PVLD Director's Blog

This very thoughtful talk by Sherry Turkle (thank you to Trent at The Simple Dollar for sharing) is well worth 20 minutes of your time. Once I got over my chagrin at how close to home many of Professor Turkle's points struck, I started to think about the role public libraries can (and already do) play in both being a place of real human connectedness and fostering the self-reflection that Professor Turkle asserts is so lacking in our world of technological hyper-connection. As we wrestle with what is our role in an increasingly digital world, we would probably be well-advised to keep this in mind.

The future of reading - teen edition

In all of the discussion about e-books and the future of readng, one thing that is starting to emerge is that teens and young adults still want to read and own physical books.

We've seen this in our family as my high school and college-aged nieces and nephew put a trip to the library book sales high on their list of things to do when they visit from Canada, and invariably go home with bags so loaded with books that we run the risk of excess baggage charges. Younger family members also request books as gifts and welcome gift cards that they can use to purchase "real books". To my knowledge none of our family members under the age of 30 owns an e-reader, and those that have tablets don't seem to use them for reading.

At the library we recently explored using teen volunteers to help teach adults how to use e-readers, only to learn that most of the teens don't have or use an e-reader.

This recent article from publishers weekly highlights that while many teens do read digital content, in part because it satisfies their desire for instant gratification, they also want to own the paper version....it seems to be "and" rather than "or" with this age group. And while the article notes that in the recent holiday season Barnes and Noble sold five times as many e-books of Young Adult titles as print ones online, and Amazon also reports that sales of Young Adult e-books outstrip those for e-books overall, I have to wonder how much of that is because of the growing popularity of Young Adult fiction with adults who no longer could be described as young. Just witness the current popularity of The Hunger Games, which is being read by adults across the country, including many book clubs...or these observations from an article in the Los Angeles Times a couple of years ago.

If teens and Young Adults represent the future, then the future of reading may not be as different as some would have us believe!

Go Library! Visiting the libraries in the Los Angeles area

Ellen November, a PVLD volunteer and community activist, has begun a mission to visit and blog about libraries across Los Angeles County. She got the idea from Oleg Kagan, a Librarian at the County of Los Angeles Public Library's West Hollywood Library and husband of PVLD's own Ashley Kagan.

I'm looking forward to this virtual library tour! If you want to join along click here to view Ellen's Go Library blog..and share it with your friends.

Why are we (the library) here?

One of the things we have been talking about here at PVLD is what is the one overarching thing that we are trying to do as a library and how do we communicate that so that is the guiding force behind the actions and behavior of every employee and volunteer.

We don't necessarily mean a "vision statement" or a "mission statement" or a tagline...we already have one of each of those...but rather a simple articulation of why we are here.

The conversation is ongoing, but the more I think about the more I think that it is not about "access to information", or "reading" or "community center" or any of the other concepts that we in libraries often talk about.  What we are here to do is  make our community, and people's lives, better.

The wording may not be quite right, and the grammar could use some polishing, but at the end of the day if our community is not made better because of what the library does, and if the life of every person who comes through our doors or uses our services is not made better in some way small or large because of their interaction with us, we are not fulfilling our true mission.

For the community that means understanding its needs and problems, as well as its goals and aspirations, and finding ways to meet the needs, help solve the problems, or support the achievement the goals and aspirations through the resources, services, and programs that the library offers.

For individual people it means not only offering resources, services and programs to help them address their personal needs and problems or achieve their goals and aspirations but also doing what we can to make sure that every interaction with us enhances their lives.  That could be as simple as a smile and greeting to a lonely older adult or  or the speedy and polite resolution of an issue with their library account or the ability to find something enjoyable to read or a clean and comfortable place to study (or a clean restroom for that matter!)....or as complex as helping them research a medical issue or complete a homework assignment or learn a new skill or language.

The key is that whatever we do should pass the tests of making things better for our community and for every person we interact with.

At least that is what I think the real role of the library is....what about you?

Giving orders

Our Leadership Team  been talking a lot about teamwork lately, and particularly about the challenge we face as leaders in balancing our desire to engage team members in decision-making with our leadership role and responsibility for giving direction and making decisions, so this nugget from the Leadership Schpleadership blog via Cultural Offering really struck a chord when I came across it the other day...

Thought Food From The Master

Said the governor, “Is there any advice you can give me in the exercise of my office?”

“Yes. Learn how to give orders.”

“Why?”

“So that others can receive them without feeling inferior,” said the Master.

Leadership in 29 Words

Thanks Terry Starbrucker for this succinct description of the most important words of leadership:

 

Honored

This has been a week when I've had more than ample occasion to be grateful for and proud ofthe people I work with. 

The week kicked off with our fourth Staff Day, where the library was closed so that we bring the entire staff together for some learning and some fun.  Our 85 employees, many of whom are part-time, are stretched across three libraries and an Annex with a combined 159 hours of operation each week.  This means that many employees never get to meet colleagues who work at other locations or on different shifts.  Staff Day gives us a chance to address that.

The day is organized by a team of staff members who volunteer for the task, and they did themselves proud on a shoestring budget.  We had an excellent and thought-provoking presentation on teens and how to serve them by Dr. Joni Richards Bodart in the morning, then got on buses provided by County Supervisor Don Knabe and rode over to the Miraleste Library for lunch and some fun and games before heading back to Peninsula Center Library for a tour of some of the libraries hidden places followed by a social hour in the Annex.

Since what happens at Staff Day stays at Staff Day I won't go into the details of our activities, but we had a lot of fun.  Dr. Bodart joined in as an enthusiastic participant, and before she left told both me and Louise Beebe of the organizing team that she has been in a lot of libraries and worked with a lot of different library staffs, but she has never seen a group that had come so far in breaking down internal barriers and hierarchies.  What a great reminder of what a terrific team we have here at PVLD!

The next day I spent the day wth colleagues from across the State talking about "Blue Ocean Strategy" for libraries and the State Librarian's vision of creating an "incubator" to foster library innovation and take ideas to implementation.  The day was informative if tiring, but it also made me realize how fortunate we are here at PVLD in having the resources and the environment to try new things and "incubate" new ideas without relying on external support.  If someone has an idea that is legal,seems worth trying, and we can figure out how to pay for it..we just do it.  I don't think many other libraries can say that.

And then today our "First Team" (the Department Managers and Assistant Managers from across PVLD) met, as we do regularly, to talk about how we work as a team and how we can continue to improve communication and grow the level of trust and honesty within the team and throughout PVLD.  Today consultant Cheryl Gould (no relation!) visited our meeting and we had a really good discussion about how far we have come as a team, and where we want to go.  The commitment all of our leaders have to making PVLD a vital institution in our community and to spending time and energy on the "soft" but extremely hard issues of communication and teamwork that can get in our way made me so proud.

We're now looking forward to a year of working with Cheryl to grow our ability to work together and I think great things are ahead. 

PVLD staff - it is an honor to work with you.

Library Graffiti

Today the staff at the Malaga Cove Library were bemused to find a piece of art like this back in the stacks:

A bit of detective work helped them discover that the library was part of this very cool art project.  Thank you to the artist for including the library!

Like Riding a Bike

PVLD operates on a July 1 - June 30 fiscal year, so about now is when we start seriously thinking about what we want to achieve next year and beyond and how those goals will affect our budget.  For many years this has meant reviewing and updating, and periodically re-writing, our Strategic Plan.

Back in November I wrote this post about my growing feeling that PVLD may have evolved to a point where a highly structured strategic planning process resulting in a formal Strategic Plan is not only un-necessary, but possibly counter-productive. 

As the end point of our most recent three-year Strategic Plan draws ever closer I have been reflecting on how dated it already seems,how little it really guided our decision-making, and how badly we missed the mark on most of the quantitative measures.  I don't think that is because it was a bad piece of work.  It was written by smart people guided by an excellent consultant based on our best knowledge at the time.  I think the problem is that the environment is so turbulent and the pace of change so great (and getting greater) that any attempt to set objectives and goals for anything other than the very near term future (measured in weeks and months, not years) is doomed.

 A couple of weeks ago I came across this excellent post on the "Obituary of the 5 Year Strategic Plan" by Lea Blair (via Michael Bungay Stanier's Box of Crayons) and loved her idea that what we really need to to is equip people to run our organization as if they were riding a bike:

"In order to ride a bike you do the following:
1. You pack what you think (best guess) you will need for your bike ride.
2. You know your destination – or at least what you want to see when you get there.
3. You start pedaling in that direction.
4. Most important…You have a short window of time to make a decision on how to successfully navigate what comes in front of you. Especially the surprises. And surprises are one thing we can count on in ever increasing number. Whether it is a child running in front of your bike, or a turn in the road that you didn’t expect, or an oncoming biker. Only at the time when you see the actual change can you make the best decision as to how to navigate your bike."

 Let us learn what we can about the future (and pack our bags well). And, if your rider – manager or executive, has the awareness and skills necessary to be able to make those quick navigation decisions with agility and flexibility, your company will wind up at its destination… no matter what changes and surprises happen along the way."

The challenge for libraries (and, I would venture to guess, for almost every type of organization) is that  the accelerating pace of change and the unkown but surely profound outcomes of the current technological revolution make it very hard (maybe impossible?) to envision our ultimate destination. 

I'm thinking that right now maybe the best we can do is hold on tight to the handlebars, pedal like crazy, and make navigation decisions based on some core touchstone principles like whether a given course of action enhances access to information or restricts it, or whether it makes the library more connected to the community or less so, or whether it meets the test of good stewardship of the public's money.

And maybe the most recent PVLD Strategic Plan will be the last...at least for this Library Director.

 

 

The more things change....remembering PVLD's first Librarian

Miss Agnes McMillan served as PVLD's first (and for the time of her tenure only) Librarian from 1930 to her death in 1956.  During the course of my 8 years at PVLD I have heard snippets about her, but really didn't know much.  I have always, for example, loved the story told by one of our book sale volunteers about what a momentous occasion it was for her when Miss McMillan allowed her to go into the "adult" stacks at a younger age than was generally permitted, giving rise to questions from her mother when she came home with a stack of books from the adult collection.  The mother's concerns were allayed when she learned that "Miss McMillan said I could read these".

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet a lifelong Peninsula resident, Mrs. Jane Armstrong Eubank Hall, aged 90, who back in the early 1930's was a "library kid".  The family, which for a time had no father, lived near the Malaga Cove Library.  Mrs. Hall's mother was a businesswoman who founded an insurance agency in the Malaga Cove Plaza and, distracted by the demands of business and the demands of single parenthood, allowed Jane to spend many hours at the Malaga Cove Library where she came to view Miss McMillan as a second mother.

Local History Librarian Marjeanne Blinn and Librarian Dennis Piotrowski have been gathering information and documentation about Miss McMillan to share with Mrs. Hall, and came across this 1930 letterfrom her to Mr. Charles Cheney, then-Secretary of the Board of Library Trustees - Download Miss McMillan letter in which she reports on, and gently educates him about, library operations.

While the letter certainly gives a glimpse into library operations in an earlier time, much of what she wrote made me realize how little things some things have changed. Yes, the "accession book" has been replaced by the Integrated Library System and the typewriter by the computer, but I bet there is not a library out there that has enough trash cans or has not dealt with the plumbing problems caused by inappropriate waste disposal.  We still spend a lot of time trying to get high school reading lists and visiting school classrooms, librarian still go out of their way to give the kind of service Miss McMillan provided to the "boy at the plunge", our meeting rooms are still heavily used by community groups, Library Directors still wrestle with budgets, and we still value and rely on community donations like that from the Friends of Art.

At the time when changing technology makes the future of libraries seem cloudy I found it reassuring to know that much of what we do is at its heart unchanged from 80+ years ago...