don't know of a good way for someone to learn the circulations without consulting with a Carl-X Subject Matter Expert because Carl-X doesn't support reports by Location Code directly under Circulation. However, you can always go to Reports -> Cataloging -> 3013 to figure how many items are in FAMILY TALK at each location. I am hoping that this figure doesn't incorporate whether another location has the same item coded as FAMILY TALK like LS2PAC does. I counted 165 books in FAMILY TALK at DN after asking at lib. where the collection is. I'm sorry that I couldn't give you much more than anecdotal evidence, but Carl-X is tricky. I would assume that as a repercussion of the media broadcasting this matter that the administration will likely publish statistics about circulation of these types of materials before and after the compromise to be shown to the commission.
I've been in the employ of Metro 23 years as a page/library aide; I don't know if I'm front line or not but I am on the public floor and direct and answer questions as to where information is located. The FT shelf was developed to assuage the concerns that some parents and caregivers had as to how they could introduce or answer questions about sensitive topics their children might ask about. FT offers a selection of titles and topics in the vast collection known as children's literature with thousands of books shelved on hundreds of yards of shelving, much of it appearing quite daunting to most parents.
It's true the FT discussions were driven by animosity to including controversial books such as King & King and Tango Makes Three in Metro's childrens collection. Metro serves all its taxpayers with stellar library service and so their concerns had to be addressed. At first, I didn't like the idea of the separation of the collection, but blended as it is with all kinds of sensitive issues that young readers might find difficult to understand, I became convinced that FT offers a very good guide for parents to edge into finding the materials they find useful.
I find it unfortunate that the person leading this movement to revamp FT has used the word "stigma" to describe the shelving of gay topic books in FT. Death, life and birth, drug use, divorce, blended families, medical visits, puberty, and sexual orientation are human experiences--sensitive even for adults, yes, but stigmas, not at all. The free flow of information without fetter is a privilege and a right that Metro offers to the taxpayers of Oklahoma County and I hope the Commission feels the same way.
I've been at two libraries (BI and RE) since we've had this section. I agree that it doesn't get much use, which I wonder if that was kind of the unspoken purpose. Even staff tends to "forget" about it, because it isn't accessed that much and the tendency is to go to the section where the materials you want would be. New staff is often unaware of it, so it's not maintained or added to. If we're voting, I would like to see the materials added in to the rest of the collection. For librarians it seems that the larger problem has always been getting people to READ, rather than WHAT they're reading.
I feel like our FT section doesn't get browsed very often, but it is used. We often direct parents there when they want materials about new siblings or potty training and I usually talk about the section being useful for when parents may want something to address certain topics and leave it at that. The section can be handy when a parent asks for a topic we know is in that section but I would love for them to be added back to the regular collection. We allow free access to everything else without putting a special label on it so these books should be treated the same even if they are in the kid's area.
If you concatenate #page=60 to the first link, then the link will automatically take the viewer to page 60.
e.g. Page 60
Since there is a lot of talk about how useful this collection is, here is a summary of statistics from the Circulation Report 17 (Items by Status). I used the parameters of all libraries, all statuses (without lost, missing, overdue, traced, or withdrawn) for the location of Family Talk. There are 1073 items. 72 are currently checked out (6.71%); 7 are on hold (.65%); 15 are in process (1.39%); 5 in transit (.46%); 173 have a last circ date of 2014 or earlier (16.12%); 686 have a last circ date in 2016 (63.93%); 168 have circulated since 10/1/16 (15.65%); there are 586 circulations since 7/1/16 and a cumulative circulation of 10565 (9.84 ave. turns). These are not shabby results.