Kickin’ Off Day Two
Shoulders sore from hauling all the freebie books I grabbed at the exhibit hall yesterday, I stumbled off my friend’s couch at 6:30 this morning, ready(ish) for the real start of the conference. Now, four hours later, I’m awake but starving, having missed out on breakfast. Despite the early rise, a detour made me late to pick up a friend from library school, and we barely made it down here in time for the first session. The signage in the convention center isn’t the best, as I (and others) struggled to find room L101 D-G. Fortunately, a helpful cleaning man pointed me the right way and I made it to “Trading Spaces: Everyday Transformations to Maintain Merchandising Momentum at Your Library.”
I went to this because our system does an awful job at merchandising (oddly, the presenters never really defined merchandising, but I take it to mean the practice of presenting library materials and services in a way that will enhance or increase their use). The presenters were from Mt. Laurel Library (NJ), which is a single-entity library serving a suburban population. They discussed the transformation they undertook over 9 months with a $45,000 budget, which encompassed not only physical changes but a dramatic change in staffing duties and attitudes. I won’t try to summarize the presentation, since the project has a nice website which covers everything, not to mention the presentation handout, which you can download.
On the one hand the presentation was rather inspirational and made a dramatic transformation feel entirely possible. On the other hand, pretty much none of it felt applicable to my own system. The reason is that a single-entity library like Mt. Laurel can take bold actions, and pretty much do what it wants. A large urban system like mine usually doesn’t offer than kind of opportunity. The funds are too tight, the interests too entrenched, the staff too stubborn, etc. I wonder if one way around this is to designate a handful of branches as “test” branches, where new ideas (in merchandising, staffing, etc.) can be tried out on a small scale without having to go through wholesale systemwide change.
