Project Compass Adds Fuel To EZ Fire

About a month ago I attended a program called Project Compass at the Boynton Beach City Library. Below I will post a brief description of this program and some ideas I gathered there. One thing that I have decided to do for the future is more programming "sponsored" by the Empowerment Zone. Ted Kramer of the Small Business Development Center presented on his organizations programs and I subsequently contacted him to have them do several programs at our library. I also reached out to Austin who is spending the off season in Connecticut and New York. He agreed to do a series of events for the Empowerment Zone. So, as of now there are 6 future programs scheduled for the EZ!!! Two on small business development and entrepreneurship, and four on job searching/resume creation. I will post more briefly on Austin's and the SBDC programs.

Here are my abridged notes on Project Compass:

Project Compass

What are the program requirements?

* Participants will attend a face-to-face training session that covers job-seeker information, personal financial skills, and resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs. At the session, participants will exchange ideas, information, and resources. They will then share this information with their colleagues and library administration.

* Participants are required to take part in four evaluations: a pre-workshop assessment, follow-up assessments three weeks and then three months after the workshop, and a final evaluation upon completion of Project Compass.

• Participants will identify and implement at least one workforce recovery activity in their local communities by October 2011.

• Participants must also participate in an online follow-up session in July 2011 to discuss their progress on their workforce recovery activities.


Possible Project Compass Activities:

Job Fair at our library
Specific program or help for veterans

Other ideas:

Create a checklist with help for the recently unemployed
• File for unemployment
• Places with help for paying utilities, etc.
• Update your resume
• Workforce Alliance contact info

Create a special section/collection of all career guidance books, resume and CV books, and cover letter books. Place the collection near the reference desk.

Create a survey to evaluate our constituency – difference between class takers and EZ patrons.

Networking event at our library, or business card exchange.

Poster Session Display FLA 2011

Here are two pictures from my Poster Session presentation at the FLA Annual Conference a few weeks ago in Orlando. Enjoy!

FLA 2011

I got back from the Florida Library Association Annual Conference in Orlando Friday afternoon. I was busy taking advantage of the many great programs, exhibits and network opportunities and did not have much of an opportunity to blog while there.

So these are the highlights in no particular order for now:

I met many people including Roberta Stevens current President of the American Library Association. I was volunteering for the Leadership Voices Project and Gene, director from Palm Harbor, asked me to roam around and try to get people to come over and participate. I was talking to Betty Sammis from the North Palm Beach Library when I saw Roberta out of the corner of my eye talking to a few folks. I waited patiently for their conversation to end and then I asked her to participate in the Leadership Voices Project. While I was walking her over I made sure to tell her about my poster session on the Empowerment Zone that was scheduled for Friday. I also managed to tell her about the EZ, Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute, and the Palm Beach County Library Association (PBCLA). We exchanged cards and then she recorded her take on leadership.

After that I talked to David Lankes who gave the key note speech at the Opening Session. Check out his blog here. His speech was awesome and really re-engerized many in the audience including myself. He basically called for librarians to be more radical and I highly recommend listening to the speech on his blog. I asked him to participate in Leadership Voices and told him about PBCLA since he would be a great guest speaker for us.

On Thursday I bumped into Vickie Joslin Library Supervisor of the Lake Worth Public Library and she told me that the library is safe for now. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI have been an advocate for the library lately (along with a lot of other librarians across the County and State) and the City Commission rejected the City Manager's proposal to gut the library budget. This was great news and followed the other great news that the State decided to fund libraries to the level requested plus 100K over what they gave libraries last year.

Friday was my poster session and I presented on the Empowerment Zone. I was directly next to Matthew Moyer who writes articles for Library Journal on music in libraries. He works for the Jacksonville Public Library and we talked about cool music like The Knife and Royal Trux. I had a little over twenty people visit my poster session and after an hour I was pretty talked out. I made sure to give everybody handouts in case they had any questions. A few people mentioned that they would pass the information on since their library could use a similar program. This was an excellent opportunity to talk about my program and represent my library in a positive way.

I was honored to be recognized at the Opening Session, along with the other hardworking members of the FLA Public Relations Committee. See what we accomplished! Snapshot Day 2011! We will be conducting another Snapshot Day this year and Salena Coller is our new chair.

Now getting back to work and catching up on emails, interlibrary loans, the EZ, and PBCLA has made me very busy, but I plan on posting another blog update soon about what I learned at the FLA Sessions last week.

Library Journal ILS Survey

Recently I was reading the last issue of Library Journal. As a reference librarian I have a decent amount of time that I can devote to library periodicals and while I will admit besides resident curmudgeon, and editor John Berry, I don't really care for LJ. But, this issue has a survey of librarians concerning their Integrated Library Systems - or ILS. I was very curious to see how Sirsi stacked up since I use it in my library and really can't stand the clunky, non-intuitive nature of it. I was not surprised to see it rank at the bottom of most of the surveys. I would really like to meet the 36% of librarians who would recommend SirsiDynix Symphony to a colleague and ask them "Why? Why would you submit anybody to the pure torture that is Symphony?" The advanced searching function is terrible, I have to double check every search since I don't trust the search mechanism, and it crashes on me constantly. Now some of this could be a library catalogers fault, and some could be blamed on the servers, but I have talked to other librarians and they agree that Symphony is terrible. Which is why Miami Dade recently switched to Polaris and Alachua County is considering a switch.

Here is the article...

One-on-One Career Help in EZ Blows Up

Yesterday was the third segment of what has turned out to be a very popular addition to the Empowerment Zone. About a month ago I wrote about how the EZ had partnered with a volunteer named Austin with 44 years of HR experience. Austin has been meeting with patrons one-on-one to offer resume, interview, and career advice. Unfortunately he will be headed back up North in a few weeks since he is a snowbird.

What really set off the one-on-one sessions was a Sunday article in the SunSentinel that appeared on the front page of the Community section. We have received at least 20 phone calls since the article was printed, and a handful of email inquiries. I have had to turn a few people down since there is not enough time slots available for Austin to meet with people. I have been reminding people that Austin is an unpaid volunteer, who is retired, in hopes that they will go easy on him. Since this partnership has been so well received we will be looking for a few more volunteers to offer the same service for the off season until Austin returns in the Fall. Here is a link to a previous article about this program http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/delray-beach/fl-drf-career-0319-20110316,0,2419985.story

Virtual Reference

I might not have time today to get to this next topic today, since I am currently actually staffing a virtual reference service, but today on the way to work I was thinking about my experiences last night with VR and have concluded that VR actually makes our patrons lazier. Instead of coming into the library to do real research - like I had to in college and grad school - they can now go online and ask librarians questions through email, text, and chat. I always thought that part of the assignment was actually doing the research yourself, but every week I get a few people who are just trying to get easy answers without spending any effort. I will write more on this later. Now off to experiment with mailchimp...

Overdue Books

I have worked at two fairly different public libraries - one a large county system, and the other a medium sized stand alone library. At both libraries there are problems concerning overdue books. My question is when does a book move from being merely "overdue" to being labeled stolen? 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, a decade? Maybe never, since we public libraries are so forgiving and don't want to associate ourselves with bill collectors god forbid we send a bill to someone on a fixed income, or an old lady who might call the local news. Instead we leave the book status as "overdue" when we know that there is a very small likelihood of the library ever reclaiming the book. This then brings up another important question - to use, or not use a collection agency?

Advocacy

I have always been an advocate of various endeavors - mostly political, but mostly not too personal. I have some pretty strong political opinions and sign petitions online on a pretty much daily basis. I also write emails to my local commissioners, mayor, and city manager on a weekly basis. Last fall I got involved with a grass roots campaign to help get two commissioners elected in my city of Lake Worth. The older I get the more passionate I seem to be getting when it comes to both local, state, and national issues. I have gravitated from just signing form letters, and petitions, to actually walking the streets of my City to campaign for candidates. And this past weekend I took it a step further by sending out a plea for help for the Lake Worth Public Library. I sent an email to both the Florida Library Association listserv and the Palm Beach County Library Association Listserv. Many people emailed me to offer support and encouragement and it was very appreciated. Besides this email to the listservs, I also sent a more personal email to the city commission, mayor, and city manager. I have copy and pasted both messages below. The more libraries get attacked - and it now seems to be a yearly thing - the more proactive those of us who care about them need to be.

Letter to the FLA and PBCLA listservs:

Good afternoon Library Community of Florida,

The Lake Worth Public Library needs your support. The Lake Worth City Manager is proposing drastic cuts to the Lake Worth Public Library and will be meeting with the City Commission this Monday (3/21) at 5pm to discuss, and possibly implement, these cuts. The City Manager is suggesting that the library staff needs to be cut from 7 full time employees to 1 full time employee and adding an additional 2 part time employees. She intends to run the library with 1 full time staff member and 4 part time employees. She is also proposing to cut the hours the library is open from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week. The City Manager believes that this minimal staff can maintain the library with the additional help of volunteers. This proposal comes in the middle of a budget year that has already been approved by the City Commission. I encourage those of you who value libraries to contact the Mayor, City Commission, and City Manager of Lake Worth, to show your support for the Lake Worth Public Library. Their contact information can be found below.

Mayor – Rene Varela - rvarela@lakeworth.org / Phone: 561-586-1730

City Commission:

Suzanne Mulvehill, Vice-Mayor – smulvehill@lakeworth.org / Phone: 561-586-1734

Jo-Ann Golden – jgolden@lakeworth.org / Phone: 561-586-1730

Scott Maxwell – smaxwell@lakeworth.org / Phone: 561-586-1730

Christopher McVoy – cmcvoy@lakeworth.org / Phone: 561-586-1730

City Manager – Susan Stanton – sstanton@lakeworth.org / Phone: 561-586-1630

Lake Worth City Hall is located at 7 North Dixie Highway, near downtown Lake Worth. Public Comments are allowed at the meeting on Monday.

Attached is a copy of the proposed budget cuts. The part about the library is on page 7.

Brian R. Smith

(Member - Lake Worth Library Advisory Board)
Reference/Interlibrary Loan Librarian
Delray Beach Public Library
100 W. Atlantic Ave.
Delray Beach, FL 33444
(561) 819-6405

Letter to City of Lake Worth officials:

Good morning City of Lake Worth officials,

I took the time this weekend to read the proposed staffing cuts to our City and I honestly don't know where to begin. The level of service we citizens already receive is poor in my estimation and I can only imagine it will get worse with less staff. As a librarian I am especially concerned with the proposed cuts to the library. I have been a professional librarian in public libraries for close to 5 years and you can not run a library with volunteers. It is not possible and not recommended by anybody in the profession. Even getting volunteers to show up for routine tasks such as shelving books is difficult. It is important that you know that a cut in hours from 40 to 30 per week eliminates any state aid the library may receive in the future, either directly or indirectly (see Florida Statute, Chapter 257.17 (2a)). The library is now only open minimally 5 days a week for 40 hours, and this already makes it difficult for citizens to use the services provided. Less hours means less opportunity for families, the unemployed, entrepreneurs, and everybody else who relies on the library for empowerment. I strongly urge you to maintain the current level of funding to the library and if anything increase the staffing and increase the hours the library is open. I plan on speaking tonight at your meeting more on this. I believe that this proposed cut of 70 employees could be the death blow to the City. I have invested too much in my neighborhood, my home, and my City, to let Lake Worth die and I will go down fighting. I am also extremely offended that both the Library Advisory Board and the Library Supervisor were not consulted before proposing these cuts. I have taken the time to inform both the Palm Beach and State library community of these matters.

Sincerely, Brian

Brian R. Smith
City of Lake Worth Library Advisory Board Member
Mango Groves Neighborhood Association Board Member
Vice-President/President-Elect Palm Beach County Library Association
Florida Library Association Public Relations Committee Member
My Address
My Phone Number

The Gloves Come Off

This past week a few things have happened to motivate me into making this blog more than just positive news about the Empowerment Zone, other Delray Beach PL events, or my various library related adventures. I have been thinking a lot about how to get my name out there more since the library world has become ultra-competitive lately and I know that locally I am probably well recognized, but nationally not so much. I have been a busy member of the PR Committee for the Florida Library Association the past year and Snapshot Day definitely got a lot of us statewide recognition. Not to mention I graduated from the Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute which allowed me to create the EZ in the first place, and to partake in a whole lot of networking. On top of these efforts a few weeks ago I was voted in as President-Elect of the Palm Beach County Library Association. Regardless of these combined accomplishments, while perusing the latest Library Journal I saw a colleague of mine from graduate school at Wayne State University. He had been named a Mover and Shaker. This colleague was no slacker in library school, but I am definitely more passionate and driven than them, which makes me wonder what do I need to do to get more name recognition?

Added to reading about this colleague my proposal to do a program on the EZ at this year's FLA conference was recently rejected. That either means that the EZ is really not all that, I am not well enough known, or the other entries were really awesome. If the first two are true then I have some work to do. Also, I applied late last year for an ALA New Member's Roundtable travel scholarship. This scholarship is stated as being based on librarian prowess and believe me I talked up ALL of my accomplishments. There were around 75 applicants and they gave out 3 scholarships. I was not chosen. Which again makes me wonder - what do I need to do to make people think of me amongst the best and brightest librarians not just in Palm Beach County and Florida, but the nation?

That is why the gloves will be coming off and I will now be talking about more controversial topics on my blog. I will of course strive to be professional and make sure that I am not going out of my way to offend anyone. It is fairly certain people won't agree with all of my viewpoints, but I hope to open a dialogue, and showcase my ability to reason and discuss important library related issues. My main goals will be to engage librarians and library advocates in a discussion of relevant and current library topics. And to blow off some steam of course. What I won't do is call people out, or tear down without discussing how to build up. Criticism is fine, but if you don't plan on improving things then you have no right complaining in the first place.

Empowerment Zone To Be Showcased at FLA 2011!!!!

It is official, the Empowerment Zone will be on display at the FLA Annual Conference 2011 in Orlando. I aimed high for an entire program on the EZ, but fell short, and instead I will be doing a Poster Session on the EZ. I will use this time to talk up the EZ, network, and hopefully gather some new ideas.

The EZ now has a dedicated volunteer to help out with resumes and interviewing. I created a sign up sheet for this and this occurs every Monday from 9-12pm in the EZ. My volunteer is a retired HR executive with over 40 years of experience in NYC. The EZ will also be changing hours (again) starting in April. Due to low usage on Monday mornings the EZ will be moved to 1-4:30pm just like Thursdays. I hope that this boosts the usage of the EZ.

More specific news on FLA 2011 to follow...

Thursdays Jump Off in EZ!!!

As expected Thursdays are jumping off after I made the switch from 9-12pm to 1-4:30pm. Last Thursday 11 patrons showed up to use the Empowerment Zone. This is close to the highest number of users for a single day yet. We managed to take some pictures and use them for the Florida Library Association's Snapshot Day as well. It is kind of ironic that we were so busy since earlier in the week a patron came up to the desk and complained that we had made the switch from mornings to afternoons. I wasn't there when he complained, but the first thing I thought was, "where have you been all of the Thursday mornings?"! Seriously, we were lucky to have 3 or 4 people show up on Thursday mornings, and after only 3 afternoons, we are up over my goal of 10 patrons each Thursday afternoon. Hopefully this momentum will be maintained, but as I sit here typing this there is only 1 patron in so far on a Monday morning, which used to be our busiest day. Who knows?

First Thursday Afternoon for Empowerment Zone

Last Thursday, January 6th, was the first ever afternoon time for the Empowerment Zone. Given how busy we were on the public computers the previous Thursday afternoon, I was expecting a large group of patrons to use the EZ. Mother Nature had other plans, and right before 1pm there was a huge thunderstorm with wind and rain gusts. The library is always slower when it is raining, or cold out, and this proved true again on Thursday. Only about half of the public access computers were in use, and the EZ only had 3 users from 1-4:30pm. Hopefully the weather is more patron friendly next week, and more patrons come to use the EZ. One of the positive outcomes was that only one person showed up at 9am and wanted to use the EZ, which hopefully means the patrons took notice of the time change. More to follow...