A Day in the Life of a COVID Work from Home Librarian

The world's a bit wonky right now and I know many (most? all?) of us are out of our normal daily routine. The life of librarians during the COVID-19 Pandemic looks very different right now and there are librarians dealing with all kinds of situations. There are librarians working from home (like I am lucky to be able to do). There are librarians not allowed to work from home, librarians who are reconfiguring jobs now that they can't do the work they normally would do, there are librarians who are on paid leave or unpaid leave or furloughed or laid off. My experience is by no means representative of the librarian population at large, but I thought you might be interested to see what a work from home day looks like for me.

So here we go... tomorrow might look completely different...

6:30am - My husband's alarm clock goes off and we both get up and start getting dressed. I check personal social media and snuggle with my cat Howie for a little bit before getting dressed. Yes, I'm getting dressed, doing my hair, and putting on makeup and earrings every morning. It helps me feel a little more normal at a time when nothing feels normal.

Photo of a librarian taking an early morning walk around the block

7:30am - I walk around the block for a morning "commute" and then eat breakfast. It's been helping me to add some movement in throughout my day, so I try to replicate the approximate times I would be traveling to and from the library with a short walk in the morning, at lunch time, and in the afternoon when my work is done for the day.

8:00am - I get settled in my "office" and start checking emails. In addition to going through my own email, I'm periodically checking our general information email where we've directed patrons to contact us with questions or help getting connected to our digital materials. We have several librarians checking it throughout the day to provide responses as quickly as possible. I also check our library's Facebook page to check for any questions or requests for help that have come through on there.

Photo of my "office" - a corner of my library with an armchair and a reading lamp. It's not the most comfortable for long-term sitting, so I tend to move around my house throughout the day.

8:30am - Only a few emails this morning, so I start working on some blog posts. Our staff blog is one of the few ways we have to communicate with our patrons right now, so we're trying to update it daily-ish. During normal times we update it twice a week and I have a team who are scheduled to post. We've been getting a lot of questions about accessing our digital resources, so I write up a post about getting started with our digital services for easy sharing.

10:45am - I switch over to working on creating some Hoopla collections. We are preparing to run our Summer Reading Program virtually, so one thing I have been thinking of is how to translate our grade-level book lists to digital formats. So far, I've been working with Hoopla and I'll tackle Overdrive in the future, too.

12:15pm - Time for a walk around the block and lunch! I heat up some 5 bean chili and watch an episode of Kim's Convenience while I eat. That's been a nice, happy show for me during this quarantine.

1:15pm - Back the the grind with more emails. I check up on some emails to patrons, answer emails about ALSC committee work and our spring reading program.

Photo of my "coworker", my cat Howie snuggling on my legs as I work

2:30pm - Time to work on some purchasing. I am still ordering materials while we are closed, although we are having our physical shipments held until we get staff back in the building regularly. Of course I am ordering digital materials, as well. My director has just cautioned us to be careful with our spending since tax delays and a high unemployment rate may affect our funding and the timing of getting our cash draws. I've recalculated my weekly spending goals and I'm sorting my "Upcoming" carts by popularity to make sure that I'm prioritizing the more popular books coming out in the next month or so.

4:00pm - Time for a brief ALSC Membership Committee meeting via Zoom.

4:30pm - Our meeting's done, so I check email again and then "clock out" and head to the park for a stress relief walk. I have been walking up a storm to help keep my anxiety at bay and to get some movement in my day since I'm sitting all day now. I'm on the lookout for ducklings at my local park, but haven't spotted any yet. I'm sure there will be some soon!

Photo of a tree with white blossoms against the blue spring sky

5:30pm - Back from the park, I check all of the email inboxes one last time before unplugging for the evening.

5:40pm - I shower from my walk and start cooking dinner (tacos tonight!)

6:30pm - My husband and I eat dinner and watch the news, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy (our normal routine).

8:00pm - I get started on some work for NoveList. I love my side gig writing readalikes as a NoveList contributor

8:00pm - WELL. The plan was to work on some NoveList work after dinner, BUT my amazing husband bought me a Nintendo Switch for our anniversary, so instead we spend the evening playing Animal Crossing. I'll work on NoveList stuff this weekend. ;)

10:00pm - Heading to bed with a book. I'm reading Parachutes by Kelly Yang (her YA debut) and I'm loving it.

10:30pm - I'm exhausted and it's time for lights out. Good night!

On Newbery Honor Books

Gold stars. Photo by Creativity103, used under Creative Commons license.

FIRST OF ALL, a hearty congratulations to the winners and honorees of the 2019 Youth Media Awards, announced Monday in Seattle. I'm pleased to say that I dragged my two roomies out of bed to come with me to the live announcements (they are NOT morning people). 

I have to say that I am especially pleased to see The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani win a Newbery Honor because that was a book of my heart this year, which means it was one of my own personal favorites. And it is always pleasing to see your favorites win an award and get an acknowledgement that others see the good in it, too. 

Now. We librarians get super excited about the Youth Media Awards. And we all have our favorite titles. And we LOVE IT when there are lots of honor books. The more the merrier, right? 

But I need to set the record straight on one thing. If there are only a few honor books selected for an award, that does NOT IN ANY WAY MEAN that there were no other books worthy of distinction. It means that these books selected were the ones that a diverse committee of 15 different people, people from different kinds of libraries, from different areas of the country, from different types of experiences and backgrounds, could all come to a consensus on. 

Have you ever tried to get a group to agree about anything? 

Have you ever tried to get a group of fifteen people to agree about anything? 

I guarantee you that every single person on the 2019 Newbery Committee had additional books that they would have loved to see get an Honor sticker. I guarantee that every person on that committee had at least one book that broke their heart a little bit when it didn't make the final list. 

My 2015 Newbery Committee was also a committee that "only" had two honor books. And yes, we heard the disappointed sounds from a room of thousands when the number was announced (especially on the heels of the 2015 Caldecott committee announcing SIX honor books). All I can say is that the winner and two honor books announced were the three books that our committee could come to a consensus on out of a field of dozens of wonderful books. 

That's how the process works. And it works that way to make the awards mean something. If I got to give a Newbery honor sticker to every book that I personally found amazing, that would be super fun for me, but it wouldn't mean much to the rest of the world. It's the consensus that makes the award mean something. It's why the committee ballots and re-ballots until a book meets the required score to be declared a winner. You can read more details about the process in the John Newbery Award Committee Manual and I highly recommend that you do so if you're curious about how it all works. 

One last little thing before I step down from my soapbox is this: 

Just because your favorite book didn't get a shiny sticker on it this weekend doesn't make it any less a favorite. I call these "books of your heart". Don't stop loving that book. Don't stop sharing that book and pushing it into the hands of children. Ultimately, it's not a shiny sticker that's going to get that book into the hands of every child who needs it. It's you, the gatekeeper. It's you the librarian, the teacher, the parent, the friend. Keep matching up your favorite books with their readers. THAT is what makes those books shine, not a sticker. 

NoveList & LibraryReads Free Genre Webinars

Photo by Abhi Sharma

ETA (1/21/19): The archived webinar is now available! Go forth and learn!

You all. Yesterday, I attended the first free webinar in a new series on genres that NoveList and LibraryReads are partnering up to present. It. Was. Fantastic.

Even before the webinar started, attendees were suggesting their favorite sci-fi novels and talking about subgenres in the chat (which continued throughout the webinar - I copied and pasted the chat into a Word document to save it and it was 33 pages).

This first webinar in the series was on Science Fiction and I found it very engaging and helpful. We got an overview of the development of the genre from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to what's new and trending today. The slides had TONS of suggestions for books along the way. I could tell that they paid attention to being inclusive with many female authors and authors from different cultures and ethnicities represented.

After the overview of the genre presented by a member of the LibraryReads team, a NoveList team member spoke about appeal factors in the genre and how to use NoveList to search for books for sci-fi readers and narrow the searches down to find a great match. I think you'd get the most out of it if you're a NoveList subscriber, but even if you're not, there were still tons of information about the appeal factors in the genre and book suggestions that would are useful.

This webinar was a bit like my Reader's Advisory class in grad school boiled down to one hour. I LOVED that class, so I was definitely nerding out. If you are unfamiliar with genre fiction or just want a refresher or if you're not confident about searching NoveList or if you have staff that aren't using NoveList because they don't know how, this is a FANTASTIC RESOURCE.

The webinars are centered on adult reading, though there were definitely YA titles that I spotted throughout. If you work with teens or adults, it's well worth watching.

The full schedule of genre webinars for the year is posted on this NoveList blog post and the webinars will be archived in case you can't make the actual time. As soon as the sci-fi archive is available, I will post it.

ETA: The archived webinar is now available! Go forth and learn!

A Look Back at 2018

2018 was my first full year in my new position as Collection Development Lead at my library and I did some things!

• I got kudos from my boss at a leadership meeting for spending pretty much the entire collection budget for the first time in many years. 

• I've been building my Personal Learning Network for adult collection development (Early Word Galley Chat has been great for this!) and learning so much about adult materials.

• I set up a location in our ILS for our new branch and have been working on getting them the materials they need up there. 
• I have learned soooo much about our ILS vendor. 

• I revised our Collection Development Policy and set up an online form where patrons can suggest purchases.
• I got us a subscription to Wowbrary and it's making our holds lists for new materials grow and grow!

• I renewed our magazines and databases and set up systems to collect more data so that these renewals will be easier next year.

It's been a great year and I continue to love my job (although I continue to miss baby storytime...). I have goals for next year. LET'S DO THIS, 2019!

On Ordering Ebooks

Boy howdy. Ordering ebooks.

As you may know, I recently stepped into a new role at my library as the Collection Development Librarian. One of my duties is, of course, maintaining our electronic collections. This means ordering and managing our ebook collections.

There's a lot I'm still figuring out about this job and ebooks is one of them. Part of the problem is that we're all still figuring out ebooks, including the vendors and publishers. Yes, ebooks have been available to libraries for years now, but the pricing schemes are still sometimes ridiculous and I just have to hope that someday they may become more reasonable.

At my library, we currently use Overdrive for ebooks and e-audiobooks and we just recently subscribed to Hoopla for downloadable movies, music, ebooks, and audiobooks. Since Hoopla is really new to us, I'm closely monitoring how it's doing. Hoopla operates on a cost-per-circ model. That means we pay nothing to make the entire catalog of Hoopla's offerings available to our patrons; we only pay when our patrons actually download the material. And everything Hoopla offers can have simultaneous users, meaning there is never a holds list, all Hoopla materials are always available. We offer 8 downloads a month to our patrons.

Overdrive has recently offered a selection of books that can be offered on a cost-per-circ model, but I haven't explored it in depth yet. I'm waiting to see what our spending on Hoopla will be once it evens out a bit.

I want to offer our patrons what they want to read. I want to purchase the newest releases and the best-selling titles. But it becomes a balancing act because these titles are almost always incredibly expensive. Depending on the publisher, an adult ebook could be upwards of $60-70 per copy (and that one copy can only be checked out by one user at a time). Popular downloadable audiobooks often run $80-90 per copy. I want to provide the most in-demand stuff, but my budget only stretches so far. When I might not think twice about buying 5 or 6 copies of popular print books, doing that with ebooks might break the bank. So that means lots of decision-making.

It's also fascinating to me to see titles that circ like crazy as downloadable when the print copies sit collecting dust on our shelves. Lots of teen titles, in particular, are like this. I'm astonished at the high number of ebook circulations for some whose print counterparts collect dust on the shelves.

The children's ebooks are the opposite of that (for the most part). We tried to build up a good selection of children's materials, thinking that the way to convince families to use them is to have them there so we can promote them. But a lot of the children's material has very low circulation, particularly when compared to adult titles. It's another conundrum: I have a special passion to provide high-quality children's material in all formats. But if it doesn't check out, how can I justify spending my limited budget on it when I know I could buy adult titles that would check out?

I mostly have questions and no answers here, but one technique I have had some success with is placing small orders each week. I try to place an Overdrive order once a week so that there's something new on a regular basis. This helps to keep our circulation up as it keeps people coming back to check for new stuff. Even if the new stuff has a wait list, they may discover something else they want if they're in the mood to download a book. It's frustrating to look at my weekly budget and know that I will only be able to afford 10-15 titles a week (and a lot of times those get eaten up by additional copies to satisfy holds or by copies that have reached the end of their metered access and I need to replace them). But I just take each victory as it comes. Whenever I buy something and then see that it's checked out, I do a little happy dance.

What are your techniques for ordering ebooks? Any special tricks I should know?

Building a Collection Development Toolkit

Image of a light bulb inside a chalk thought bubble. Like, an idea.

When I took on a new position as Collection Development Leader at my library, I knew I would need to reach out to find resources to help me in my job. I have been pretty good at staying on top of what's being published as far as youth materials since that's been part of my job for many years. But I am brand new at collecting materials for adults, so I've been building up my resources in that area. Not only did I need resources, but I needed to figure out how to manage them in a convenient way.

One system that's worked for me is signing up for collection development and reader's advisory emails and then setting up filters so that they go to their own folders and I can peruse them when I have time. Emails go straight to their own folders and then I reserve some time each day or every couple of days to look through them.

What are the resources I have found so far? 

Book Pulse from Library Journal. Becky Spratford of RA for All pointed me to this resource and I am so grateful. Updated each weekday, this blog points out popular titles for the week, books new to the NYT Best Seller List, and books that have been reviewed in big publications or mentioned in the media. It also shares general book news like award announcements, author deaths, etc. The posts can be emailed to you, so I get them in my Book Pulse folder each day.

Baker & Taylor's Fast Facts. This weekly email includes not only hot titles for the upcoming week and titles about to be featured on radio and TV but it includes a spreadsheet of all titles being published the following week. Sometimes that's too overwhelming, but it's broken down into Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, New Paperback, etc. so unless it's a super busy week it's helpful to me to double-check and see if there's anything I've missed that I want to make sure I order. My library is a Baker & Taylor customer, but it looks to me like you can access their Fast Facts even if you're not (I could be wrong!)

Shelf Awareness Pro. This is another weekday email blast that sends out book-related news. A lot of it pertains more to bookstores, but it helps me keep my eye on the publishing world. Even the ads can be helpful, pointing me to books that are being heavily marketed that I might want to put on my radar.

Check Your Shelf. This is a new bi-weekly email sent out by Book Riot for a librarian audience. Even though I haven't actually gotten my first email yet, I trust it will be a useful resource since I already rely on Book Riot's blog posts to help make me aware of new and upcoming adult books. Bonus: if you sign up now you can enter to win a free library cart!

LibraryReads. Each month, LibraryReads announces librarians' top ten picks for the upcoming month so you can put them on your radar. I get these emailed to me so I can forward the list out to my public services staff and make them aware of hot books that will be coming out.

RA for All. Becky Spratford has an amazing blog with tons of resources for reader's advisory, which goes hand in hand with collection development. I've found out about many great resources through her blog.

Book Riot. Here's another great blog for staying on top of what's new and upcoming in books. What I love about this site is that it's geared towards all readers; there's something for everyone here. Not every post is relevant to my work, but there are tons of book lists and they make an effort to feature diverse books, which is important.

Rich in Color: Diverse Books Release Calendar. Here's another great resource for keeping on top of diverse children's books coming out. It's something I have bookmarked to check each month so I can be sure to be collecting diverse titles for my library.

These are some of the resources I have found most useful and use regularly. I use other resources from my vendors (e.g. Baker & Taylor's Automatically Yours plan and their First Look carts). What should I add to my toolkit?

The "We" in Collection Development

Previously, I posted There's No "I" in Collection Development, about checking personal biases as I'm selecting books for our community.

It turns out that there might not be an "I" in collection development, but there certainly should be a WE. Particularly if your library has centralized selection (i.e. one person or one department selecting materials for the entire library or system). Who are your collection development partners?

(Image shows a cat standing on a dog's back to reach the refrigerator water dispenser with the words "Teamwork makes the dream work.")

Colleagues

My front-line colleagues are an important partnership. They're the ones at the circulation desk and shelving the books and talking to patrons every day. They're the ones that know what new series is popular with elementary school kids, what title everyone's asking for because it was mentioned on a local radio station, what genres our large print readers are seeking. Make it as easy as possible for them to make suggestions for purchase.

I created a Google form that is bookmarked on every public service desk computer and I also emailed the URL to every staff member so they could bookmark it for themselves if they wanted to. Staff can pass along patron requests for purchase, suggest general subjects we need more materials on, or request particular titles they think would be a good fit for our library.

I also walk around.

I admit, sometimes it's nice to spend a day in my office at my desk working quietly on book things. But I'm doing my library a disservice if that's all I do. When I walk around, I can see changes that are happening to our physical shelves. I talk to my colleagues and ask them what's working and what's not. How are things going? Is there anything they need that I can help with?

Patrons

My patrons are an important partnership. They're the ones who can best tell me what they're looking for and I need to listen to them. Staff can pass along their requests for purchase (and soon we'll have a place where patrons can make their requests directly - we're working on this bit). I can also listen to them by checking the holds lists and running circulation reports.

I also walk around.

I can listen to our patrons by perusing the shelving carts to see what's been recently checked out or by scanning the stacks to see what's been so loved that it's falling apart. I can jump on to a circulation desk to help patrons and engage with them. Have they read the first book by this author they're checking out? What did they think? How did they hear about this book?

It was by helping staff the circulation desk that I learned that some of my patrons get book recommendations from local blogger and podcaster Modern Mrs. Darcy, so you can be sure I added her blog to my feed and read it regularly.

Vendors

I get so much help from outside sources - a post about resources I have discovered for collection development is coming soon. But vendors make up another important partnership for me as I step into this collection development role. As with stepping into any new role, I have not been afraid to ask questions. I've tried to contact all the vendors I'm now working with and ask for training or introduce myself. And many of them provide valuable help in keeping me aware of what's hot and new and what will be useful for my collection.

Like I said, look for a resource post coming soon (and probably many more in the future... I'm still new at this!). But don't overlook vendor reps as valuable partners. Use them!

Who are your partners in collection development?

There's No "I" in Collection Development

(Okay, of course there's an "i" in Collection Development, but bear with me...)

Image of teetering, overstuffed bookshelves. If I am not careful, our shelves will look like this.

It's a selector's responsibility to maintain a balanced collection in the library. We're taught that in grad school. They say that if 20% of your library's collection personally offends you (politically, religiously, etc.), you're doing your job.

But there are smaller biases that we need to be aware of, too. What are your personal biases? And how do you check them as you're selecting for your collection?

What I mean is, I can tell what personal interests our selectors have had as I look at our collection. There are some sections that are just perennially popular and have been widely ordered throughout the years: mysteries, large print, Christian fiction... But there are some sections that give me pause.

Looking at the collection, I can tell that at a certain time our selector of nonfiction loved reading biographies. Our biography section ballooned at that time. Other past selectors have had other personal interests I can spot as I look through what's circulating - and what's not - in our collection.

When I first heard I had gotten this job, I thought "Great! Now I can make sure we have any book my heart desires; I can just buy any book I think I want to read!"

Surely, I thought, if I read it someone else will want it. I have great taste! Everyone will love the exact same books I will!

That's flawed thinking and will probably result in many books sitting on the shelf, not circulating or checked out once (by me!). And that's not doing any favors to our collection.

Being in charge of selection is about more than getting the books I personally want to read on our shelves. I'm selecting for the entire community. And that means more than just ensuring that I'm buying books I know my patrons will be interested in. It means checking my impulse to buy the books that personally sound interesting to me and asking myself if they're a good fit for my community as well.

I've learned some surprising things as I've stopped to think carefully about what I'm selecting. I have an impulse to buy every book with feminist themes that is being published. I love reading about icky medical history, I crave short story collections, I am drawn to writers from Africa. Some of those may be interests my patrons share, but I've got to make sure I'm asking myself this question: who am I buying this book for?

If the answer is that my patrons will be interested and check it out, great! In the cart it goes. If not, maybe I add it to my GoodReads to-read list and seek it out for myself later.

Collection Development Tool: Google Keep

So, I've started my role as the Collection Development Leader for my library and I'm slooooowly learning the ropes. One tool I've been using a lot already is Google Keep.

Google Keep is a free app and web tool that's part of the Google Suite. Basically, it's a digital bulletin board where you can make notes, keep lists, pin links, add photos, etc.

I am a person who loves to read about books and reading. I love perusing Book Riot for their recommendations and checking out what people are reading on Litsy. I have been known to view online publisher book previews at home on my day off. I love making lists of books I'm interested in reading, even if I know I'll only have time to get to a tenth of them. I've done that for a long time, not just because I'm now a collection development librarian.

We talk a lot about work-life balance and, even though my work is something that I LOVE and researching new books is something I sometimes do for fun, it could all too easily turn into me working all the time, around the clock. If I was constantly bringing up our library catalog to check if we have books or pulling up our vendor's site to add books to carts, I would be working all the time.

So I wanted a tool that would allow me to save relevant links, lists, etc. for further investigation when I'm back at my desk. I needed an online tool so that it could be accessed on multiple devices and I needed something that has an iPhone app so that it would be with me where I am.

That way, instead of digging out my bullet journal to jot down the URL to the amazing Rich in Color, the diverse books release calendar, I can add a link from Chrome or my phone or snap a screenshot so I remember to look it up later. I don't have to obsess about something in hopes I'll remember it on Monday when I'm at my desk. I can quickly note it right where I am and then go back to living my life.

Here are ways I've already used it:

• I jot down titles that I want to check and see if we have. This is great for when I'm hearing about a book during casual conversation, etc. and I don't want to forget.
• I snap and save photos of new books or book displays at the bookstore when my husband and I are browsing.
• I keep lists of book display and book list ideas that I can add to whenever something occurs to me (no more scrambling for themes on the first of the month!).
• When I'm scrolling through my blog subscriptions on Newsblur, I can save links to posts that I want to read in close detail, so I can catch up on my blogroll as I'm watching TV or something but not miss anything that might be useful in my job.
• I keep resource links saved in there that I want to check regularly. Since I can make notes about the links, I can note what I want to explore when I have time, what I want to check regularly, etc. 

I'm sure there are other similar organizational apps out there - what do you use to keep notes about new books or trends you hear about??

Am I Still a Children's Librarian?

I posted awhile back about changes in my career and since then we've been busy transitioning at my library. We're managing a lot of changes all at once, which has been stressful, but I'm excited about where all these changes are taking us.

I knew that transitioning into a new role wouldn't be easy, but to be honest it's been harder than I thought. Part of that is my own tendencies toward stress and anxiety. As I've started taking on some of the tasks of my new position but also remained doing some of the tasks of my old position (necessary since we're in the process of moving things around), I've tried to remind myself that no one expects me to do two full jobs at once. I've gotten the time-sensitive stuff done and everything else has had to wait until I'm more fully into my new position.

And that's had me thinking a lot about my old position as Youth Services Manager and not being that anymore. I've got the skills and knowledge to put on a children's program, to do storytime, to cover the Children's or Teen reference desks... but that's not going to be my job anymore. So am I still a children's librarian?

Being a children's librarian will always be part of who I am. I've offered to be a sub any time they need me. But to be really fair to my new position and to do justice to the part of my new job that's concerned with the needs of adult patrons, I'm starting to think of myself as a collection development librarian. I have to - it's my new job and one I'm really excited about.

But "children's librarian" has been my label for so long that it's hard to let it go. It's really bittersweet to think about my last (regular) baby storytime coming up in a couple of months or that I've worked at possibly my last teen after-hours program. I won't be part of our Thursday night crew anymore (lovingly called the Thursday Night Dream Team) and I will probably only rarely need to use the hashtag #SaturdayLibrarian.

As I've been winding down my time in youth services, I've realized how much that type of work took it out of me. I have loved what I do, but it's also always stressful for me to run a children's program or to work a public service desk. These are jobs where you have to be "on" even more than when you're working with your library colleagues in a more "behind the scenes" fashion. And while I will still want to jump in on the public service desks sometimes to give me a sense of how people are using our collection, it's a relief that it won't be part of my everyday work life any more.

I don't think I really have a point here... I'm just exploring what this transition has meant for me and what I've been thinking about lately as I make this change. I'm still really excited about my new position, even as I'm feeling nostalgic (already!) for the job I haven't quite left yet.

Taking Off My Manager Pants

Hi. It's been a minute.

That's because there have been some changes going on!

Let me start at the beginning...

When I was in library school, one of the required courses was a management course. I thought this was ludicrous; I had no interest in getting into management. I took the course, but repeatedly said to everyone that I would never be a manager.

My first job out of grad school was up near Chicago. After a few years there, I started to look for something closer to my hometown and my family. The job that came up? A manager position. Library jobs around my hometown are scarce, particularly jobs that pay you enough to live as a single person. I didn't know if they would hire me; I didn't have any management experience.

But they did hire me. Suddenly I was in a manager position.

I know lots of you are in a similar boat. You're a great youth services librarian and the only place to move up in your organization is a management position. You feel like that's the next step, so let's do that. Does that mean you suddenly have a passion for managing people? For mentoring and coaching and all the things that come with a management job?

Maybe it does! That's awesome! But sometimes not. And for me, it did not. It took a long time for me to really realize that and longer still for me to come to terms with it and to be okay with it. It was fine for awhile, as I concentrated on building up our program schedule and making connections for outreach: manager work that needed to be done to get us up to speed, but that was still the librarian work that I loved. However, when a new director came in and started really working with the leadership team and providing training and workshops and development for us, I started to panic.

I felt like I had NO TIME to incorporate all the things that I was supposed to be doing as a manager, mentor, and coach. I felt like I would have to work 60-80 hour weeks to get all my manager tasks done in addition to all the other things I was responsible for. I realized that the reason that I had no time was because I was still also doing all the work of a front-line librarian and that the thought of giving up those tasks to do the true work of a manager broke my heart.

Honestly, it took breaking down at the Power Up: Youth Services Leadership Conference to really start to take a hard look at why I was so unhappy. Gretchen Caserotti asked me why I wouldn't consider seeking a director position and I told her "Because it would be all the parts of my job that I hate and none of the parts that I love." I burst into tears whenever someone asked me how I was doing. HELLO. I was in the wrong job.

So, I gathered up my courage and I went to my administration and I told them that I would love to stay with our library but that I wanted to step down from my management position. I wasn't sure how it would go. I wasn't sure if they had a role for me other than my current role. I cried the entire morning before I went in for my meeting with them, rehearsing what I was going to say. But I wanted to stay, so it was worth a shot.

I have an incredibly supportive and understanding administration team. They listened to what I had to say. They readily acknowledged that many people find themselves in management positions when they don't really want them. I felt like a fool for taking eight years to figure this out, but they applauded me for figuring it out at all. They told me that they would work with me, that it would take a little time to figure out what we could do, but that we could do something.

Just hearing that made me feel so much lighter. And now, our library is undergoing a major restructure (which was in the works before I approached them) and I'm stepping into a new role as the Collection Development Lead. Which is pretty much my dream job.

I am proud of the work that I did as the Children's Manager and then Youth Services Manager at my library. Together, my staff and I made great strides forward with our department. This new role doesn't change any of that. This change doesn't mean I love the people I work with any less. I am thrilled to continue to get to work with them in a different capacity and to see where they take our library's youth services next. I know it will be awesome.

Changes are coming as we transition to our new staffing structure. And I'll just be over here taking off my manager pants and putting on some new pants. I think they'll feel great.

Summer Reading: A Blast from the Past

I don't know where they came from. Someone must have cleaned out a cabinet somewhere. Suddenly, there appeared these boxes.

Boxes of stuff from past Summer Reading Clubs, dating back to the 1980s and 1970s. 

So, a couple of weeks ago on a quiet Friday morning, I delved into these boxes to take a look at our summer reading past before the boxes went to the Indiana Room for archiving in our library history files. 

Some of what I found is delightful, so I wanted to share with you today. :) 

Apparently our Summer Reading Club used to be a lot more collaborative with our neighboring libraries, including the Louisville Free Public Library across the river. Check out these mascots! And yes, our mascot for MANY years was a rat named Floyd the River Rat who was "a retired river boat captain". For MANY years. You will see him again. 

Do you remember the California Raisins? They did a Summer Reading campaign in 1989! Sometimes my library participated in national or statewide campaigns and sometimes we went our own way. 

I have no idea if this was a large scale campaign, but I find the image unfortunate. (What must parents have thought?! Or is it only me whose mind goes there?)

Of course there was a roller skating theme in the '80s! Lots of the coupon prize packs I found had tickets to local roller rinks (which are no longer in existence, sadly). 

As promised, here's Floyd the River Rat again in an Indy 500-themed club called the "Reading 500". As far as I can tell, 1982 was not any kind of special anniversary year for the Indianapolis 500, but I'm sure it was a popular theme nonetheless! 

This might be my favorite of the ones we had in our boxes: a 1978 play on the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 

And I have to give a special mention to this dinosaur-themed Summer Reading Club log, which was not ours (it was from the Louisville Library across the river), but I would participate in this club in a heartbeat. Hmm. It was 1987 when I would have been turning 5 years old, so it's possible I DID participate.... Look at those bones to write your books on! Yes, please. 

Reading Wildly: Manga

Last month for Reading Wildly, my staff and I tackled manga. This is a genre that is SO popular, especially with our teens, and it's a genre that none of us naturally gravitate towards. That makes it a perfect genre to include in our Reading Wildly meetings!

We talked a little bit about why manga might be so popular with teens - it's often funny or wacky or strange, so something a little different than typical American books. Even the format feels like a rebellion or like something that many adults wouldn't understand or like or bother with. Emotions are often depicted as over the top (which can be exactly how something FEELS when it's happening to you). Manga series can last tens or hundreds of volumes, which gives readers plenty of fuel to keep going and engaging with the characters or plots they are enjoying.

Here, our teens know what they love and what they want in manga and anime. Most often they are the ones making suggestions to us on what to buy, rather than our staff giving them reader's advisory. But even if our RA skills aren't called for very often with this genre, it's great to pick up books, series, and genres that our teens and kids love so that they know that we honor what they value and we're willing to give it a chance.

I don't know that anyone in our group necessarily discovered a newfound love for manga, but I appreciate that they were all willing to give it a try! Here are the series we read from:

• Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama
• Cactus's Secret by Nana Haruta
• Case Closed by Gosho Aoyama
• Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan
• Danganronpa by Spike Chunsoft
• Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima
• Food Wars by Yuto Tsukunda
• Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa
• Miki Falls by Mark Crilley
• Skip Beat by Yoshiki Nakamura
• Strobe Edge by Io Sakisaka

Next month is Reader's Choice as we gear up for the Summer Reading Club! What great books have you been reading lately? 

Leaders are Readers: A #PowerUp17 Book List

I had the GREAT pleasure of attending the first Power Up Conference in Leadership for Youth Services Managers and Staff at the University of Wisconsin - Madison last week. It was such an amazing two days and I am feeling really empowered (!!).

But the learning continues even now that I'm back home from conference. Not only will I be taking some time to read back over my notes, journal, and reflect, but I am busy tracking down all the great leadership and professional development books that were mentioned at the conference! Of course (since we're librarians), many of the presenters had book suggestions for us. And here's a compiled list. If you're looking to power up your leadership skills, start with these books!

Leaders are Readers: A #PowerUp17 Book List

**I did my best to write down as many book suggestions as I could, but of course I couldn't be in two sessions at once. If you remember any that I'm missing, please comment and I'll add them to the list!!**

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything in Business by Patrick Lencioni (Josey-Bass, 2012).

Being the Boss: 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

 Brene Brown - This author was mentioned, though not a specific book.
Daring Greatly (Avery, 2012).
The Gifts of Imperfection (Hazeldon, 2010).
Rising Strong (Spiegel & Grau, 2015).

Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block (Berret-Koehler, 2008).

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson et. al. (McGraw-Hill, 2002).

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books, 2009).

Effective Difficult Conversations by Catherine Soehner and Ann Darling (ALA Editions, 2017).

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by James Collins (HarperBusiness, 2001).

It's Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace by Anne Kreamer (Random House, 2011).

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek (Portfolio, 2014).

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandburg (Knopf, 2013).

Library 2020: Today's Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow's Library ed. by Joseph Janes (Scarecrow Press, 2013).

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer (Harper, 2006).

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek (Portfolio, 2009).

Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup Press, 2007).

**What books did I miss? Please tell me in comments and I'll update!!**

This Time of Year

This is one of my storytime faces. Chosen because it is a face I have made many times this month when failing to manage my stress. 

It's this time of year again. The time of year that we're really working hard at getting everything ready to go for the Summer Reading Club. This is the hardest time of year for me. Which is why this blog has been pretty quiet lately. :)

This is a time for planning, for getting everything into place so that we're ready for Summer Reading. It's the time to think of ALL the things you need to think about so that summer goes as smoothly as possible. In fact, tt's hard for me to stop thinking constantly about what's on my task list, what due dates are coming up, what we're going to do for XYZ, how Program X is going to work, how we're going to staff all the things we've got planned. Even when I'm trying to fall asleep. Even on my days off.

This time period is a special challenge for me this year because we are changing so much:

• We're switching to a new online Summer Reading software (we're going with Beanstack), which is very exciting but also a lot of work. 
• It's my teen librarian's first year planning and doing the Summer Reading Club, so I'm trying to be supportive of him (and it's my first year really needing to be involved with this so much since our previous teen librarians were more experienced). 
• I'm developing a whole system of new "Pop-Up Library" outreach visits to try to target our underserved populations of kids and families and get some books into those hands. My director is super excited about this project and wanting to get the entire library involved, which is great, but it's a very involved project. 
• We are hopefully going to have an intern to help with the outreach project? But I've never hired one before, so we're starting from scratch with that process, too. 

And all of this is good, exciting stuff, but it's a lot of new stuff. A lot of learning and trial-and-error and planning and thinking and coordinating. And a lot of things are up in the air, which is is hard for me to deal with. I like projects that are finished. I like plans that are firm so we know what's going to happen. 

There's a lot of good that's already come from all these things that are in the works. Maybe the best thing is that I've made some great connections with folks in our school system and our community and found them to be super supportive and enthusiastic of what we're trying to do. I'm sure that our outreach visits will be fine, and no matter how they go we'll be taking notes to improve the service next year. But if nothing else, we've made some new partners, which is awesome. 

I'm heading to the Power Up Conference in Leadership for Youth Services Management and Staff at the end of this week and I'm super excited to learn from some awesome leaders in our field. And then when I get back, it's going to be scheduling school visits, training staff, getting the final pieces into place with our outreach, and basically steamrolling right through until summer starts. 

Summer is always super busy, but I actually like June and July better than I like March, April, and May because by the time it's June there's no more thinking. There's no more planning. There's only DOING and coming into work each day to do what needs to be done. (It helps that our local schools have gone to a balanced schedule, so our entire Summer Reading Club is just 8 weeks long! For some reason that feels SO much more manageable than 10 weeks!)

So, here we go. Into this time of year. We'll get through it.

Reading Wildly: Romance

For our March Reading Wildly meeting, we read romance. This was a genre suggested by one of my staff members and once we put it on the schedule, I started noticing how often I was getting requests for romance, too, particularly at our teen desk.

Here's what we read and shared at our meeting:

• My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp
• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Every Hidden Thing by Kenneth Oppell
• Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour (#OwnVoices)
• The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvanez Tash (#OwnVoices)
• Hot Cocoa Hearts by Suzanne Nelson
• Me and Miranda Mullaly by Jake Gerhardt
• The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (#OwnVoices)
• Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan (#OwnVoices)
• When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon (#OwnVoices)

Next month, we're reading manga, which is outside the comfort zone of many of us (if not all of us!). We've reached out to our Teen Anime Club to suggest some series that we should check out, but if you have any manga recommendations, I'd love to hear what you suggest!

Reading Wildly: #OwnVoices

This month for Reading Wildly, my staff and I read #OwnVoices titles. #OwnVoices is a snappy name for "books with diverse characters that are written by people who share those identities" says Kayla Whaley in her post #OwnVoices: Why We Need Diverse Authors in Children's Literature. We all read that post before our book discussion. 

We have been trying to focus on diverse books for several years now, keeping track and aiming to include diverse titles in our storytimes and booktalking programs as much as possible. But this month, we specified that books read should be written by diverse authors. There were lots of great observations by my staff as we were sharing our booktalks. People felt that knowing that they were reading #OwnVoices authors helped them connect with characters and made the characters feel authentic. 

Why does reading #OwnVoices titles matter for reader's advisory? Because we should be putting these books into our patrons hands. As gatekeepers, it's our job to seek out and champion these books. The books shared at our meeting are from a wide variety of genres - contemporary realistic, fantasy, science fiction, horror - and have myriad possibilities for suggesting during reader's advisory transactions. We need to keep diverse books and especially #OwnVoices titles at the forefront of our minds so that we're not forgetting them as we suggest books, put together book lists, and choose titles for displays. 

Here's what we read this month: 

• Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson (#OwnVoices: author is African American)
• As Brave as You by Jason Reynolds (#OwnVoices: author is African American)
• Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates (#OwnVoices: author is African American)
• The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street by Sharon Flake (#OwnVoices: author is African American)
• The Buried Bones Mystery (Clubhouse Mysteries) by Sharon Draper (#OwnVoices: author is African American)
• Flying Lessons and Other Stories, edited by Ellen Oh (#OwnVoices: many (all) of the authors in this collection of diverse stories are #OwnVoices authors)
• George by Alex Gino (#OwnVoices: author is transgender)
• Hoodoo by Ronald Smith (#OwnVoices: author is African American)
• Kinda Like Brothers by Coe Booth (#OwnVoices: author is African-American from the Bronx)
• Lola Levine is Not Mean by Monica Brown (#OwnVoices: author is Peruvian-American)
• Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters by Margaret Dilloway (#OwnVoices: author is half-Japanese)
• On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis (#OwnVoices: author has autism)
• Run by Kody Keplinger (#OwnVoices: author is legally blind)
• Tiger Boy by Mitali Perkins (#OwnVoices: author is Indian)
• We Were Here by Matt de la Pena (#OwnVoices: author is Mexican-American)
• The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani (#OwnVoices: author is half-Indian)
• The Zero Degree Zombie Zone by Patrik Henry Bass (#OwnVoices: author is African American)

I asked my folks how they chose their #OwnVoices title(s) and many of them chose to read something off the list of possibilities that one of my librarians created. Finding #OwnVoices titles can be a little more involved than finding a book in a certain genre. It may be difficult to tell by the author's name alone (although you might think you can). 

My first step is locating books with diverse content, since that tends to be a little easier. And then I do a little research on the author to find out about their background and experiences. One of my librarians also suggested utilizing award-winners such as the Coretta Scott King Award and the Pura Belpre Award, which are awarded to African American authors/illustrators and Latinx author/illustrators respectively. 

Next month, we're reading romance novels, which some are very excited about and some are NOT excited about. ;) 

I think we've got plenty of ideas for teen romance, but would you suggest any love stories (crushes, etc.) for middle-graders or chapter book readers?

Days Like This

Here's the note I wrote on our walk-around log in the Teen Scene tonight:

Tonight I: 

- had to kick teens out of the library

- had to call the police about a car illegally parked in an accessible parking space

- had to chase out an adult couple making out on the couch in the Teen Scene

All in a day's work. Nothing more to add except that if you sometimes have days like this, just know that we all have days like this! 

Reading Wildly: Fantasy

**I just realized that I never posted this roundup from our Reading Wildly Fantasy discussion in December! Better late than never?**

My team met again for Reading Wildly and this month we discussed fantasy books. We have some lovers of fantasy and some for whom fantasy is a chore. One thing we discussed is that even books we pick up, read a little bit of, and put down can still be helpful for reader's advisory. When Becky Spratford (RA for All) visited us to present our staff day, we practiced speed reading and learned that you don't have to read an entire book to get enough information for reader's advisory.

One of my staff members mentioned that she tried several books that she just couldn't get into before she finally fell back on a favorite author for our book discussion. Well, if you are familiarizing yourself with your collection and reading parts of books, that can be helpful, too. When that fantasy fan comes up to the desk, you'll be familiar with a few more books than you were before! We're not all going to love every book we pick up for Reading Wildly because the purpose is to stretch ourselves beyond what we normally gravitate to reading.

Here's what we read this month: 

• Alison Dare Little Miss Adventures by J. Torres
• Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde
• The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman
• Frostborn (Thrones & Bones) by Lou Anders
• George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl 
• The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
• The Inquisitor's Tale by Adam Gidwitz
• Mighty Jack by Ben Hatke
• Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
• Serpentine by Cindy Pon
• Silence and Stone (The Faerie's Promise #1) by Kathleen Duey
• A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling

We also spent some time brainstorming and deciding on genres and topics for next year. I tried to give us a good blend of genres that were real stretches (the ones everyone groaned at) and genres that my staff didn't mind so much. We've got manga on the list for next year, which will be a stretch for all of us, I think. I'm also very excited to read and share #OwnVoices titles one month. 

January will be a Reader's Choice month to ease us into the new year and I hope to have a 2017 schedule up soon. 

In 2017, we're doing something a little new: we're partnering with GreenBean TeenQueen Sarah Bean-Thompson of the Springfield-Greene County Library District in Missouri to share our book discussions each month. Sarah and I will both be blogging about it along the way and I'm excited to expand our network of librarians and share even more titles!