Pausing Masterful Librarian Podcast

04/21/21 • 4 min

In last week’s episode, called “Librarians, Let It Go!”, I mentioned that I was in the process of packing up and moving again. If you haven’t listened to that episode, you can find it at masterfullibrarian.com/ep-19.

Although I have been back in New Mexico for only about a year and a half now, I’ve decided to head back to Georgia again. I came to New Mexico from Georgia over 20 years ago and raised my children here. New Mexico feels like home, but most of my family is back in the Southeast, so that’s why I’m Georgia-bound.

I’ve had to accept the reality over the past few days that it’s a little tough to produce a podcast each week when most of my belongings are in boxes and I’m keeping all the details and plans for a cross-country move in my head. And trying to jugge a lot of activities and responsibilities. It’s honestly become a bit too much for me right now.

So I’m pausing the podcast for a few weeks. My hope is to be settled enough in my new home in Georgia by mid-May, with a little studio set up. that I can reboot at that time. I plan to check in with you from time to time as I move through the next few weeks, but I’m not making any promises!

If you haven’t listened to my other podcast episodes, I invite you to do that while I’m away. You can find those, along with today’s show notes, at masterfullibrarian.com/podcast.

I’d be really happy if you signed up for my email list while you’re there. If you do, you’ll automatically get notified when I return to the podwaves again.

You can also download my free gift, 4 Simple Steps to Achieve Greater Relevance, Meaning & Impact. I would really love to have you as part of my email family, and I promise I don’t abuse that by sending you a lot of junk that you don’t want to see!

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you about topics that interest you that I might address on the podcast. I’m always looking for ideas for the podcast. You can email those ideas to [email protected], or connect with me on Facebook on my Masterful Librarian page.

I hope that I hear from some of you and hear your wonderful and inspiring ideas for podcast episodes.

I’ll talk to you again real soon. I thank you for your patience with me as I make this huge transition.

If you haven’t listened to my other podcast episodes, I invite you to do that while I’m away. You can find those, along with today’s show notes, at masterfullibrarian.com/podcast.

I’d be really happy if you signed up for my email list while you’re there. If you do, you’ll automatically get notified when I return to the podwaves again.

I hope that I hear from some of you and hear your wonderful and inspiring ideas for podcast episodes.

I’ll talk to you again real soon. I thank you for your patience with me as I make this huge transition.

Previous Episode

Librarians, Let It Go!

Once again, I’m packing up and moving everything I own. A few days ago, I was standing in my house looking around at stacks of boxes and things still to be packed and I realized that it’s time again to let go of accumulated stuff again. It seems no matter how often I move and clear things out and pare down (I’ve moved four times in five years), there’s still more to clear out when I move.

And it got me thinking about our libraries and how we in libraries so often hold on to things for far too long. And that’s unfortunate – no one really benefits from what’s no longer needed or useful or current.

So today, I’m going to talk about three areas that all librarians need to examine with an eye to letting go of the old and making room for the new. We can benefit when we make it a regular practice to weed out, declutter, let go, and refresh.

You can find the show notes at masterfullibrarian.com/ep-19.

Weeding Your Collection

Are your shelves stuffed to the maximum and filled with books or videos from 20 or more years ago? If they are, it’s time to do a serious weeding.

This is a necessary activity that we all know we need to do but may often put off because it’s time-consuming and somewhat laborious. Weeding was never my favorite activity.

There may also be institutional or community obstructions to removing materials – like a principal who thinks you shouldn’t remove anything regardless of how old or inaccurate, or community members who object to weeding out racially offensive materials.

Even so, you should pursue ways to remove outdated, incorrect, damaged, and patently offensive materials from your library.

Mounds of anecdotal evidence show that having bookshelves that are only about 1⁄2 to 3⁄4’s full makes browsing materials easier and will actually increase circulation – at least for a period of time. This is especially true for younger children. A packed bookshelf makes looking at individual books difficult for small hands.

Hopefully, you have a documented policy and procedure in place that guides weeding of materials from your library. If you don’t, I suggest you explore that as a possibility. It’s always good to have an approved policy and procedure manual to support your actions in the library. But that’s a topic for another episode.

If there is no policy and you’re getting pushback from anyone about removing materials, then consider going guerilla. Remove items one or two at a time and discard them somewhere away from the library.

I’ve had so many books picked up out of trash cans by well-meaning custodians and returned to my desk, even though they were marked “Discard” all over them!

Just be sure to follow any state or local laws and regulations addressing the discarding of items purchased with state monies of with taxpayer funds. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law about that.
Decluttering Your Space

When you look around your library, what do you see? Are your displays and posters so old you forgot when you put them up? Or maybe you didn’t even put them up, they were put up by your predecessor. Have you got 75 stuffed animals that so many children have handled that their ears have frayed and their eyes have fallen off or they’re just dirty? Do you have artwork that is dull, age-inappropriate, or maybe even faded from years of hanging on the wall?

Trust me, if you have pictures of former principals in a high school library or worn and possibly germ-ridden plushies in your space, you need to do some updating.

If you have these things, it’s time for a major decluttering and refreshing of your physical space.

For complete show notes, please visit masterfullibrarian.com/ep-19.

Next Episode

3 Tips for Becoming a Library Supervisor

Hello, librarians! I’m back – at last. My brief podcast pause lasted a couple of weeks longer than I anticipated, so if you’re still with me and listening, thank you for that. I have made my cross-country move and am settling into my new, if only temporary, home. I expected to be back sooner, but all my podcasting equipment got misplaced in my move and I just found it a couple of days ago! It’s good to be getting back to the podcast.
Recently, I was working with a librarian who is contemplating a career move. We were discussing the challenge of getting hired for a supervisory role when you have no library supervisory experience.

I feel safe in saying that all job postings for library management positions call for prior supervisory experience. That’s a reasonable thing, but if you’re looking to move up into management for the first time it creates kind of a Catch-22. You can’t get the job because you don’t have the experience, and you can’t get the experience if you don’t have the job.

The key to that dilemma is to secure leadership positions and opportunities in other contexts and offer those as your qualifying experience.

So today, I’m going to share three tips for preparing and presenting yourself as someone ready for a supervisory role in the library, even if you lack the experience.

Complete show notes can be found at masterfullibrarian.com/ep-21.