Readings Journal 2/28

Staffing Shifts Roil Orlando Public Library by G, F.F.

This article discusses differences in opinion on staffing changes between librarians and their director at the Orange County Library system in Orlando.  Librarians claim that the director is trying to save money by reducing the number of professionals in the library system.

While reading this article, I couldn’t help but side with Church.  Especially when I read that only 33% of the professional staff have an MLS degree.  How can the director expect to run a good library system when more than half the staff have never been trained as librarians?  The director talks about offering a wider range of programs and classes, but who will run these programs if she keeps cutting professional librarians?  I would understand if the director had to cut the librarians because of budget issues, but since she is doing a major renovation at the Main Library, this doesn’t seem to be the case.  I have a hard time understanding why the director feels that this is a good idea.

Assessing Staff on the Competencies by S. Houghton-Jan

This article discusses various ways to assess library employee’s skills such as tests, surveys, self-assessment, and peer assessment.

I found it interesting that this article stated that most libraries opt for self-assessment for their staff members.  This seems like a bad idea to me.  Self-assessment can be subject to response bias, where people answer the way they think they should instead of how they actually feel.  In a job assessment, people may feel like they should know how to do things that they don’t and feel pressured to answer a certain way to show they are a good employee.  I feel like peer assessment or surveys would be a better option.

Working Knowledge by Mary Pergander

This article discusses the importance of speaking up and telling your boss what you want.

The idea of speaking up to your boss is a very important one, especially for women.  In undergrad I read an article stating that women are less likely to ask for pay raises then men (Bylsma & Major, 1992).  This is part of the reason for the wage gap.  Men are more likely go to their bosses and ask for a pay raise, and as a result, are more likely to get a raise.  This is the same situation as discussed in the Pergander article.  Your boss can’t read your mind, so if you want a pay raise or want a specific job you have to ask for it.

Bylsma, W. H., & Major, B. (1992). Two routes to eliminating gender differences in

personal entitlement: Social comparisons and performance evaluations. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 16(2).

One Model for Creating a Career Ladder for Library Support Staff by Jane Fama and Elaine Martin

This article explains a career ladder system for support staff that was implemented at the Larner Soutter Library.

It was interesting to read about the changing roles of support staff in this article.  I have read many articles about the changing roles of librarians, but I never thought about how this affects the support staff.  I also thought it was interesting that the LSL library requires all staff to be cross-trained.  This seems like a very good idea, especially with the changing times.  One thing this article didn’t mention is if LSL has a standardized training procedure for all support staff.  I think it is extremely important to have standardized procedures as I have been trained in jobs that don’t and, as a result, have missed important information.  This is also something that has been brought up in the pub lib listserv recently, the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library was looking for standardized procedures for training circulation clerks.