...just add building, technology, staff, and collection.
Chapter 2. Planning & Statistics
Chapter 3. Policies (Board Positions)
Chapter 5. Procedures (Daily Library Tasks & Forms)
Chapter 7. Marketing & Public Relations
God is the reason I have made it through life to this point. God is the reason this book is being written. It is too much for me to handle on my own. The only way I can run a small public library, be visible and involved in my community, and write this book, is through letting God handle the worries and uncertainties of life. When I run low on strength and when my courage fades, God is always there waiting for me to ask for more. God gave me the courage to take on this project in the first place and the strength to finish it. Without God, you don't get this book. Hopefully with this book, you'll be able to bring about wonders in your community and make it a better place to live.
A great, huge, non-monetary thank you to everyone I have worked with at libraries in Kentucky and Michigan. Without experience a book like this is basically a paperweight.
Another similarly amazing thank you to all of my family and friends who have seen me through to this point in my life and helped me enjoy the journey.
A grateful and well-earned thank you to all of my library science professors at the University of Kentucky, especially Don Schabel who took it all and applied it to real problems in public libraries.
Thank you to Christopher Hart, Christine Johnson, and Don Schabel who reviewed various sections of the book in its early days.
Thank you to everyone on PubLib who answered questions and provided information and feedback, especially those who reviewed the manuscript.
Thanks also to all the librarians in Northland Library Cooperative and Woodlands Library Cooperative. I hope what I've already shared of the book has helped. Your encouragement and positive response kept me going.
Thank you to the Library of Michigan and many other libraries for freely sharing their professional development collections.
Thank you to Renee Vallaincourt who proposed the project in the first place and helped set the mission and goals of the book.
And thank you to Fiona Apple who accompanied me during the final, hectic push to get it all done.
We all work together -- board, director, staff -- to make our small public libraries better, to make them more responsive to the needs of our communities. Keep the patrons first and foremost when doing anything at the library, from organization to signage to policies. Planning for Results, New Planning for Results, Managing for Results, Wired for the Future, and Staffing for Results all have the same underlying assumptions:
Excellence must be defined locally. It is a result of providing library services that match community needs, interests, and priorities.
Excellence does not require unlimited resources. It occurs when available resources are allocated in ways that support library priorities.
Excellence is a moving target. The best decision-making model is to estimate, implement, check, and adjust -- and then estimate, implement, plan, and adjust again.
Workforms with instructions from The New Planning for Results, Managing for Results, and Staff for Results along with Creating Policies for Results are available online from eLearn Libraries at http://www.elearnlibraries.com/workforms/.
If you just took a director position for the money, you are a seriously deluded and troubled individual. There are much better ways in this world to make money than running a small library. Even if you embezzled you could not amass millions without being caught. A small public library director stands at the nexus between the library board, the staff, and the public; is responsible for hiring, planning, policies, and finances along with the board; and oversees training, management, technology, marketing, public relations, cataloging, processing, selection, ordering, grants, paperwork, procedures, evaluation, reading to children, and answering all types and kinds of questions. However, there aren't many things in this world you can do that are more rewarding, more satisfying, than running a small public library. It is a wonderful way to help others, whether it's those walking in off the street or the entire community. As director of a small public library you are in a unique position to communicate along all sorts and sections of society, to reach out to all kinds of people, and hopefully to bring them together. As Julie Maruskin, Director of Clark County Public Library in Kentucky said, "Library Directors should be crazy and really like the community, their co-workers, and people in general. They should like being the person on whose head everything falls. You need a tremendous liking for human beings in all their forms, a sense of humor, and good emotional intelligence to pull it off."
This book is my personal opinion. Feel free to change and modify any part you like. My opinion is based on what has worked, research and publications I have reviewed, and the expertise of library directors of many stripes passed down through the years. I am very grateful to every one, both writers who have shared with me through the page and directors who have shared with me directly, at times separated by continents and computers but direct to me none-the-less. Do I do everything I talk about perfectly? I'd never claim that. I don't even do everything that I mention in this book. It is always much easier to sit down and write about running a small public library than it is to actually go out and do it.
My best advice for everyone: Do the best you can. Build on what works and keep reading, learning, and trying where problems exist. Band together with as many other library directors and managers as you can to share stories, successes, and failures. Even great and mighty directors need a support group. For your sanity and the good of the library figure out some coping strategies. Find ways to unwind and relax, to leave all the stress of work behind you where it belongs. Watch out for your personal health, both physical and mental. There is always good being done in a public library. Focus on the good and not on the failures. Learn from the failures and then go on. There will be successes too, hopefully far outnumbering the failures.
Not all chapters are relevant to each reader. Skim through the book to find those parts of help and interest to you. The first four chapters are of most interest to directors, boards, and other governing bodies of the small public library. This is based on my premise that you need to know the legal environment surrounding you before you can look to the future and where the library should be heading and how the library can meet the needs of the community. Some laws limit what the public library can do or how it can work. There are many different things the library can do. Planning is very important so the resources of the library can best be used to meet the community's unmet needs. Once a plan is created you can put the policies in place to handle various situations while supporting your overall mission. Policies need to be in place for any small public library to run efficiently and for everyone at the library to know where the library is heading and how things are handled at the library. Finally, you need to be sure you can finance the trip. I've put this off until the end of the first section, because it's not an area I'm very knowledgeable or comfortable in. I took my own advice and kept learning, reading, researching, and talking to others. Finances are very important to any small public library. It is hard to provide library services for the benefit of all citizens without decent financial support.
The second four chapters are for the directors, managers, and staff at small public libraries. Procedures need to be in place to step through how to do various tasks and how to handle different situations. It helps consistency greatly to have them all written out somewhere. I'm not saying everyone's going to be looking at them, not saying everyone's going to follow them, but at least the people who want to refresh their memories have procedures to refer to. In the small public library, at some point in time, everyone's a manager; either of paid employees or of the countless volunteers that make our libraries run. If you are the director, read the management section very carefully several times and just keep practicing. Work to develop and guide the staff and volunteers along the trip we are all taking. Once the groundwork is in for the library to function, you need to let everyone know about all the great things the library can do and give them reasons to support the work of the library. Now you are going to learn the most important thing to making a successful small public library -- marketing and public relations. Finally, technology is the biggest tool and often the largest obstacle to great library service. We all have to accept the technology environment and do our best to manage it, not let it manage us.
There, you're a small public library expert. With great power comes great responsibility. I entrust all of you to do your best and work for a better world.