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...

Long Long Long Time No Blog

It has been quite some time since ink has been spilled on the Delray Beach Public Library Empowerment Zone. Things have gone routine with the EZ and with no "new" news, creativity for this blog has been stifled. But, there is now some news to report.

1st. Last summer I submitted an online application to give a workshop at the 2011 Florida Library Association Annual Conference. In November I was sent an email notifying me that my program was not selected to be presented on. No reason was stated, and I was pretty disappointed with the news. I was then encouraged by Brad at NEFLIN (one of the SSLLI Leaders) to submit an online application for a poster session at the 2011 FLA Conference. So...

2nd. Last week I filled out this online application, and am waiting to hear back to see if the EZ is at least poster session worthy.

I plan on attending the FLA Conference regardless, but being a presenter would be extra motivation for my library to send me, and would be an excellent way to network and get the word out about the EZ. While there I plan on seriously evaluating the programs that were approved for presentation to see what makes them more special than my EZ proposed program.

3rd. Starting Thursday January 6th the EZ will now be open from 1-4:30pm on Thursdays instead of 9-12pm. I have been wanting to switch one of the EZ days to afternoons since last summer, but due to the large number of afternoon classes we have been teaching this had not been possible. Monday morning has by far become the busy morning (unless it is cold, raining, or a holiday week) and switching Thursday was almost a no-brainer. Thursday afternoons the public computers are very busy, so we should be able to shift the appropriate people from the time managed computers to the EZ. This will give us the opportunity for even greater word of mouth advertising, and instead of telling people to come back Monday morning (or the following Thursday morning) as we have been doing, we can just shuttle them immediately into the EZ. I am hoping the numbers really climb with this switch. More to follow.

4th. I plan on trying to get an article published on the EZ in either American Libraries, Library Journal, Public Libraries, or the FLA publication. I would like to talk about the entire procedure of setting up the EZ, and give an overview of what has followed since opening, including statistics.

That is all for now on the Empowerment Zone. I will have more after January 6th.

Results

Today the EZ hosted the first ever Resume Writing Workshop for the library. We had 13 people in attendance which allowed for an intimate atmosphere, with a lot of questions being asked and answered. Dr. Jadwick was exceptional, and used props for examples, along with an excellent PowerPoint presentation. I was a bit disappointed that several of the EZ regulars were not in attendance, but for a first event it was still decent.

In other news 7 people have now signed up for the Workforce Alliance mobile unit that is scheduled for next Monday. We have also decided to change the time of the EZ on Thursdays from 9-12pm on Thursdays to 1-4:30pm. I am hoping that the later time will draw more people in, plus with having one morning slot and one afternoon slot this gives our patrons more flexibility.