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[This year's December Days are categorized! Specifically: "Things I should have learned in library school, had (I/they) been paying attention. But I can make that out of just about anything you'd like to know about library school or the library profession, so if you have suggestions, I'll happily take them.]
One of the better things that you can do with your newfound powers, should someone decide to give you the more managerial set, is to make sure the people who don't have your powers are able to exercise their creative skills to the fullest. While I've not been given anything that actually allows me to tell people to work on their strengths in addition to their duties at the library, I do have the power to generate programming under my abilities as a youth services librarian. I have used that power ever since I arrived on the scene, full of new ideas about things that libraries could do that would make them more relevant to their audiences. And also cribbing pretty heavily from programming that I had seen work well on my directed field experience, because optimism.
So, the people who work desk as paraprofessionals and pages are often possessed of some seriously useful skills, whether language translation, crafting and needlework, or an encyclopedic knowledge of a genre or format that you are lacking in. Since librarians are all about using systems for maximum effect, the skills of the people you work with should be able to be put to use. There are more than a few library systems that do not do this, or do not provide the necessary schedule flexibility to make this happen, insisting that the librarian learn and do the skill themselves, rather than tapping the expertise present.
I have since learned in my intervening years that a request coming from someone not possessed of the necessary clearance to suggest programming is unlikely to get anything through, and even those that do have to be able to convince people that it's a good idea and within the stated goals of the library. However, if the request comes from someone who does, then it's a lot easier to recruit someone to help you out in that regard as the second (or more) person that you need to make sure there aren't too many kids in the program for this librarian to handle by themselves.
And thus, the agreement is born. If people want to do programming that would be of interest to the community of kids or teens in our at, but they're not at a classification where they can suggest it themselves and get it passed through, I will act as if it is my idea when pitching it and make sure that this other person is recruited on to help to it, should it go through. So long as they keep me in the loop about everything, I can keep them from being called to the carpet for doing things that are not part of their assigned work. This agreement is really useful in the preliminary stages of a project, where you need to do research and feel out if there are community partners that can be recruited into helping or. If the other person has contacts in those communities, it's easier for them to work their leads than for me to try and build those relationships as an outsider. If they know how to make it be a program that isn't immediately exposed as being done by a n00b, that's even better. The space of possible things expands exponentially when the scope of skills is known. But it still has to come from me, because programming is in my job description and it isn't in theirs.
Library school teaches us to find and use systems to our advantage, but it often focuses on the idea that those systems are mechanical or electronic. There are more than enough people systems that have to be navigated in addition to these that not getting a crash course on unleashing your inner Slytherin hurts librarians.
Each person should be able to use their skills to the most, if we know what we're doing. And sometimes that means finding the spots where the boundaries are just soft enough that you can sneak someone else in to make the whole thing better.
One of the better things that you can do with your newfound powers, should someone decide to give you the more managerial set, is to make sure the people who don't have your powers are able to exercise their creative skills to the fullest. While I've not been given anything that actually allows me to tell people to work on their strengths in addition to their duties at the library, I do have the power to generate programming under my abilities as a youth services librarian. I have used that power ever since I arrived on the scene, full of new ideas about things that libraries could do that would make them more relevant to their audiences. And also cribbing pretty heavily from programming that I had seen work well on my directed field experience, because optimism.
So, the people who work desk as paraprofessionals and pages are often possessed of some seriously useful skills, whether language translation, crafting and needlework, or an encyclopedic knowledge of a genre or format that you are lacking in. Since librarians are all about using systems for maximum effect, the skills of the people you work with should be able to be put to use. There are more than a few library systems that do not do this, or do not provide the necessary schedule flexibility to make this happen, insisting that the librarian learn and do the skill themselves, rather than tapping the expertise present.
I have since learned in my intervening years that a request coming from someone not possessed of the necessary clearance to suggest programming is unlikely to get anything through, and even those that do have to be able to convince people that it's a good idea and within the stated goals of the library. However, if the request comes from someone who does, then it's a lot easier to recruit someone to help you out in that regard as the second (or more) person that you need to make sure there aren't too many kids in the program for this librarian to handle by themselves.
And thus, the agreement is born. If people want to do programming that would be of interest to the community of kids or teens in our at, but they're not at a classification where they can suggest it themselves and get it passed through, I will act as if it is my idea when pitching it and make sure that this other person is recruited on to help to it, should it go through. So long as they keep me in the loop about everything, I can keep them from being called to the carpet for doing things that are not part of their assigned work. This agreement is really useful in the preliminary stages of a project, where you need to do research and feel out if there are community partners that can be recruited into helping or. If the other person has contacts in those communities, it's easier for them to work their leads than for me to try and build those relationships as an outsider. If they know how to make it be a program that isn't immediately exposed as being done by a n00b, that's even better. The space of possible things expands exponentially when the scope of skills is known. But it still has to come from me, because programming is in my job description and it isn't in theirs.
Library school teaches us to find and use systems to our advantage, but it often focuses on the idea that those systems are mechanical or electronic. There are more than enough people systems that have to be navigated in addition to these that not getting a crash course on unleashing your inner Slytherin hurts librarians.
Each person should be able to use their skills to the most, if we know what we're doing. And sometimes that means finding the spots where the boundaries are just soft enough that you can sneak someone else in to make the whole thing better.
