ALL.THE.THINGS.

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I've been thinking alot about the pressure we put on ourselves in our youth library world. We want to be good at our job and for our community but there is also a whole world out there in the profession that sings a siren song of opportunity and over-commitment. Striking a work balance, a professional balance and a personal balance is hard because of All.The Things. that call and call and call.

Two recent blog posts brought this into particular focus. The first was this one at House at Katie's Corner.  Katie talks about those many things that pulled at her and drove her to exhaustion.  In the end, she reminds herself why she is a librarian : "It’s not to have the best blog or the latest gadget or the best-written article in Library Journal [although these things are fabulous]. I’m really doing my job to serve my people, my community, my kids. And if I focus so much on myself and how I stack up next to others, I’m not going to do the best job for them."

The second is the first of three posts that Mel is doing at Mel's Desk about the nuances of no. Mel beautifully explores the difficulties and satisfactions of working towards balance and the power that "no" has in reaching towards that goal. She shares her journey of getting out of earshot of the siren song. I can hardly wait to read the next posts coming out on this.

One of my first library directors taught me something valuable as a young librarian that has helped me work through this struggle in my own practice. He pointed out that there was time for everything in my career. When I was asked to serve on an award committee early in my career, he said no.  I was burning the candle at both ends with some amazing work projects and partnerships and he pointed out that the opportunity would come again. At the time, I was really angry with him. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! He was ruining everything! I could do it! I had the energy!

But time proved him right. The opportunity not only came again but came at a better time - a time when I could commit energy and thought to it without shorting my work at the library. And it came more than once. He helped me see that in the course of a career, we have many opportunities to do meaningful work professionally without jumping on the train early or taking time away from work or family.

I also learned as I went along that stress is not my favorite place to be. It helped me create balance and really pursue projects outside of work that made a difference without killing me with overwork. I say yes to very few outside professional commitments/projects at any one time (storytelling, consulting, professional association work, teaching, writing) since it has to mostly fit in my non-work time. If I take on too much, my blog goes quiet. I am out of balance.

How do I juggle all the things to get to balance? My first  - and always  - bond and commitment is to the people I serve and who pay my salary. My best energy, my best ideas and my time go here first. Next is my family. From there, I work to serve and advance our profession - taking on commitments that don't overwhelm me or crowd into my workday.  If I don't serve my community and my job, everything else I do is really meaningless and false. This - this everyday and day-in-and-day-out work- is my center.

Because I am closing in fast on four decades as a children's librarian I have truly learned that a career is a marathon and not a sprint. The sweetness of those "extra" things that I have done in the past ten years is better than many things I did early on. And there is room and time for everyone to get to that sweet place. Time brings all the things our way. We just need to be patient and realize that the journey is just as good as the destination. Give yourself time and space to grow and balance. The rest of All.The.Things. will come in their own good time.

Books as Prizes - Where's the Money Coming From?

In the Afterschool Program Facebook group, we were chatting recently about books as prizes for SLP and the question came up, "How do you afford books as prizes?" We shared some ideas on inexpensive sources: Half Price books; Scholastic Literacy Partnership, Scholastic Book Fair Warehouse sales; ARCs from conferences.

But that begs the question - where does the money come from? After all,  books are our priciest prize.

One thing we did to find the money was change how we program.

We booked performers for years - singers, magicians, storytellers, performers of one kind and another.  A very few could generate a crowd of 100-150 kids in our auditorium. Most would result in crowds of 25-45 kids and adults - and this in a city of 51,000 population!

The costs involved with performers were substantial - $200 if we were lucky; $300-$500 and up more likely. Add mileage, hotel and expenses and ouch! When we had 25 people in the audience, it meant we were paying anywhere from $10-30 per person in attendance for the program. That didn't seem like a sustainable use of money.

We were also developing some amazing in-house programs led by staff.  It occurred to us that if we continued this strong staff programming and cut back on performers, we would have enough money to fund the hundreds of books that we want to give to kids as prizes.

So we made it so. We still book a performer or two for special events. The money we saved went directly to buying books as prizes for babies through teens. Parents and kids both love these books. Kids get to choose freely from a variety that we put out. We fill our program room for two weeks in August with books for kids to choose from who have completed their SLP in previous weeks.

Of course, we could also have written grants, looked for donors or sought money in other ways. But we chose to enfold books into existing programming money. By changing our priorities we made sure we could make a book in the hand of a child happen. Seems worth it!

(For more thoughts on sustainability and funding in Youth Services, see this series starting here that I wrote last fall).

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

An Eye for the Future - Part 4

In this series of blog posts, sustainability is the watchword.  We've looked at issues and thoughts about project costs and grant fails and triumphs. In this final post, let's consider the sustainability factor in our everyday programming work.

Programs are some of the bread and butter of our work with youth. The concept of sustainability becomes critical here.

Our patrons often want ALL THE THINGS. And many of us want to give them ALL THE THINGS. That's perfectly understandable. They pay us, they are the reason we are working at the library in the first place. However, ALL THE THINGS often leads to staff burn-out, stress, and an unsustainable pace and level of work for staffers. Work tasks leak into home life and extra unpaid hours. Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I hate you. I quit (literally or just check out emotionally and mentally).

Not sustainable. To create sustainability - and sanity - in programming, finding balance is an important factor.

Budget
If we have a program budget, how can we best use it?  Many of us are expected to and feel pressure to book outside performers (note: I work as a free-lance storyteller making the big bucks at schools and libraries so I know about this issue from the performer's perspective). If we spend all our money booking performers, does that leave us a budget for incentive prizes like books, bookbags or money to fund buses or another special project?

If we balance our planning and expectations, cut back on outside performers, it often frees programming money to allow us to fund special stealth programming projects or initiatives or try something entirely new. Our budget can then sustain a larger number of efforts.

Patron Expectations
Teachers and parents have clear thoughts on what they need for kids in their care but often these fall into narrow personal concerns - we want to use the library without these crowds; the storytimes aren't convenient for my schedule;  you should have more ________ (fill in the blank: baby/toddler/teen/K/school age/homeschool/single/continuous/Saturday/evening/Sunday/Monday morning -I could go on but you know what I'm talking about here) events; why can't you provide our group with a weekly storytime or monthly outreach visits?

Meeting all the expectations isn't possible to do in a sustainable way - especially if you want to balance services to all. The challenge in planning then becomes looking for ways - through active and passive programs; judicious deployment of staff for in-house and outreach efforts and critically looking at the arc of programs  - to honor on some level most of your clientele's needs.

What might that look like? It all depends on what you can find sustainable - and what you feel you can fairly offer to all. Perhaps:

• Storytimes being offered for 25-30 weeks of the year.
• After school programs being offered once a month or in a three-four week series 2-3 times a year.
• Storytime breaks of up to two months to allow time to book field trips or do outreach to daycares.
• School age programs during school breaks and  early release days including plenty of DIY activities.
• Programs presented once a semester to classes that make weekly/monthly visits.
• Outreach visits scheduled once a year to every day care or school classroom
• Passive programs made available more frequently

There isn't a one-way, right answer but there are many paths to help create a program structure that can be sustained and serve many needs.

Balance and Sustainability
The point is not to deny patrons, jealously guard time and resources or alternatively force staff into working at a mad pace.  To sustain programs, finding the balance is key. Looking at what we do and how to create balance - whether through program breaks; decreasing the frequency of some programs; offering the same level of service to all school or daycare groups or making sure that we have a balance of active and passive programs - means that our program work can be sustained.

And in the End
Last but not least, learning when to say when is critical. When a program has reached the end of it's useful life, even though it is your favorite, let it go and put staff time and resources elsewhere. It keeps what you offer fresh, frees time for new initiatives and services and keeps patrons interested in your offerings.

And that's what sustainability is really all about!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Graphic courtesy of Pixabay

An Eye for the Future - Part 3

In this series, I am looking at sustainability in our work. The first post addressed some larger issues and thoughts about costs of ongoing projects followed by a post on grant fails   Today, let's consider the sustainability factor of  successful grant-funded  projects.

So what are key components to create sustainability in grant-funded projects?

First don't write it if you can't see a way to sustain the project, keep it fresh or easily make changes to evolve it to meet changing community needs. Taking a pile of money, creating a thing and letting it languish seems to be wasteful. If, in your grant planning, you figure what you need to keep the initiative or service going beyond the grant, it means two things: the grant start-up money is well-used to kick things off and you actually need the service or initiative enough to justify putting future general budget funds into keeping it fresh.

Grant Wins
Here are two examples of sustainability thinking we used in creating and thinking about projects we wanted to continue beyond their initial grant cycle.

2nd Grade Library Stars
Based on meetings with our LMC colleagues who suggested we bring in one grade level for an introduction to the library, we decided to reach out to all second graders and offer a field trip adventure at our Main Library location.  The biggest expense for this was going to be transportation - only one school is in walking distance of our Youth Services Department.

We wrote a Community Foundation grant for buses for $1000 and looked at our program budget for the future to fund the project in ensuing years. If we didn't book three outside performers, we would have that money.

The tours were a huge hit with the teachers, kids and staff. The worth of them was so apparent that the schools funded the buses the second year. Now we are looking at adding seventh grade and kindergarten field trips annually and the schools have agreed to split the bus costs.  This makes these visits sustainable for both organizations.  And because of the impact of the visits and the positives that have resulted, if we needed to fund raise to keep them going, I believe we would have no trouble in gaining support.

Baby Book Bees
We offer our 1000 Books program to children ages 1-5 but really wanted to catch families with their children from birth. So we developed a pre-1000 BksB4K efforts asking parents to read 100 books to their baby before their first birthday.  We decided that offering a little bib at sign-up with the library name and a book as a culminating incentive would be swell.

We wrote a Target grant to fund these two pieces and we received that grant - for twice the amount we asked for! This allowed us to fund the effort beyond a year and get better pricing on the bibs and books.  And how will we maintain this effort beyond this grant funding? We plan to enfold this initiative into the funds for 1000 Books (that original $7000 raised). Once this money is expended, we'll look into using existing programming money to continue or do a special fundraising appeal.

I think, dear readers, you are starting to see how thread of funding for projects needs to be worked into the warp and weave of regular budgets for programs and collections if sustainability is a goal.

Next post, we'll leave special projects behind and look at the sustainability of our programs. See you then!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

Graphic courtesy of Pixabay

An Eye for the Future - Part 2

In this series of blog posts, I am looking at sustainability in our work. The first post addressed some larger issues and thoughts about costs of ongoing projects.  Today, let's consider the pitfalls of grant-funded  projects.

It is exciting to plan, write and receive a grant - but the devil is in the details.  What will you do once the funds are expended to maintain, evolve or change the grant-funded project. How will you keep it fresh? How do you build in sustainability?

I have noticed a tendency to create the project or service or kit or thing. And then when it is done, it is done.  There is no money to add, enhance or change what has been created. The grant-funded initiative becomes static, dated and either reluctantly sunset long past it's usefulness or in place forever because it was...grant-funded!

Grant Fail
Two examples of this grant-funded ennui in our library collection were a set of middle grade book discussion kits and "Treasure Boxes"- themed tubs full of preschool books and manipulatives to rotate to daycares. Both were outstanding original ideas, well-executed and did exactly what the grant was intended to do - for a time.

Book Discussion Kits
The book discussion kits had ten books and a great discussion guide in special bags hung in a closet. As the years rolled on and the reading tastes of the target audience changed, the kits became less useful since no new ones were created or old ones withdrawn. Also compounding their decreased usefulness was difficulty in accessing them - both because they were out of browsing view in a closet and extremely tricky to find through the catalog.

The solution?  Let the old kits go. Create new kits of five books each and house them near the fiction collection and accessible to the public. Buy enough bags to ensure we can develop 2-3 new kits each year for ten years and use the existing book budget to fund the purchase of the books. Be prepared to do great PR, withdraw kits that don't move and continuously add to keep content fresh.

Unsustainable was changed to sustainable.

Treasure Boxes
Created almost fifteen years ago, these tubs were stuffed full of goodness - fifteen-twenty books, puppets, cassettes, teacher material, hands-on manipulatives. They rotated in our outreach visits to the daycares we visited.  Each daycare had a box for the month. All good you say?

The problem again was that the content of the boxes never changed. For years, our providers received the same books over and over again.  To me, the message we were sending was that these are the only books we had on popular themes. It was as if we were caught in a Groundhog Day time warp that no one could ever escape. While we are spending ten of thousands of dollars a year on new materials for the general public in YS, the daycares were only provided with the same 100-150 titles.

The solution? Let the Treasure boxes go. Begin new service to the same daycares - Books2Go. Ten books per classroom are selected, bagged and delivered monthly to daycares.  Each daycare then has 40-70 unique titles to share among the classrooms. We use our existing collection and a variety of titles pass through the hands of the providers to the kids.  For teachers interested in particular themes, we encourage them to contact us and pick up a collection of five books matching their theme that we pull on their behalf.

Static morphed into dynamic and the service is sustainable as long as our department aide can drive and deliver and our collection of picture books exists.

Next post, let's look at grant triumphs in terms of sustainability.

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

Graphic courtesy of Pixabay

An Eye for the Future - Part 1

This in the first in a series of blog posts addressing the concept of sustainability in our planning. As a management tool, it helps us build programs and initiatives in a way that points towards success.

I believe in sustainability - not just in my personal life but also in my work at the library.

When I think of projects and initiatives, a big question and discussion point as planning is done and over the course of the project is - can this be sustained? As a manager I like to see amazing efforts and accomplishments. I love to see big picture projects and ideas that push the envelope of our service to families and kids.

But I also like to see how the ideas and efforts can be maintained beyond the here and now. What are the implications - for the budget, for the staff, for continuation over the long-haul, for equitable access? Is the idea for a service or initiative one that will have longevity? Can it evolve and have a nimbleness factor that lets us adjust it for changing needs.  Is this something that if we offer to one, we can offer to all?

To me questions like this that look into the future can inform our choices. They make planning deeper and result in a project or service that is more sustainable.

Let's look at an example.

1000 Books Before Kindergarten
Many libraries are creating these programs for preschoolers in their community. The question is often asked, what are the costs of the program? I always like to say, it's what you can afford - and can realistically maintain. When we developed our program in Menasha, figuring in the cost for a binder for each child, CDs given out at every 100 level and a book at the end brought the cost per child to $14. I could see this would mean we would need to do continual fundraising to maintain this if the program proved popular.

It made me uncomfortable not to have a secure source of funds in place and to have such a high cost per child in terms of sustainability. The program has great worth and, philosophically, I wanted to offer it for as long as we could to involve kids for many years. The pressure of continual fundraising and grant-writing to maintain a project adds stress and uncertainty. I didn't want to repeat that feeling.

When we developed the program in here La Crosse, we had a goal of 1000 kids involved over the life of the program. We worked hard and raised $7000 dollars and figured the cost per child at $6 for stickers, book bag, finger puppet and book.  We now have 750 kids in the program after two and a half years and still have a substantial cushion of funds to go well beyond our original projection (not all families who start will continue).  I believe based on current and projected expenditures, our original funding remains secure for at least six years.  By that time the program may naturally sunset or we can reach out again to generate donor-funding. This passes the sustainability test in my mind.

Our materials have also met that test. We have evolved our recording sheets and incentives to reflect participant feedback. It has helped us save money and still provide an amazing experience for families. We have not had to stay static and we look forward to more tweaks in the future.

In the next blog posts, I'll look at grant-funded projects and their pitfalls - or triumphs.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


Graphic courtesy of Pixabay