Talk to the Hand

This was an interesting workshop, because of the "after" conversations it evoked in my branch. Here's my thought, all of us have the capacity to exhibit characteristics of each species, given any situation, one or the others is always needed.

March 19 2012 Talk to the hand: A guide to dealing with Conflict in the Workplace

This was one of the better workshops I've attended. Julie Gaver kept her audience's attention with a lot of humor and made the learning a lot of fun. The workshop was on conflict management: the five types of conflict management styles, how to resolve conflict in a productive manner and what to say when in a difficult situation. The activities were interesting: we wrote down different scenarios (some that had really happened in some of the branches) and went through a few of them. I learned that sometimes it's very hard to keep a smile on my face when dealing with unruly and nasty patrons (never staff)! We were shown positive ways of dealing with them. BTW I'm a hummingbird.

PLA 2012: Tell Me Something I Don't Know

Joan Frye Williams and George Needham presented this program which focused primarily on what public librarians can do to foster more meaningful community engagement. However, since I work for the Western MD Regional Library where my civilians/stakeholders are my library colleagues in Allegany, Garrett and Washington counties ... I kept translating their valuable points into terms that I can apply here - most of which are just questions to think about. For example:

1. Joan and George made an excellent point that library employees need to come to grips with what the public actually wants and not what we think they should want. This isn't anything new but how many of us actually follow through? In terms of the regional, are we falling into this trap as well? Are we imposing what we think the counties' library systems should do/know/provide or are we really listening and giving them what they want so they can do their jobs to the best of their abilities?
   
2. The biggest statement they made and it's more or less a restatement of the aforementioned point, was, "it's not the community's job to understand the library; it's the library's job to understand the community." Do we at the Regional really understand our customers in the three counties or are our perceptions of ourselves and each other skewed? How can we tell?
   

The biggest take-away for me what their suggestions on how to get insightful information from the community and I would like to try and apply these suggestions to the 2012 Training Needs Assessment which will be launched in another 2-3 weeks. In order to get useful, applicable, act-on-it-now information they said:

1. Ask what the community values. It's much easier for folks to talk about what they care about in real time than to speculate on what they might care about in the future (i.e. what are your current training/education concerns)
2. Ask what results the community wants. Results are tangible - much like the way effective learning objectives should be. (i.e. What functions do you want to be able to perform in Outlook?)
3. Ask what challenges they're facing and how they'd like to see them resolved (i.e. I have difficulty completing my staff's performance evaluations because I don't know what feedback I can give them that would be helpful and it seems as though there's not much importance put on the reviews. Ideally, I'd like evaluation time to be a team effort that isn't a chore and that provides two-way feedback that is somehow tied to rewards).
   

What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree/disagree? Why? How would you like to see the Regional's Training Needs Assessment handled? I'd love to hear your suggestions!

PLA 2012: Warren Graham

I attended Warren Graham's presentation at PLA purely out of curiosity because the rave reviews I've heard from colleagues regarding his keynote at the 2009 Tri-County Summit do not jive with my impression of him after having read his book and I wanted to reconcile the two once and for all.

So, am I reconciled? No. But I can understand why so many of my colleagues and friends enjoyed him - he has a strong talent for pointing out our (library employees) foibles in a mostly respectful manner (not unlike the celebrity roasts that are shown on cable).

After hearing his presentation I realized a couple of things ... please take them with a grain or two of salt:

1. Sometimes I think many of the difficult situations front line library staff experience with customers is due to a difference in mental models. Library employees see ourselves and our libraries one way and our customers see us and our libraries another way. Is one right? Is one wrong? Perhaps that's the wrong question. I believe our customers' mental models are the most justified ... based on Joan Frye Williams' and George Needham's PLA presentation which I'll link up here as soon as I post it. Basically, I believe we need to meet our customers at their mental models rather than trying to have them meet ours.
   
2. My hackles raised ever so slightly when Graham said that most of us (library employees) are passive and do not stand up for what we believe it. Then I started to really think about if this is true for myself and why that might be. I think I'm much better than I used to be. When I first started working in libraries and I felt very strongly about something - I would stand up for it but ineffectively - because I would let my emotions run the show instead of my reasoning (if anyone is familiar with the rider and elephant metaphor - here ya go). It's been my experience that there is an aversion to employees expressing strong emotions in the work place and I'm not quite sure how this came about but I think this aversion is related to why Graham sees us as passive. I think there's a fear that we'll be reprimanded if we do stand up for what we believe in and in doing so overly express how we feel and not just what we think. Maybe there's a training topic there - how to express ourselves passionately yet respectfully in the work place - especially when we're angry which is a completely healthy emotion.
   

What are your thoughts on this? Have you had similar experiences? Similar impressions? Different experiences? Different impressions?

Julie Z.

What's New in Children's Literature

Jeff Ridgeway and I attended "What's New in Children's Literature and How to Use it in Your Program 2012" on 2-29-12. It was presented by one our favorites, Dr. Peggy Sharp, from the Bureau of Education & Research. We follow a handbook with books categorized with breakdowns of titles and authors. Brief descriptions are also in the booklet and is subsidized with Peggy's elaboration. Audience participation is requested. It is a fast-paced learning experience but appropriate for all participants. I will send out a notice when the next workshop is announced. Please join us. Naomi Butler

eReader Training with JZ

The most important thing that I learned during the recent eReader training with JZ is that no one can know it all, even though our patrons may express that expectation. The eReader is like a newborn and we are like new first-time parents. We can take some classes, read a few books and blogs, talk to others in the same situation and go from there. We do the best we can at the time, with the knowledge that we have at that time.

The truth is that this industry is new, unstable and unpredictable. Publishers change rules and new and different devices are born every day. As this trend will probably continue, so will our learning about the e-Reader world and its accompanying issues.

On the positive side, we have been thoroughly introduced to this new world and well armed with tools like our notebooks and flow-charts that will help us get through these confusing yet exciting times. Yes, it is an incredibly awesome time to work in a library!

Thanks JZ!

Donna Orris
Ruth Enlow Library, Oakland

Big Talk From Small Libraries

All conference presentations were recorded and will be made available for your viewing pleasure on this site: http://nlcblogs.nebraska.gov/bigtalk/presentations/
Maryland library staff in Allegany, Garrett and Washington counties can earn 1 CEU per archived presentation viewed so long as you write a blog post about them.

If you're on Twitter you can see tweets about the event at #BTSL.

The Nebraska Library Commission organized and hosted a free, all-day online conference yesterday, Big Talk From Small Libraries. Each of the seven presentations focused on topics familiar to libraries of all shapes and sizes but the presenters brought a small library point of view to each issue. Rather than commenting on each presentation specifically, I'm going to reflect on the one I found most poignant.

It's might not come as a surprise that I found Jessamyn West's presentation the best organized and most interesting; Jessamyn is a veteran librarian, writer, and presenter. Her presentation, Magic Tricks and Maintenance: Helping the Public Learn Technology, didn't blow my mind but she did bring awareness to some habits I am guilty of from time to time like:

• Don't grab the mouse away from whomever you're helping no matter how much he or she is struggling to maneuver; use reassuring, non-condescending language and tone to help them ease into whatever it is they're trying to accomplish.
  
• Translate technical mumbo-jumbo into language everyone can appreciate or leave it out completely (does the individual really need to know that the computer is running OSX? Or that it has an Intel Celeron Processor? What does that even mean?)
  
• Avoid the soapboxes - even if a person asks you your preference on which browser or piece of software to use. Sure, tell them your opinion but leave it at that.
• Avoid expressing your disgust when someone tells you they prefer IE9. Be accepting of what works for each individual and work with it the best you can without expressing bias. Unless they ask for your opinion, it is best not to encourage them to you a superior browser like FireFox.