News

Hello everyone,

I'm settled in enough to make a quick post but not quite enough to make a longer one. So, some quick news/notes:

• The move was fairly uneventful. A couple of our boxes did get destroyed in shipping, so we unfortunately lost a bunch of books. (Word to the wise -- don't ship via the US Post Office, or if you do, make sure you get insurance -- we didn't and they wouldn't even reimburse us the postage for the box that came completely torn up and empty.) We got to drive into MA via Route 2, which I loved -- lots of curvy hilly roads through (sort of) mountains.
• I was ultimately not offered the job I interviewed for. The feedback I got when I asked how I could improve was very positive, though, which was encouraging -- I didn't do anything wrong, just got beat out by someone with a bit more experience.
• On the very same day I heard about the job just mentioned, I was asked to interview for another position! It's a very similar kind of job (community outreach/public relations/program coordination plus some reference and collection development), and it's at a busy library that enjoys quite a lot of community support. I think the interview went reasonably well. It certainly made me even more excited about the position! The library building is lovely, and the culture meshes well with the value I place on customer service, staff participation in decision making, and collaboration. Plus: I met with a panel of staff members, and beyond being really nice people, they shared my interests: knitting, dogs, baking...

And finally, to make this post about something actually library-related...

• I thought this post about treating your volunteers right on the Closed Stacks blog had a lot of good advice. Some of it is perhaps common sense (e.g. letting your volunteers know when your institution will be closed (!!)), but overall I think it provides good pointers on how to treat volunteers in a way that ensures both that they feel good about their service and that your organization benefits from their time. As someone who is likely to be overseeing volunteers in a future job (many of the postings I answer seem to include that responsibility) and who is interested in leadership and management, this was a very helpful post for me to read -- and I hope you'll find it helpful too!