The Challenges of Running Two Libraries
I realize that I'm not the only librarian out there that is in charge of more than one library. With the recent cuts in education spending, many school districts have pulled in the purse strings and looked for ways to stretch the budget dollars. Unfortunately, we librarians have often been viewed in the group of school employees that can stretch the scope of responsibility to include more than one campus. Whatever you do at one campus, just do at the other - right?
I'm not complaining (too much...) about this since I'm very happy to be working and I really enjoy spending time with all of the kids. But the challenge of running programs at two schools can be very daunting and is not as easy as just duplicating the work. I am fairly new to the district that I work in presently, and inherited two elementary libraries that had been run by separate librarians. Both were in charge of all of the day to day responsibilities of their respective libraries including collection development. Here is where my first challenge arose: buying books.
One way to save time with two libraries would be to buy the same recently published, highly reviewed books for each library. Well, that would work in theory, but while the libraries had many of the same books, their collections were quite different. One library had a very good non-fiction collection, the other a very good picture book collection. Both had good numbers of emergent reader books, but neither had a decent chapter book collection for the older kids. The reference collections were hit and miss at both campuses. Many of the popular, classic books were worn at one campus and the other campus had a reading program that required a number of specific titles that I didn't have. So, any thoughts about making a copy of my book lists and using them for both libraries went out the window. Putting together my purchase orders easily took twice as long.
How about programming? Because I spend one week at one library and the next at the other library, I do not have access to the library where I'm not while I plan the programming the next week at both. (I do have an assistant that flip flops with me at each campus.) Endless emails are necessary to figure out what books are available to use at the opposite campus while I planned reading activities for both and no, our collections are not available online. Many times I just make two weeks worth of plans and flip flop the activities. Again, I easily spend twice as much time
Oh, there are other challenges and I won't go into them right now. But it feels good to write down what I'm going through. In addition, I wish that I could get to know the kids at the schools a little better. Since I see them only half the year, I just don't get to know too many on a first name basis as I would prefer. Ah well, such is my job and on I go.
So how do you know you’re a 21st century librarian? When You have to remind kindergartners to turn off their cell phones before the story starts.
- Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog
Hey, let me here from some librarians that run two elementary libraries! How are you coping? Give us some of your best tips!
AEL
