Staff Development Plans



  I am so jealous of all you who have a staff to work with in your library!  That is my dream!  It is a long story, but when I get my city on board to "build on", I'm sure many more people will use our library just because they will see "something is changing", "something exciting is going on" and people will want to participate when they see growth happening!  I am optimistic!

  Since I have no staff members, I will tell you about how I work with my Friends of the Library members, the library volunteers, and my Planning and Technology Team!  These are the people I feel like I lead, although, as all library directors, I do work with my city, my county board, and my library trustee.

  First of all, I am so glad that I have four library volunteers to assist whenever I ask them to fill in, or if I just need a day off.  In the three years in this position, I have never had a vacation, and I have only took two or three days off at different times when I had to go out of town and each one of those days, a different person worked for me, with no pay (volunteer!)  One volunteer works every Tuesday and Thursday about two or three hours, and another one comes in on Fridays for a while, which really helps.  They clean the computers, vacuum the carpet, straighten book shelves, and anything I ask them to do!

  My FOL need to be a little more active, but I am trying to work with them slowly while getting new people on board, because if I want to build on and expand the size of the library, I do want them to be quite a bit more assertive, and interested! 

  The Technology/Planning Team is awesome and they have worked many hours developing long range plans - the best our little library has ever had!  I just asked them about their interest, some were more interested in general planning assistance while one person was only interested in the technology aspect of the long range plan, so it all fit together.  This is the team who has helped me develop policies for our library and as far as I know, our library has never had computer policies before.

  In the future I do plan to reward my volunteers in some way, which is an idea acquired at PLMI.

I continue to learn a lot at PLMI and mostly I feel I need the motivation I gain while realizing most other library directors face many of the same challenges I face.