The Imaginary "A"

Our first orientation of the new volunteer recruitment campaign was held Monday at Davidson Library. We had 17 volunteers, a great group indeed! Complete with a local TV station there doing interviews of me and new and current volunteers.

We reviewed many things but one topic of discussion was the "Imaginary A". The imaginary A that librarians place in the author name of McDonald (and all other Mc's) so it would become MacDonald. It seems that some of our branches differ on this phenomenom. Some do it and some don't.

Another scenario; the smaller the branch the less space it has to hold collections.
So their system may be different from a regional library which has more space. As we try to merge a volunteer workforce with a professional workforce these details, oddities become challenges. We have lost 50% of our professional staff so every minute is crucial. They would prefer to have volunters trained by me; a centralized volunteer training has been requested. However, I wonder how many other "Imaginary A's" are in our system, in the way we organize things. A universal training becomes less and less viable with each branch idiosyncracy.

The way in which we do things so that we can recieve volunteer assistance is crucial. A consistent and customary way in which all books are shelved would allow for centralized training and/or for volunteers to be shared among 2-3 libraries in the same area.

We are one system with 20 branches. These branches reflect the culture and demographics of a neighborhood. Striking the balance bewteen consistent and different is so hard! Have you encountered this situation? Do you have centralized training?

Please share your story, thoughts and ideas.

It is the "Year of the Volunteer"

In case you haven't heard it is the Year of the Volunteer. It happens every time a community is faced with decreased revenue,and Charlotte NC is in that category this year indeed. Bank Town was hit hard by the economic melt down. So was our library. Our budget is down 9 million, that's the good news. It was recommended that we take a 17.5 million cut which would have been half of our previous budget. We still lost almost half of our staff and 3 libraries (of 24) have closed doors for good. Yeah...its been a brutal Spring.

The following is the first verse we heard from county commissioners "why don't you use more volunteers?" The second verse is the same as the first. So guess what? We are going to double our volunteer workforce. This has led to all kinds of interesting questions. Are volunteers taking jobs from staff? If we do a really good job with volunteers will we lose funding for staff positions?

We may be making history here. Do you know of any library that is receiving funding based on our ability to engage volunteers? That is what happened here and it goes by the name of "inter-local agreement". The municipalities that surround Charlotte were approached for additional funding revenue. They said sure but we want our libraries open more than 4 days a week; why don't you use more volunteers? So now we have it in writing. Money given with a caveat, open these 5 towns' branches a 5th day with the help of volunteers.

Can it be done? Should it be done? Want to take this journey with me? I'll be blogging about it.Celebrate it. Its the year of the volunteer.