Solo Librarians

DiscussieLibrarians who LibraryThing

Sluit je aan bij LibraryThing om te posten.

Solo Librarians

1colm18
feb 3, 2021, 9:19 am

Hello all,

Just curious as to whether there are other solo/one-person librarians on here? I will be starting a new role next month setting up a small College library here in Ireland from scratch. Any hints/tips/resources people could recommend?

Thanks in advance :-)

Colm

2Artoriarius
feb 4, 2021, 8:13 am

Another solo librarian here—I’m currently working on setting up a children’s library in rural West Virginia. Here’s some advice:

1: See if there’s any previous attempts to set up the library that you can build on. This is something like the fifth attempt anybody’s made with the library I’m working on, and unfortunately there’s no sign of the previous catalogues—apparently, the previous people kept the files when they left/moved on to other work for the organisation, or the files have been lost since.
2: First thing you need to do is make sure the library has dedicated equipment; at the very least, a computer for the librarian to work on—not you specifically, nor any member of the organisation funding the library, but whoever happens to be the librarian—any library files you keep to yourself aren’t available to any future librarians. This probably would have helped with keeping the files at my library. It’s good advice all the time, really, but it can be harder to remember when you’re the only person working on the library right now—keep in mind that you might have coworkers one day, or that you could move on to another library or retire and they have to hire another librarian, and it’ll make things easier if your files aren’t scattered around a dozen different personal devices.
3: Check your internet connection. If you’re working in an area where the internet isn’t reliable, you need to have an offline backup catalogue so you can search the collection for in-person patrons when the online catalogue’s unavailable—hopefully, whatever online catalogue system you use will have an export function you can use (even a basic XML file is better than nothing).
4: If you need to build the catalogue from scratch, I cannot stress the importance of having volunteers to help out. Given the current pandemic, this may be difficult-to-impossible to safely arrange, but if you can get even one more person to help out, it’ll make building the catalogue go a lot quicker. Even a small library’s catalogue can take forever with one person working on it.
5: Be aware that you might be called upon to be more than just the librarian—in my experience, anytime there’s something to do with books that doesn’t have to do with one person’s work specifically, I’m the one who has to take care of it. Essentially, you’re not just the librarian, you’re the go-to person where books are involved, and if you’re not prepared for it, it can be overwhelming.

Finally,

6: Don’t underestimate the importance of being an active member of the local community—it’ll help out a lot. I managed to get a lovely wooden desk for the librarian’s use—it was picked up at an estate sale because the person who donated it thought it would be perfect for the library. If there’s a problem at the library, I know people I can ask for help with it. There’s all sorts of little ways in which participating in the community will help your library out in ways you can’t predict, and that can make a lot of difference to a small library.

3megbmore
feb 4, 2021, 1:40 pm

I think Artoriarius has it very well covered, but I would add that you should try to connect to local and regional library organizations so that you have a group you can reach out to if (when) you face a new or challenging situation.

4colm18
feb 6, 2021, 6:30 am

Thanks guys, great advice. I'll keep you updated :-)

5PMALibrary
sep 16, 2021, 12:59 am

>2 Artoriarius: Thanks for the advice! I just took up a job as a small high school's librarian and as you mentioned as well, my library has traces of multiple previous catalogs, but no actual files. Its been many years since the school, which operates mainly staffed by university student volunteers like myself, has had a dedicated librarian. I really appreciate these points you made, particularly having an offline back-up catalog. Since my school is on a small island, our internet (while honestly rather good) can be iffy and I never even thought about what I'd do when it inevitably goes down during school hours.

I have been considering recruiting students (who need volunteer service hours for graduation) to help out in the library, but since I'm still in the process of cataloging everything, I don't know what I'd even have them do. I feel like my whole system is still in my head and I don't know if it's possible to have help when things are still this unorganized. Do you (or anyone, of course) have any advice?

6Artoriarius
sep 16, 2021, 3:54 pm

It may or may not be a good idea to wait until you’re more comfortable putting people to work on cataloguing—if you think it’ll cause problems for you later on getting their entries in the catalogue into proper shape, it may not be a good idea to have people working on that.*

Also, an alternative to having people work on your system is to have other people catalogue books according to something simpler, then follow along after them and adjust their work for your system. The goal here is that they do the majority of the work—get the book in the catalogue, make sure it has all the right fields filled out, and while you still have to go over every book, you’re doing a lot less work per book. If that doesn’t seem like a good idea to you, there are some other ways people can help without working directly on the catalogue:

1. Sorting: I don’t know what system you’re using, but I’ll lay even odds you’ll wind up organising the fiction books by broad genres; it’s the easiest and most common way to do it, since fiction tends to be a lot looser about what goes into it—it’s not really possible to come up with a good decimal system for fiction that won’t separate a fair number of similar or related books. The upshot of this is that it’s a lot easier for the average person to sort by genre—most people are going to be familiar with what goes into fantasy or science fiction, whereas they may get lost when a lot of classification numbers are thrown around.

Also, if you’ve got more books to deal with than you can reasonably put in the library, or if there’s a lot of books that don’t really fit the theme of the library (for instance, as a high school library, you don’t have much call for picture books or children’s books—some, sure, but it’s not really the focus of the library) or are out of date or inaccurate (such as a book on computers from 1971 for the former, or anything by Erich von Daniken for the latter) then you can have people look through the books and remove these—depending on your local situation and the condition/usefulness of the books, you may be able to donate or repurpose them, so you don’t have to feel like you’re going to be throwing books away.

2. Handiwork: Another thing that can be helpful is having people do some of the work that’s not necessarily book-based. If there’s bookcases that need to be repaired or replaced, you could see if there’s anyone interested in helping with that—for that matter, you’ll want help if you just decide you want to move the cases into better positions—even an empty bookcase can be empty. Then there’s cleaning—it’s always nice when somebody else deals with the rat’s nests—and decorating—if there’s an artistically-inclined student who wants to help, you can have them create posters, maybe paint a wall that’s got a lot of bare space, make new dust jackets for hardcovers that have lost theirs; there’s a lot that can be done to make the library a more welcoming place.

3. Activities: The high school might want the library to be available for activities—maybe they want to do a book fair, or they want to have teachers take classes in to check out books, and they probably won’t be happy to hear, “You can’t use the library—it’s not set up yet.” (This depends on the high school administration—maybe they’re nice enough to wait until you’re done, or maybe they’re not interested in using the library for anything—it all depends on who’s in charge and what their plans are). Having some volunteers around will make these things go smoother and ensure that you can get your work done without taking the library entirely out of commission.

* If you’re not sure whether it’ll be a hindrance or a help, get somebody to help for a few hours. If they get the hang of your system reasonably quickly, you’re probably good to go. If they’re still struggling with it when they’re done, then it’s not a good idea to have other people working on it regularly just yet.

7librorumamans
Bewerkt: sep 17, 2021, 12:48 am

>5 PMALibrary: Since my school is on a small island, our internet (while honestly rather good) can be iffy and I never even thought about what I'd do when it inevitably goes down during school hours.

For that situation, you might want to look at open-source software Kiwix that allows you to compress an entire website — Wikipedia, for example — onto a local host for off-line access. ETA: a description here.

8librorumamans
sep 16, 2021, 10:15 pm

For shelving paperback fiction, the best system I found was the coloured labels used in medical offices for filing charts. For example this product on Amazon. Staples also carries them, but not perhaps this handy starter kit.

Those browsing shelves were used so heavily in my school that it was unrealistic to try to maintain strict author order. With the coloured labels for the first letter of the author's last name, at least it was possible to keep all the Stephen King/Dean Koontz titles in one place, and spot them when when they wandered out of place.

9WeeTurtle
Bewerkt: sep 17, 2021, 2:11 am

There is also open source ILS software that might help with online stuff, or making a catalogue. If you can import records for the books you have, it would save cataloging time, though learning the software might be a pain.

One potential area students could help might be searching out library equipment or fundraising. Finding needed furniture, shelves, computer, etc., or getting the money to buy new things (computer would be on that list I would think, because of how fast electronics age), can take a lot of time. I'm part of a library friends group and pretty much what we do is fundraise to support library purchases and boost their budget. For a school library, students could fill the role of a friends group.

Fundraising towards a modest goal just to have money to buy basic supplies like labels, book tape, cover sheets, etc., would probably help.

10CGHogan
dec 1, 2021, 1:20 pm

I'm a solo librarian in a state prison in the US. I didn't form this library from scratch, but I've had to establish a lot of my own practices and policies, as well as change a few from the previous librarian. I've been here 2 1/2 years and while it can be really isolating, I overall like my job and have gained a lot of confidence through working here by myself. Having a network of other librarians (especially other prison librarians) has been essential for me.