Juggling Pots

Now that I'm more familiar with my new library, I have spent several weeks evaluating all the pots that I juggle through the month. Using the SWOT method, I've identified ten pots (areas of management.) At first it seemed that there were many more than ten, but after looking at each one, some could be grouped with others.

1. Customer service includes adult services, children's services, service to teens, circulation, programming and customer service development and continuing education.

2. Staff and personnel issues includes personnel reviews, meetings, communication, scheduling, safety training, hiring and training, and continuing education.

3. Outreach to our service area includes publicizing the library, outreach to the community, outreach to schools, outreach to government, use and scheduling of the community room, and outreach to organizations like Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club.

4. Friends of the Library includes meetings, maintenance of the bookstore, and working with them to promote books, reading and the library.

5. Managing our satellite branch at Laguna Woods. This is small technology branch and I have been working with the city of Laguna Woods to outreach to the community, begin to build a Friends of the Library, programming, collection development, and to begin working on a new facility that would allow the branch to grow in a separate branch that can fully serve the needs of the its community.

6. Maintaining the building and facility of the El Toro Library. This includes regular building inspections, making sure needed repairs and maintenance are completed, maintaining the landscaping, making sure the parking lot is good shape, requesting the FOL to make purchases to enhance the use of the building, and security.

7. Collection Development includes, building the collection, weeding the collection, maintaining the collection (Cleaning, mending and labeling), location and maintenance of special collections, and shelf reading.

8. Professional Development includes professional literature, keeping up with system changes and databases offer at OCPL, learning our new phone system, keeping up with other technologies as they apply to the library (Web 2.0 & Library 2.0), attending training and workshops, participation in system wide committees, working on my personnel review requirements, working on outreach, programming and publicity, and writing articles to promote the library, and eventual publishing professional papers.

9. Budgets, includes monitoring several budgets and payroll, working on ways to conserve money when needed and to spend money when there is some to spend. These budgets are materials, supplies and extra help (substitute staff.) Also included are all money handling at the branch and payroll.

10. Reports are required from various departments, some are my responsibility, but it my job to make sure these reports are completed and submitted on time. These include the Branch Managers Monthly report, mileage claim forms for the staff, monthly statistical reports, janitorial inspections, safety inspections, training log and donation log, and our new Customer Care reporting.