I have decided to participate in library day in the life.

I am the Branch Services Librarian at an eight branch public library service. In the main I am responsible for managing the staff/staffing and all the work that goes along with 54 staff at the seven branch libraries (not the Central Library-the library manager looks after that).

There is about 160k residents in the immediate local government area and about 320k residents in the region.
#libday5
So far this week I have completed three staff performance reviews, which are quite involved, particularly coming up with realistic, achievable and affordable training and performance objectives.

On Monday a local school teacher from a school in an extremely poor suburb approached the library service near the school and spoke with the branch librarian about a proposal to run pre-school story time in the school hall.  Unfortunately after discussions at a senior staff meeting we couldn’t go ahead with the proposal and I had the unpleasant job of delivering the disappointing outcome.

Today I met with a branch librarian to catch up with the particular challenging library where she works.  Yesterday two young sisters were in the library crying because their dad had gone to jail-imagine the librarian struggling with the stress of speaking to the children.  The good news is the librarian was able to tell the children there is a counsellor they can talk to at the community centre which is close to the library.

This afternoon (Wednesday) I had a meeting with the library manager, lately we are discussing staffing strategies all the time, trying to find ways to reduce staff wages budget so that we have money to purchase resources-it is a constant concern.  It takes up so much time working out strategies to best manage human resources and deliver a quality service.

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Tomorrow is the monthly Branch librarian’s meeting – a meeting of all the librarians that manage the branches plus the Outreach, Audiovisual, Children’s and Information Services Librarian’s.  The meeting will discuss new fees and charges, projects, staffing, staffing, staffing. occupational health and safety.  The staff are concerned/stressed about Monday next week when the library has to start charging customers to use the internet. The anticipation is that customers will be upset/angry and take it out on the front line staff-I hope the concerns are misplaced.

Some other things I’ve done so far this week:
read 11 job applications as an independent panel member for a truck driver position.  The interviews are next week
Delivered a report about why a small branch library should stay open
For the rest of the week I have more staff performance reviews, branch librarian’s meeting , plus the day-to-day operations of the library.