Mindful Customer Service

On Thursday, Dec. 6th, Hugh Byrne, Ph.D. presented a four-hour workshop on mindfulness and disappointingly not directly on customer service but connections could definitely be made. Plus, it opens up the possibility of having a "part two" workshop in the future in which the focus would be directly on applying mindfulness to our interactions with colleagues, friends, library patrons, family, our neighbors in the check-out line, etc. 


The following post includes the most poignant takeaways that resonated strongest with me.

Mindfulness is about producing an appropriate response.
When we're mindful we're fully in the present moment. I interpret this as meaning when we're having an interaction with someone, let's say a library patron, we're experiencing that person as brand new and novel, and without the stories we tell ourselves about that person (i.e. "Oh, here comes that guy again. I bet he's going to say he didn't deserve his fines, again, like he always does..."). And without the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (i.e. "I never know what to say to this guy. I won't be able to handle him." Instead, we great him and ourselves with kindness and presence and we take the interaction moment by moment. In other words, we produce an appropriate response - as opposed to a cookie-cutter type of response. If we bring positive, pleasant energy to a situation then we have a greater chance of eliciting the same kind of response from whomever we are interacting with. 

This got me wondering if our collective (human) weakness in mindfulness is why policies exist. I think maybe well-written policies exist in an attempt to capture the most cookie-cutter type response that is also on some level generally appropriate in most situations. It makes my head hurt trying to understand the sentence I just wrote but, there it is. The situations that don't fit into or go beyond the cookie-cutter response are good times to dip our toes into the water that is mindfulness. 

What would be left if I stopped doing ________ ?
At one point during the workshop Dr. Bryne was talking about how unmindfulness (is that a word?) manifests itself by the things we do to excess: eat, watch tv, sleep, consume alcohol, gossip, etc. And he said something to the effect of if you're mindful, even for a moment when you're scarfing down a stack of those Lofthouse sugar cookies with the 1" of icing on them, ask yourself, "what would I be left with if I stopped eating these cookies?" Essentially we need to ask, what need is trying to be fulfilled - ineffectively - by eating cookies/watching tv/drinking/sleeping/smoking/gossiping, etc? Then we have something we can work with, something that can then become the focus of our mindfulness, even if it's just for a moment. If we can interrupt ourselves by asking that question when we're caught in those cycles of unconsciousness (I'm going to use that word instead of unmindfulness because at least it's a real word) then eventually we can break the cycle all together. But it takes time and energy and dedication and mindfulness. 

If you're interested in getting small doses of mindfulness during your day, I highly recommend the free podcasts from the Insight Meditation Community of Washington as well as those available from Hugh. They're both available in the iTunes store or from their respective websites.

MLA Tech Meeting

I've become slack with posting about the meetings I attend so, in an attempt to rectify my lazy ways here's what went down at the most recent MLA Technology Committee Meeting on November 29th.

Any MLA members are welcome to join the Tech Committee. Just contact Stuart Ragland for more information.

In-house equipment for MLA 
The Tech Committee would like to get the MLA office their own laptop, projector, and screen for use during meetings and presentations at the MLA office (and potentially at off site locations like the annual conference). Some team members, including myself, were asked to gather some more information about the options available to us so we can make more informed decisions when we get the green light to buy, buy, buy.

Staff development meeting follow-up
There is a subcommittee of the statewide staff development coordinators that is headed by Joanne Trepp that has agreed to take on the task of coordinating online learning exchanges. The first event they are hoping to do is an online follow up to an LMD (leadershp and management division) event. Joanne wanted to check with Margaret to make sure it'd be OK for her subcommittee to hold an online learning exchanged fueled by the LMD event that is free. The concern here being that most MLA events charge a fee but Margaret said that due to past discussion and decisions made by the PDP (professional development panel) that MLA does not charge for discussion group events - regardless of whether they are held in an online or physical location). In the end, Margaret decided that she'll get back to Joanne and let her know that she indeed has MLA's blessing, zero charge and all.

Recording the annual conference
Stuart recommended considering live streaming parts of the conference in 2013 using such technology like Ustream. I let him know that there is going to be a Ustream test on Dec. 10th with some folks, including myself, from across the state. So, the committee agreed to wait and see what the Dec. 10th event finds and to go from there.

The committee also selected preconferences and programs that at-first-read sound worthy of being recorded. Margaret is going to compile a list of the programs we selected so we can check for overlap in the schedule and finalize our first picks. MLA will need to get the presenters' consent for recording in advance so, the sooner we make our decisions the better.

We also talked about the need to increase the amount of video cameras we have access to at the conference. Right now we have 3 which greatly limits our recording capabilities. If anyone reading this has a proper video camera and tripod that you wouldn't mind letting the Tech Committee borrow for three days in May, will you please let me know?

Praise for photocopier subcommittee
Yes, there once was a photocopier subcommittee and they did a fantastic job of hooking the MLA office up with a brand spanking new super scanner/copier extraordinaire. Yay!

More from MARAC - from a digital perspective.

I also attended the MARAC (Mid Atlantic Regional Archives Conference) conference in Richmond, but did not attend any of the sessions that Elizabeth Howe reported on.

Highlights for me -

The presentation by Edward Ayers, President of the University of Richmond.  Ayers has taken vast quantities of historical data and made it accessible and understandable by mapping it.  So for example on the Digital Scholarship Lab is Presidential Voting, which graphically shows how the country changed its allegiances over the years.  Another map that I found impressive was one mapping slavery’s end during the American Civil War -  Visualizing Emancipation. I can dream of making the information on Whilbr more visually attractive and meaningful.

The session on social media in archives/ history collections provided some new insights. Several of the presenters talked about History Pin, which has come a long way since I looked at it a couple of years ago -  History Pin It still has inaccuracies in my opinion (bridges on the Antietam Creek incorrectly identified etc. ) but is another way of presenting data graphically. Another presenter thought that Flickr was a useful way to present data in sequence.

A piece of software that I need to check out is Tesseract - a free OCR package.  Since I have a purchased program I have not had the need to look at it, but it might be useful for those who don't want to retype something that already exists in some other digital form.

For those who are bored with Powerpoint - check out Prezi

And the reminder that crowd sourcing is a possibility for transcriptions - see Australia National Library - Trove for example. We would appreciate getting help to transcribe documents writing in 19th century script to add to Whilbr. Any one want to help?

Maker Meet-Up

Towson University's 3D Printer

On Wednesday, November 28th I attended a statewide Maker Meet-Up at the West County branch of the Anne Arundel County Public Library. There is actually a ton of information and resources available to you if you click on the Maker Meet-Up link. There is also a Flickr (online photo album) of the event. You can also read the news article about the event.

With that said, I'll focus mostly on my personal take-aways and ideas I got relative to staff development in western Maryland.

I attended the event wearing two hats: 1) my "I-wanna-be-a-maker" human hat and 2) my staff development coordinator hat. Basically, I needed to reconcile the fact that I personally know very little about the maker revolution with the fact that I need to be able to take bits and pieces of it back to my colleagues in the western MD region. It turned out to be the perfect event to do just that. 

So, how did I do this? Well, the event kicked off with a round of lightning talks (5 minute presentations that just introduced the different maker spaces that were available to us in the room) and through listening to them I was able to get a list of possible collaborators/presenters for future staff development events and it helped to wake up my creative brain so I started thinking of other people/organizations I could reach out to. Such as?

Matthew Barinholtz with FutureMakers in Crownsville, MD. 
Gary Mauler with RobotFest in Linthicum, MD.

Attn: Children's Librarians. The two guys listed about would make knockout kids' programs.

After the lightning talks I got to feed the part of me that is Enneagram 7 by experiencing the maker spaces in the room. I immediately went to the RobotFest table and learned how to use the Scribbler program to make a robot do my bidding - bidding like playing a midi version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, spinning around in a circle, and flashing its lights. I figure it's only a matter of time and money before I have my own Scribbler robot to do my important bidding like getting up at 6am and making me breakfast. I actually spent more than an hour playing with this robot and the software and it was so much fun. It took only a little explaining on Max's (RobotFest guru) part to get me started but after that, I was off and programming. 

A screenshot of the Scribbler program.

After I grudgingly left the RobotFest table (other people wanted to play, too) I had to find time to eat lunch and then attend an affinity talk. I didn't know it when I signed up for the talk but it was with the RobotFest guy, Gary Mauler. He talked about, "So you want to hold a festival for tinkerers?" He spoke a little about things libraries should consider if they wanted to hold a maker space event - particularly one focused on electronics and robotics - and other alternatives there might be for them to encourage creativity and the maker spirit in the community such as checking out DIY Inventor Kits like the ones sold by Sparkfun Electronics. The one less-than-attractive quality of checking out these kits is that you'd have to inventory every single itty bitty part that's in them. Or, you could just invest in buying a stash of replacement parts which are actually pretty cheap. He also says that it would help if the library subscribes to magazines like Make, Nuts and Volts, and Servo.

We ended the day with a keynote talk by Jeff Sturgis, founder of the Mt. Elliott Makerspace in Detroit, MI. Although the information and stories he shared were extremely captivating and energizing, they haven't yet sparked any ideas...more like a lot of best practices to keep in mind when trying to create a makerspace. Here's a hint: keep it simple, go slow, and don't do it alone.  

I know what you're thinking. So me the money. Right? As it turns out, DARPA offers grants for such projects (yes, DARPA) and Cognizant is offering similar funding opportunities. They have this crazy notion to help folks just like you create and launch 500 makerspaces in the country over the next 5 years. As you might imagine, they've been really active in the maker revolution. Just Google them and you'll find interesting articles. All you have to do is fill out the grant applications!

So what would I like to see happen in the western MD region? Well, here are a few ideas:

• Have a makerspace component at the Tri-County Summit 2013
• Start a library staff maker club (ala book clubs)
• Compile a list of staff in the three counties who have awesome maker skillz. You know who you are!
• Libraries subscribe to the maker magazines listed above and start to build up their collections with maker-type books and materials
•  WMRL could start their own makerspace collection (much like we started the emerging technology collection) for staff from the three counties to check out maker-type kits.

What ideas do you have? How can we play more at work? What would you like to see happen as a result of this new and novel trend?

Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC), Richmond, Fall 2012

1.  An Enduring Profession - Reconstructing for the Next Forty Years (Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, Fall, 2012, Richmond, Virginia).

2.  October 25 and 26, 2012.

3.  www.marac.info

4.  marac-blog.blogspot.com

5.  a.  In the day-long workshop "Beyond the First Year: Practical Advice for New Lone Arrangers," we were given an outline that summed up the most important things for lone arrangers (also applicable for librarians) to focus on.  These included: vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and action plans, publishing, volunteers, budgeting, understanding limitations/abilities, strengths/weaknesses, and being persistent.  

b.  Not as practical, but thought provoking, was the concurrent session "Continual Reconstruction:  Tracing Changes in the Archives Profession."  I learned about changes in a major archival journal, a leading professional organization and in archival education.

c.  The concurrent session "Put Your Archives on the Map! Using ArchiveGrid to Promote Archival Collections" was most informative.  ArchiveGrid was developed and is supported by OCLC Research, and is a tool that facilitates the discovery of primary source materials.  In the past patrons had to pay a subscription fee to use it, but now it's going to be free.  Right now there is a beta version that is usable while they change over.  

6.  Because this was an archives conference, what I learned is most applicable to archives, i.e., Western Maryland Room.  Our history library/archives can be improved by the information (free ArchiveGrid!) and pieces of advice mentioned above.  I hope to help implement them.     

Summit 2013 #makeithappen Team Announced

Mark your calendars:  
November 11, 2013 is WMRL's Tri-County Summit (aka staff day)!

Ok, so you probably don’t have to mark your calendars yet.

I do want to introduce you to the Summit 2013 #makeithappen Team. These folks will be working together over the next year to plan, organize, and execute our day-long tri-county staff day. Feel free to talk with them if you have questions, concerns, or suggestions for next year’s event.

Representing the Allegany County Library System

Chris McGee – Adult services and staff development specialist

Regina Spiker – Public computer specialist

Representing the Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County

Georgie Dawson – Human resources specialist

Connie Savage – Circulation and interlibrary loan specialist

Representing the Washington County Free Library

Melissa Foltz – Boonsboro branch manager specialist

Aliceana Onley – Technical services specialist

Representing the Western Maryland Regional Library

Susie Poper – Technical services specialist

Myself – Facilitator of the #makeithappen Team

Take care and stay tuned for updates as the team makes wonderful and exciting progress!

Serving Your Customers Without Sacrificing Yourself

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, I attended Rayna Schroeder's workshop Serving Your Customers Without Sacrificing Yourself at the LaVale Branch of the Allegany County Public Library System.

I was really looking forward to this workshop, as I deal with difficult customers on a daily basis, and while I always try to be polite, professional, and helpful, it's usually at the expense of my nerves!

I definitely got a lot out of this workshop.  I'm not sure why it came as such a shock to me, but the biggest thing I took away was that different people have completely different sets of triggers than I do, and that we can use each others' strengths and weaknesses to our advantage.
All of this also helped me recognize my own personal triggers, which is something I had never really given much thought to before. The workshop really gave me a lot to think about, and several self-improvement goals for me to work towards, which will help me stay calmer and more focused when serving library patrons.

In turn, I think this will help improve all of our patrons' library-going experiences, as it will create a friendlier, more welcoming atmosphere; if I can deal with difficult patrons without getting upset and feeling overwhelmed, then not only might I have helped that particular patron, but I may have helped everyone in the library at that time to avoid a much more unpleasant experience.