Things I Never Learned In Library School: Changing Your Mindset, or how it ultimately hurts your library if you donate time, money and more
A lot of people don’t understand teen librarians and teen specialists. Like youth librarians, we are people with big hearts and big ideas, and we strive to make our libraries and communities a better place. However, we have a peculiar mindset- we like to give until way past when it hurts. We ARE a vocation and a calling, there’s no other way to describe it. I’ve known librarians (and have been one) who spend their own money on programs (“in order to make them better”or “to actually have programs”), who donate their time (“because otherwise things wouldn’t get done”), who have taken work home during their non-work hours (“because I can’t get anything done during the work day”). Do you see yourself in that? We all do it (and continually do it- I still do, trust me) but we (as a profession) need to take a huge step back from it. We are HURTING ourselves in ways that we don’t realize: by donating money, time, and resources that our cities and places of employment don’t recognize, they don’t realize the amount of work that goes into the programs and jobs that we do, and therefore can’t justify things like additional programming money, additional staff, or converting part time positions to full time positions. By helping, we are actually hurting because donating time and money prevents administrators from developing a realistic picture of the library’s needs.
Follow the break, and see some of the things that I’m talking about.
YOUR MONEY
We can easily get into the mindset that, “OH, we could do this awesome program if we had THIS or we had THAT, and it’s only THIS LITTLE BIT.” STOP. Right now. Think for a second. Every penny that you are taking out of your pocket is a penny that the Library Board and the City Council that you work for does not realize they need to invest into their library programs. They only see the end results, so if you have this completely awesome program based on materials that you have purchased with your money- no one sees that. All anyone sees is that the library had an awesome program, and they spent practically no money on it- so why do they need to fund it?
If you are going to donate money or supplies to the library (if there is absolutely no way around it), then 1. make sure that your supervisor and director know that you did, and 2. make sure that it is listed as a donation to the library program. Physically take it to the library, have someone *else* at the library fill out the donation form, and mark it as specifically as a donation for *your* program. That way it’s marked for your program, AND you get the tax break from it as well.
YOUR TIME
Another mindset that is hard to break is giving up your time. Think about it. That mandatory meeting when you’re not working? School visits or huge system wide programs when you’re off? Did you get reimbursed (comp time or flex time or time taken off another day) for those meetings or events? NO? Then you got hosed. Yes, we are a service profession (all library staff are) but that does not mean that we need to be self-sacrificing. STOP and have a talk with your supervisor about the issue and what can be done to resolve it. If you’re full time, it may mean using flex/comp time and taking that time on another day. If you’re part time (a very nasty trend that I don’t think we’re going away from any time soon, though it is very destructive to all involved), then it should be taken off at some point during THAT pay period. If it’s not, then move the conversation upwards, because you’re being taken advantage of, and the only one who can stop that is you. And again, the library isn’t getting proper staffing levels and your community and patrons suffer because they don’t get the levels of staffing they truly need to be a dynamic library.
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Make sure that you have your details to back you up when you go in to talk with your supervisor or manager. Show that you’ve given up X amount of hours for this project, and Y amount of time for this project, and that you want the same amount of time off. Take a look at the schedule beforehand as well; don’t expect to walk in and ask for the time off for holidays, etc.because it won’t happen- your manager (if they’re any good) has already given everyone the day off that they could. Instead, propose a day that your location is fully or mostly staffed, or a time when you come in late or go home early without affecting the rest of the staff. It may be that your manager just doesn’t know.
CONFERENCES AND PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Furthermore, while we’re talking about time, it seems like every minute gets scheduled with *something*, whether it’s work or home or reading or blogging or email or family or…. well, you get the idea. Take a look at your commitments. Yes, being on professional committees from ALA or your state association is fulfilling and enriching- I’ll be the first to say it. I’ve had amazing opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, and I’ve met some amazing people through committees and conference attendance. I’ve presented at both ALA and TxLA (Texas Library Association), and been on a variety of committees. However, each time I’ve volunteered myself for one I’ve taken a good, hard look at my work and personal life and made sure that I could handle everything without driving myself insane. If I couldn’t, I didn’t. And you know what, the years I wasn’t on something- NOTHING HAPPENED. The world didn’t crash, I wasn’t smote or shunned by the professional community, or struck by lightening. It was all OK. So STOP and think before volunteering- do you really have time to be on something? Do you really WANT to do it? Or are you caught up in the professional pixie dust? And does your workplace reward or compensate you for the expense? Also keep in mind that professional involvement can have a lot of monetary expenses built into it, so it can also come back to money.
Note that I’m not saying do not volunteer. It is extremely rewarding. however, with ever tightening budgets, I know a lot of librarians who have gone into DEBT volunteering their time and energy into professional organizations because they felt that they HAD TO in order to stay “in the top” of their field and “in the eyesight” of those organizations. Conference attendance and professional memberships are not cheap, and it can take a strain on even the healthiest of budgets- especially when you are paying your own way. Yes, it looks good on a resume, but if you’re going into debt to do it, it’s not worth it.
WORKING FROM HOME
Finally, let’s talk about working from home. Yes, it’s easier than ever and OH, SO TEMPTING. You can log into your email remotely, and get through it all because you’re AT HOME and there’s no one asking for this book or that program description or OMG SOMEONE IS EATING THE COMPUTER CORD. (Oh, wait, that might be at home, my bad.) Or you go to a book store and find the greatest display of nonfiction books, and start placing orders through the WiFi. Or you’re browsing through the internet and there’s the BEST IDEA for a program, and instead of emailing it to yourself at work to work through, you create the idea and flesh it all out complete with proposal and costs because you have the time and can’t loose the muse. Sound familiar? STOP. That is WORK, and if you aren’t cleared to work from home (and really, how many of us are?) then you are working on your off time, and need to stop. Give yourself a break. If you really think that you’re going to lose that idea, take a photo. Email to your work address the information, or the picture of the display, or the ISBNs off of the back of the books, and put the order together AT WORK. Put the program together AT WORK. You need your downtime just as much as anyone else, and if you don’t vary what you do, you’re going to be all teen stuff all the time, and you will be fried. Additionally, if you do all of this stuff OFF THE CLOCK, no one will realize that it was off the clock- it will seem like you did it all during work hours, and then there will be no justification to get another aide in your area, or moving you to full time, or adding on additional staff.
So what are the things you do that you need to change? Or what suggestions do you give for someone who needs to change?
Filed under: Professional Development, Things I Never Learned in Library School
About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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I have slowly gotten better at this over the years, but I will admit to still doing a lot of collection development and idea collecting and organizing at home. Sometimes it's hard to separate out what's work and what's not, b/c I blog, review, etc. and I also mainly hang out with librarians. I made a New Year's Resolution in 2012 that I wouldn't work 10 or 12 hour days anymore (I'm salaried) and I've mostly stuck to that. I also started cutting back on programming and redesigning programs so they're not so time-intensive. I now only do about 3 weekend programs a year and an average of 3 programs a week, 4 in summer (not counting outreach) (yes, I was doing more) and I take off almost all of May, August, and from mid-December to mid-January from programming.
One thing I'd add to the not donating time and money is fundraising. Of course, I write grants and solicit donations as part of my job, but at our library even though we have a Friends group and a fundraising committee of the Board, somehow staff always end up involved or doing most of the work! Our Friends especially have been very pushy and after I confirmed with my director that I wasn't expected to be a Friends member (active or not) I pretty much told them NO. Our board is also asking for a “staff representative” for the committee, and while it's a good idea, it's not going to be me.
Good for you!
Exactly- know where your boundaries are and stick to them. Your “Friends” and your Board should be working for you and your library (and in concert with), and should not be making your job harder.
I worked at a library once where they tried to tell us we all had to pay (our own money) to join the library Friends group and donate our time at the annual Friends booksale. I think Friends groups are amazing things, but it always bothered me that this admin was trying to say we needed to do all of these things.
Later I was on a preschool/daycare board and they actually got in trouble for telling their staff they had to “volunteer” for the various fundraisers. It turns out you can't ask staff to volunteer to do what you should be paying them for.
Thank you for this post. I am guilty of most if not all of the above. You hit the nail on the head when you said that our jobs are a calling and it is CONSTANTLY on my mind. I feel like a lazy, bad librarian if I'm not on a ton of committees, keeping my blog up, checking work mail from home, or not spending my own money on programs. It's comforting to know that I'm not alone and that the world isn't going to end if I don't do some of these things.
I don't know if it's because we're so dedicated, or because we're so tuned in now-a-days or what, but it just seems like some weeks there is not enough time in the days, and the more people understand that we *can't* do everything in the hours that they're giving us (or paying us for), the better the situation will be. Either they're going to have to lighten the work load, increase hours or hire more staff.
And honestly, the world does not end if you turn everything off for a weekend- the blog, the twitter, the email, or anything else. It really doesn't. (But don't tell Karen, she'll smack me 8D )