The most important purchases: library budgets in the proprietary college pt2

Thinking about the next years budget is really about asking questions and deciding on answers.  The first questions I try to answer have to do with usage.  To start the first thing I do is check stats on what was used the previous year.  I look at number of log ins for our databases, total number of book circulations, what programs were the most successful and the least successful.  And then I ask a bunch of questions.  Are their types/subjects of books that got more use?  How many articles were printed/shared/emailed in the databases?  And on and on.  The budget process doesn’t stop with material though and while it’s obvious when you have never thought about the process before it’s possible to get blindsided by other considerations.  For example:

You mean I have a budget? library budgets in the proprietary college pt1

Money – it’s a love hate thing for me.  I need it to be able to do what I want to do in our library but thinking about it sometimes can be stressful.  When I first started in my career college library I was not quiet finished with my MLS.  I had a library management class the first semester I held the position of head librarian and spent, maybe two weeks on budgeting.  I should also probably disclaim that I have a bit of an anxiety about numbers; math has never been an easy subject for me and so the budgeting process was, quite naturally, intimidating for me.  I SO didn’t want to screw it up.  This time of the year though,

A reference question

Every once in a while our library is greeted with a great reference question.  Has it happened to you yet?  It isn’t generally anything to do with research per say, but it takes some digging to find this answer.  Sometimes it’s a student; they have stumbled into an area of their field that they find interesting or feel passionately about.  Usually, it’s a faculty member;

You’re looking for what? Electronic resources in the for-profit college library

It is almost our midterm.  Our school operates on a quarter based terms so we have four twelve week long sessions each year.  We are moving into week 6 of our winter quarter – midterm.

Midterm when I was in college was nuts.  I remember having a few classes that had 2 exams; one at the end and one at midterm.  Some sort of major project would be do or a paper needed to get written and then there was a test to study for.  Ugh… It doesn’t seem to be quite so busy here, but maybe that is just because I’m not the one in class.  hehehe

The library does get a little busier though for about a week and most students come in looking for a magic answer to their research question.  It’s almost like they think

IT or librarian?

It has been my experience that lucky career college libraries operate with one librarian (maybe full-time).  The challenge of being a solo in a college is that at some point you will have an issue develop that you can’t make better; you don’t have the skills.

Such is the case for our little library in North Carolina.  Now I am a very lucky library because I’m full-time and I also have a fabulously wonderful MLIS assistant librarian that is also full-time.  The major bane

What is a library for?

This isn’t going to be long because I’ve been thinking about it so much I almost feel like I have nothing else to share on the topic but I wanted to give a brief commentary non the less.  I wrote a blog post previously about serving our patrons and asking who the patron really is in a career college.  I was looking at it in terms of who is the person to reach, the faculty or the student or do you reach one through the other?  Patrons are the lifeblood of the library, we do provide a service after all so if there is no one to provide for we have no purpose.  Why then would a library not find out about what their little community wants?

Yesterday I read the Annoyed Librarian‘s blog on Internet porn in Seattle’s Public Library.  I don’t follow Annoyed’s blog really but a colleague posted on it via Facebook so I took a quick read.  I try really hard to not have volatile emotional responses to these types of things because I recognize that every situation is way more complicated then it seems on the surface – but I’ll admit it, I was angry at Seattle’s library because of this.  And not because of the porn, but because it seemed they had completely disregarded the wants and more importantly the needs of their patrons.  BTW – if anyone knows more about this and can show that Seattle is listening to their patrons I really really want to know.  I would feel so much better, so please don’t hesitate to share.

Ok, here it is, my opinion very simply.  Libraries are places (virtually or physically) that help to provide answers to an individual’s questions.  We are here in essence to ensure that everyone in our community (patron, customer, student, whatever) has their information need filled.  I will add that I don’t believe it is the librarians role to make judgement calls on what an individual defines as “information of value”.  And I mean that both ways, in the porn example, we should respect the for and the against, regardless of our own personal feelings on the matter.  That is our ethical responsibility.

I can hear the flip of this too.  We also have an ethical responsibility to encourage exploration of ideas, that however does not translate into TELLING the community you serve what they need and/or want.

Where is the dialog between the Seattle Public Library and the community it has an ethical responsibility to serve??

What if 65% of the patron base doesn’t WANT porn in the library??  Did that discussion happen?

Ehhhh….I guess that was a little longer than I thought it would be.  I just find that so frustrating.  Does anyone else get what I’m saying here?  Am I missing some critical piece of information?  Please share!!

Adding patrons: part of the Evergreen adventure

I have no idea how much time anyone has spent really thinking about this but it felt like a good topic to discuss.  As we continue to progress into our Evergreen ILS migration the discussion of how to add patrons to our system has obviously come up.  Previously we were having patrons create a library account when they approached the desk to check out material for the first time.  At one time (when we had maybe 50 students in the school) I tried

Keeping up the drive: motivation if you’re the only one

Reblogged from careercollegelibrary:

Ok, with a show of hands, how many out there are solo librarians?  Yep, that’s what I thought.  Most career college librarians are running a solo gig.   Our library does have a small staff (another professional and three student workers) but for a while I was doing a solo gig.  But, even those of us that are lucky enough to have a small staff are still not large enough to begin thinking about things like departments.  If you are in an environment like many other for-profit college libraries you might …

Fairly leading

Several months ago I was given my yearly performance review.  I don’t know how everyone feels about these but I always appreciate the feedback (even if it stings hearing) and like the opportunity to learn and grow from this.  This year my supervisor did something a little different involving a 360 evaluation.  A feedback form was given to two individuals that report to me, two that I report to and two that I work laterally with.  I found the feedback to be extremely eye-opening and I feel this is a positive way to perform all performance evals in any organization.

That said I was a little surprised at one of the trends and it had to do

A library tour

So in my last video post I mentioned that over our class break I was going to be updating the design of our library.  Many thanks again to David Lee King for the inspiration.  The video will give a quick tour of our new library space and to the left is an image I was able to dig up showing the differences.  I can’t wait to hear your feedback.  What does your library space look like?  What do you like about it, what do you wish were different?