Action Librarian

I assume you have already read my riveting post on all of the planning that went into my library’s Free Comic Book Day/ Star Wars Day event, right? Good. Now we can talk about the fun part, the actual event! It’s kind of crazy to think about all of the planning that went into a two hour event but this event was the biggest one that the library has ever done while the library was open. We have done teen lock-ins before with much success but like the name suggests, it was locked down. Since we’d be open, live and taking over the whole building, we had to do a lot of planning but it all paid off.

It was hard to keep track of how many people showed up but it was definitely a few hundred people. Luckily we had several awesome volunteers throughout the facility to make sure everything ran smoothly. If you do a similar event, you definitely want to get lots of volunteers and I’ll illustrate why in a minute.

We set up our Free Comic Book table on the third floor in Adult Non-Fiction, so there would be lots of room for people to stand in line without being in the way of other participants.

We put up comic book trivia questions on the ends of all the bookshelves so people would have something to do while they waited in line for their comics.

We handed out cards to people getting comics. They could get it stamped at the library and our partner shop, Hall of Heroes to enter a raffle for a free box of comics! This was our way to drive crowds to both places. We ran out of cards in the first hour! We didn’t expect so many people to show up, next year we will know to plan for WAY more! Our partner at the Hall of Heroes reported getting A LOT more people in the shop this year because of the promotions and partnerships, which bodes well for library/ comics shop collaborations.

Members of the 501 Great Lakes Garrison arrived to take photos with our patrons! It was about as adorable and amazing as you would expect. Those costumes are totally legit too and Darth Vader was giant and very scary. If you’re going to have legitimate cosplayers with legitimate costumes come to your library, make sure you have a volunteer there to manage the crowd. Those costumes are expensive and sometimes people get a little too excited and try to hit them with lightsabers. Luckily we had somebody who was willing to be Darth Vader’s bodyguard.

We also had artist Timm Umstead on hand who was drawing and handing out prints to all of our participants.

Randy Scott, Librarian at Michigan State University and caretaker of the largest comic book archive in the world came to talk about his collection and about comics in academia.

Library staff member, Wes Umstead gave a talk about the process of writing comics and all the different kinds of comics that are out there.

We had a costume contest where the winners won free movie passes and the runner up won a signed graphic novel. They were all EXTREMELY adorable.

The Winner was the family that dressed up like Star Wars Characters. Mega adorable.

It was a lot of fun and very well received. We got a lot of positive feedback from everyone involved, including the patrons. I think we will definitely do it again next year!

I couldn’t get any of my Vine videos to embed properly but I made a few during the event if you’d like to check them out!

Free Comics at the Library

The Arrival of Darth Vader & Leia

Star Wars Photo Area

Vader in the Elevator 

My library had a Free Comic Book Day/ May the Fourth Be With You Star Wars Day event this last Saturday and it was AWESOME. It was a lot of planning over an extended period of time but everything came together very well, with some room to grow on for next year but I’ll talk about all of that in a minute. It all began, like most things in the library, with a committee. It was myself and my co-workers Rebecca Bundy and Wesley Umstead who started talking about what we wanted to do and see on the magical May 4th, where both Free Comic Book Day and Star Wars Day would converge. Rebecca works on our library’s programming team so she did most of the heavy lifting when it came to all of the paperwork, scheduling, decorating and many of the other thousands of details such a large event requires. This post will focus on the lead up TO the event and all of the planning.

Anybody who works at a public library knows that we’re always trying to work on our image and to reach out to under-served populations. As a public resource, funded by public money, we kind of have an obligation to at least TRY to reach out to every segment of our population. Libraries are here for you TOO. Yes, YOU too. And even YOU. We’ve expanded our programs and collections to try and appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. All are good things! But it always brings up a point that really grinds my gears.

Whenever we talk about doing this kind of outreach and changing our image to the public, what is the image we’re trying to change? One image is that we’re “outdated”. But to whom are we outdated? The biggest user demographic at our library is the young mom, who checks out tons of stuff for her kids and brings them to all of our programs. We also have seniors who use us quite a bit, to check out books and to attend all of our computer classes and iPad demos and for us to show them how to use Overdrive. We get TONS of kids and teens every afternoon and weekend using our building as a safe place to hang out with their friends, do their homework and play games. And we also have people who use us because they can’t afford to have internet at their house, or to print off things or would like a place to be where they don’t have to buy something. All of these people do not think we’re outdated but we have this idea that “everyone” thinks we’re obsolete. What this is actually telling me is that we don’t think any of these people MATTER.

Who is left out of this scenario? From a marketer’s perspective, the biggest and best demographic there is: Middle Class Males, ages 18 – 35. Lots of library marketing is focused on getting that group into the library and using the resources. Why? Like I said earlier, as a publicly funded resource, we’re always trying to appeal to the entire community and Middle Class Males, ages 18 – 35 make up a pretty good chunk of that population. But why do we act like if THEY don’t think we’re useful then NOBODY does? What I hear is that you consider all of the people who do use the library regularly (moms, kids, seniors, low-income people) are nobodies. Who CARES if THEY use the library, the people who MATTER don’t use it.

Would it be so terrible if the library was only used by these groups of people? Middle Class Males, ages 18 – 35 already occupy space in every other element of the universe, is it the world’s most important thing to make sure that they are also the library’s biggest demographic instead of young moms? Or seniors? Or low-income patrons? Instead of asking why libraries aren’t catering to the desires of these Bros, maybe we should be asking why these Bros don’t feel the need to support something they don’t use themselves? Or why they think something that’s used by moms, kids, low-income community members and seniors is such a waste of time and money.

I don’t think we should stop trying to bring more people into the library. And I don’t think we should exclude these Bros or stop marketing to them. The Library is for them as well, whether they know it or not. But we shouldn’t forget all of the people who do use the library NOW. They’re not nobodies.

PS: If you know a Bro who doesn’t think the public library is worth anything, maybe you should forward him this blog post by author John Scalzi, where he describes why he supports public libraries even if he doesn’t NEED to use them anymore.

This year, my library is planning a blowout for Free Comic Book Day. It just so happens to fall on May 4th this year, which is also Star Wars Day. We’re planning a lot of awesome stuff and we’ve decided on our top ten picks for our Free Comics. We tried to pick some big industry titles as well as some smaller press items and to choose some more all ages stuff along with more adult fare. Basically we were going for some diversity in addition to popularity. We made the bold decision to dump Superman in exchange for Disney Fairies : Tinker Bell because the Fairy books do pretty well here AND our local comic book store will have the Superman issue for sure. Additionally, already have a DC title with DC Nation so there you go. What do you think? Are there any other titles you would choose instead?

As I discussed in the post, Circ Schemes! Bringing it to the streets., one of my plans for 2013 was to being circ services out to public and community events. The best part about this particular scheme is how it improves and effects so many different elements of our library. Through the process of getting the Instant Circ Desk from a fevered dream to a Thing That Could Happen, I was able to simplify a complicated work process for my staff! And the Instant Circ Desk will (hopefully) increase circulation stats and increase the number of library card holders by marketing our collections to specific community groups AND signing people up for cards where they already are! It’s pretty exciting!

So as you would imagine, I was pretty jazzed to take the Instant Circ Desk on a test run at an off-site community event this week! One of my co-workers was heading out to the Isabella County Commission on Aging to do an iPad presentation to a group of seniors and I asked if I could tag along. Since this was the trial run, I went all out in preparation. I agonized about the small themed collection that I would bring with me. We only had four iPad specific books, so I also grabbed any relevant computer related books, a bunch of Steve Jobs biographies and several of our or back issues of Wired magazine. I’d be using one of the library’s circulating Mac laptops as my circ station so I got one of our IT interns to install Google Earth on there so I could see if anybody was in our district, PER THE SCHEME. Luckily the whole lot fit in a medium sized box.

There was one small hitch in my plan, it being that we didn’t have a receipt printer I could take with me off-site. And who wants to bring a danged receipt printer? But if we circ’d any items, we’d want to print the due date somewhere. So WHAT DO? Well I decided to go old school to solve this problem and I created a few simple bookmarks where I could stamp the due date and stick them in the books.

Once I got all of that figured out, I had almost everything I needed. I also made sure to take all of the usual marketing and informational accoutrement; Computer Class schedules, One-on-One appointment slips, Policy brochures that we give out with new cards and our guides on how to download Overdrive to Apple products. I was SO prepared. Possibly over prepared but you can never be too sure during your first time out!

Thankfully, when we got to the Commission on Aging they had a table in the back of the room that I could take over with my circ scheming. I had lots of room to display some items and put up a shelf for all of the items I brought with me!

The turnout at the Commission on Aging was great! We had a full house and Judy had a lot of good questions. I was able to sign four people up with new library cards after the program and I was able to renew five expired cards on-site! Everybody who was interested in getting a card or renewing was excited about using our Overdrive eBook collection on their iPads, so that was awesome. Unfortunately nobody wanted to check anything out so my perfectly selected collection was just for show BUT now that I think about it, since it was an iPad demo it would make more sense that people are more interested in Overdrive vs. checking out some books at that moment.

THINGS I LEARNED

• Don’t bring such a large collection with me! This will need more experimentation at different kinds of events to really see what to expect from the material circulation side of the process, but I do know that I brought too much stuff with me for THAT event. Anything where kids and parents would be involved, I could probably get a bunch of stuff circ’d out but that is to be seen!
• Truncate the Library Card signup. Even though I simplified the process with my Google Earth polygon, the library card signup is never super quick no matter where you go. So I had people fill out the applications, checked to make sure everything was on there, filled out the minimum required info (Name, Barcode & Expiration Date) and gave them their card. Once I got back to my office, I pulled out all the apps and completed the registration process completely. That worked just fine and I can’t foresee any big problems stemming from that if you already checked if they were in District & that the app was filled in properly.
• Prepare for some Awkward Convos. I had to inform some people that they weren’t in our district. That’s always awkward but it’s super awkward when you’re on-site somewhere. Maybe it’s because you’re not in The Library, surrounded by library things, so when you have to deliver bad news sitting at a folding table it seems extra weird. HOWEVER I had some good conversations with people about what being “In-District” means and why they weren’t in our district (Millage vote) and what they could do to get back in our district if they wanted to.
• Dealing With Problems On-Site. Luckily I didn’t have to deal with this but I was worried it might happen. I was worried somebody would try to circ something and they owed money in fines. Technically I COULD take money and deal with fines with our ILS but did I want to? That could potentially be a whole bag of rattlesnakes if I send staff people off with a money box. Thankfully, we do have the option for people to pay for their fines with a credit card via our website. So if worse came to worse, we could do it that way and I wouldn’t have to worry about cash transactions. This is something I’ll have to mull over for a while.
• All in the Family: Bring in Reference. Several people requested that I helped them download the Overdrive app while I was at the circ desk, which I was happy to do. However that wasn’t why I was there and if someone wanted to get a card while I was helping someone download the app, I’m kind of defeating the purpose of mobile circ. So why not bring a reference person with me next time to answer questions? Since the Instant Circ Desk can be just as much about sharing information about the library as it is about checking out and getting cards, having another person would really help. It would depend on the size of the venue to see if that is possible but it’s something I’d want to pursue.

All in all, I consider the Instant Circ Desk’s maiden voyage to be a success! The coordinator at the Commission on Aging LOVED that we brought the circ desk with us to the presentation and she even updated her card too! I look forward to bringing it to other community events this year, expecially the summer events and events out in our branch communities. I’ll keep you updated!

In addition to my role as Head of Circulation, I am also responsible for helping to manage the library’s outreach efforts. If you know me then you know that I always have one or twelve projects brewing at the same time. Some people call it strategic planning but I prefer to think of them as schemes, it’s more fun that way. One scheme I’ve been cooking up ever since I started at CRDL in July is bringing the circ desk outside of the building and doing circ related tasks at community events. Once the idea was planted in my mind, I had to think what I would need for that to actually happen. What are the roadblocks that keep it from being a viable service? And what can we do to destroy those road blocks? At the time, I identified three particular roadblocks that made this project difficult:

1. Making the ILS mobile
2. Making library signup quicker and easier
3. Securing internet access at every off-site location

Luckily for me, the first roadblock worked itself out. My library uses The Library Corporation (TLC) for our ILS and in December we switched over from the desktop ILS to their web ILS because that is what they plan to support from here on out. Huzzah for me because we can now access our ILS from any internet browser, provided that we had the long and crazy URL bookmarked somewhere. This makes it much easier to go off-site because now I can grab any of our library’s laptops, a barcode scanner and I’ll be good to go.

The second roadblock took a bit of doing. The reason why library card signup was cumbersome is because our district is not very cut and dry. We include specific townships and the Mt. Pleasant School district and the only way to tell if someone was in our district was to check the Isabella County Land Records Portal. Well, if you live in an apartment complex then your address wouldn’t be in there because you’re not paying the property tax, your landlord is. And not every address could be found in the Portal, so then we would have to resort to the American Fact Finder through the US Census to see what school district they were in. Could you then imagine going through this whole process only to find out you’re not even in our district? Needless to say this was pretty stressful. And if we were going to be off-site somewhere, having a looooong wait every time someone signed up for a card wasn’t going to work. If we could simply the process of finding out whether someone was in the district, not only could we go off-site but we would be increasing quality of life for the entire circ department in general! Huzzah!

I came up with the solution to this problem by speaking to a geography professor at Central Michigan University. I asked him if it were possible to overlay a map of our district onto Google Maps, so we could search for an address and the cursor would either land within the district boundaries or outside of the district boundaries. I thought that this would be a very complicated process involving APIs and lots of coding and JAVA or something. But he said it was actually very simple to do and that he would just create a polygon for us that could be opened in Google Earth. And so he did!

(click on pic to embiggen)

Now all we need is to use Google Earth to search for an address and it pops up either outside of the red border or inside the red border. Easy peezy, lemon squeezy! In case you were wondering, those nice clean squares are township borders and the CRAY squiggly borders belong to the school district.

I haven’t resolved the third roadblock yet but I do know that would involve getting our IT Department to invest in a mobile hotspot for the library so that we can operate off-site where there is no open wi-fi available. That will be my next task on the road to complete Off-Site Circ Domination! In my next installment, “Instant Circ, just add LaLonde” I will tell you all how my first trial run of the Off-Site Circ Desk goes! We’ll be heading to the Isabella County Commission on Aging to do an iPad presentation and I’m tagging along to put my scheme into motion! See you then!

Today, we are going to talk about technology and representation. But more than that we’re going to talk about what technology represents and who our profession seems to value. To start: I’m an Access Services Librarian and before then I was a Museum Librarian and an IT intern. I really feel like technology is a key to enhance how we access library resources, circulation of materials, outreach, programming and several other facets of the library. Unfortunately, our professional organizations seem to forget that technology is only one tool in our library arsenal and it’s often held on a pedestal over “traditional” services like youth services, reference and programming.

When Miss Julie wrote her blog post “ego, thy name is librarianship” a lot of the points really resonated with me. She illustrated why I often felt frustrated at our professional organizations, why they decided to give awards and accolades to people who wrote about libraries without real practical applications. Or worse yet, people who don’t seem to do anything besides develop marketing gimmicks to other librarians. She also points out Youth Services is not seen as a progressive field if it’s acknowledged at all, unless tech is somehow tied into it. And so Youth Services librarians are confined to their YS Ghettos, doing it for themselves while our professional orgs ignore them for the razzle dazzle.

Which brings me to Bobbi Newman’s reaction post. I think it really misses the mark on what Julie was talking about and trying to say about how our profession values different segments of the field. Bobbi’s post was predicated on the idea that Julie was saying “HOW DO I GET ASKED TO BE A SPEAKER?” which is incorrect. Julie’s frustrations (along with many other librarians) are rooted in the idea that traditional services are seen as “less than” compared to tech services and those who do traditional services are less deserving of the innovator title. The fact that Youth Services librarians are rarely put on the same level as librarians touting tech is not because YS librarians don’t present at enough conferences or they don’t write enough blog posts, it’s because our profession has decided they’re a relic when they’re actually the heart of public library services.

Julie also brings up the point that librarianship tends to put more value on the opinions and antics of male librarians, over the work of female librarians. I would certainly agree and I would add that our professional obsession with everything tech has a good deal with that. Technology has long been seen as a “Man’s World” while conversely, the librarian role has been “female dominated”. Technology and tech services are automatically given greater value over the traditional library services, i.e. working with children, helping people on a one-on-one basis and other nurturing and feminine coded services. Even though librarianship is “female dominated” we are no stranger to the patriarchy. Men are over represented in administration roles across the board and their voice is louder in professional development roles. How many times have male librarians spoken over female librarians on subjects they have no practical experience in? How many of those men are considered to be “The Experts” on subjects in the profession when there are hundreds of female librarians who have the same experience or more? And how many of those men are given awards & speaking engagements while the people doing the hard work on the ground are expected to consider them leaders in the field?

This isn’t about “WAH! I WANT ATTENTION TOO!” it’s about a particular element of our profession being over-represented and others being under valued because of some misguided notion of relevance. This is a systemic issue within librarianship and unlike what Bobbi says, it can’t be solved by paying your own way to conferences. We have to really take stock and take a good hard look at what kinds of things we are putting value on and which things we are tossing to the side. People are out there writing about their experiences and we need to be shining the spotlight on them. Personally, I refuse to attend any workshop or keynote by someone who doesn’t do any of the things they’re going to talk about. I will no longer read blogs by people who have no practical experience in what they write about, opting instead to seek out those who do. And I plan on celebrating hard working women in the profession and trying to support them whenever I can, Leslie Knope-style. I invite you to do the same.

When I moved from the Detroit area to Mt. Pleasant, I had to make a couple of adjustments. Generally, I’m pretty content wherever. I mean, I can be on the internet in any place (provided that there IS internet). But one of the things I DO really miss is the different restaurants in the Detroit area, so I’m forced to try and make facsimile some stuff at home. This time around I was really craving some butter chicken from Ashoka Indian Cuisine in Troy but what was one to do?! I’ve tried a million different iterations and nothing really came close but recently I hit on a recipe that seems to do the trick AND it’s dairy free! And it’s good enough to put on everything, not just rice and chicken. I’m talking vegetables, pasta, WHATEVER you want. I call it Tasty Yum Yum Sauce because that’s exactly what it is.
INGREDIENTS

1 TBS of Earth Balance
1/2 Red Onion, diced
5 small cloves of garlic, minced
10-12 button mushrooms, chopped
1 TSP red crushed pepper powder
1 TSP chili powder
1 TBS Franks Red Hot Sauce
1 TSP black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes
1 13.66 oz can of Coconut Milk
Melt the Earth Balance in a medium sized pot over medium heat. Throw in the onion, garlic and a pinch of salt , cook until onions are translucent. Throw in the mushrooms and another pinch of salt, and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the can of tomatoes, whole and with the juice. Add the spices and Franks (add more or less spice to your tastes, this is about a medium heat). Stir it all together and turn it to high to bring it to a boil. Put a lid on it and then turn down to medium. Cook for 10 minutes.

Remove lid and chop up the tomatoes in the pot with a spatula into smaller pieces. Add the bay leaf. Turn it down to Medium Low and cook for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes, open the can of coconut milk and drain out the coconut water. Add the coconut cream to the pot and stir well. Carefully put the entire pot into a blender (or do half and half, depending on the size of your blender) and blend on high until everything is smooth. And there you go!

The sauce is best the next day, like most tomato sauces. I put mine into a quart sized mason jar and add it to rice or vegetables or whatever as needed. GO FORTH and make it!

So now I’m well entrenched in the Public Library world as the head of the Circulation Department, as well as a collection development team member and volunteer program manager. Several different hats are being worn at once. The first couple of months were mostly learning and settling into the various positions. Now I’m at the point where I have several schemes brewing. I say schemes in the nicest way because schemes sounds more fun than STRATEGIC PLANS FOR GROWTH or whatever.

As head of Circ, I do many general management type things but I’m also concentrated focused on three main goals: Increasing Circulation of Items, Increasing the number of Library Card holders in our district and Streamlining Circ processes to make things simpler for my pages to do the best they can. One of the schemes I thought of for increasing circulation would be to do a bit of marketing and promotion from the Circ Desk. Since I am the Head of Circ, one of my SUPREME POWERS is the ability to implement Fine Forgiveness. I can’t exactly wipe everyone’s overdue fines away and I wouldn’t want to do that anyway, BUT it can be a nice “prize” for some Circ Specific marketing.

I had the idea that it would be cool to do special promotions on our Facebook page for our followers. On a random day we would send out a message to our followers that gave them secret instructions they could use to get a nominal Fine Forgiveness waive. People would pay more attention to the Facebook feed and (hopefully) Circ more items because they had to come to the library circ desk to redeem the waive. There were several things I thought about after I had this idea. One would have to make it clear that the Fine Forgiveness must be for overdue fines only because we can’t take a dollar off from a lost item. Also, you would have to communicate with your staff, including all of the staff at the branches about what was going on. So this idea kind of sat in the back of my brain for a couple of weeks until…

We did it! It was a sunny Friday morning. It was about an hour before the library was opening, the Detroit Tigers had beat the Yankees to go on to the World Series and everybody was feeling really good. I had a Baseball display going on in the Children’s area and I was getting ready for the opening reference shift when I thought, “We should do something for the Tigers going to the World Series. Let’s do that Facebook thing!” So I made several calls down to Marketing and our Marketing person was all about it, so I then made several calls to our Branches telling them the plan and how it would work. Then I wrote a note on our Staff Intranet about it and THEN I told my circ staff about what was going to happen, including a note about the details at the circ desk. Only then did I post the thing to Facebook, and HERE IT IS!

Our marketing person was enthused about it and encouraged me to do similar things in the future. I WILL, my man. I will.

I love Aquaman now. Truthfully, I never really thought about him much before I met Geoff Johns but he described it so well that I HAD to check it out. And I’m glad that I did. I bought “The Trench, Vol. 1″ from my local comic book store “Hall of Heroes” and it chronicled the first 6 issues of the relaunched Aquaman. I loved how meta it was. Aquaman really had to live in a world where everyone made fun of him for what they THOUGHT were his super dumb powers. Turns out, people don’t know what they’re talking about! Aquaman can do a lot of stuff and his background story is interesting as heck!

I felt particularly attached to Aquaman because I recognize the struggle of being understood but from the POV of a librarian. Everyone has these preconceived notions of what you do all the while you’re helping people every day. It gets annoying after a while and you learn to just ignore it and keep on keepin on. Which is what Aquaman does! I feel you Aquaman! I feel your feels!

Anyway, I wrote a short review about “The Trench, Vol. 1″ for my library’s blog. Check it out, if you’re so interested!