Episode 504: Policies and Procedures

Welcome back to Season Five of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. This season we are working through some skills that people in any kind of library will need to be successful in their work.

This week we will be talking about policies and procedures. These are tools that can not only guide your library and help you make decisions, but they can also be so useful in explaining to other people what you are doing and why you are doing it. Good policies and procedures can save you a lot of trouble!

This week we have Guest Host Karen Pundsack, Executive Director at Great River Regional Library System to help us get some ideas!

The Basics:

As we often do, let’s start by getting some vocabulary settled.

We are going to talk about policies and procedures jointly, and basically treat them as the same kind of document. For our purposes today, that’s fine; but they are different and have different purposes.

A policy is a guiding document. It talks about higher level concepts that guide your library, such as: Intellectual Freedom, Access for All, Privacy, Literacy. A procedure looks at more basic things that happen, giving guidance on getting standard tasks done, such as Shelving Books or Reserving the Meeting Room or Hosting a Classroom Visit. Both are important, both guide the library and your decisions.

Does your library have policies and procedures? You can always write up procedures for your library practices, and it’s a good idea to do that. Especially if you are a solo library person, or in a small place – you never know when you might win the lottery and abruptly move to Canada, and you want to leave things in order for the next person. Write up all the things you regularly do: opening the library, fixing that one printer that always gets stuck in the same way, filling out assorted request forms, ordering books, weeding book. Whatever you regularly do, take some time to write it down.

We definitely advocate for writing up policies relevant to your library. Spend some time looking at policies in other libraries – those like yours and also other types. You may find some good ideas that are important in your library, and get things covered. These may be the bigger ideas you need to help provide some education to your stakeholders about libraries and the work we do and the things we have to offer the community your library is serving.

When problems arise, it is so handy to be able to pull out a policy to explain why, or why not, you are choosing a direction or program or material for your library. Solving problems before they happen is a wonderful thing; good policies and procedures can make that happen for you.

Work with other people to create policies and procedures! They speak for the entire community, so you don’t want them to be just your individual voice. Even if you work alone, there are other people to chat with as you think about them. Talk to your library system – we’re always happy to help! Talk to other libraries in your area, or other library people you know. Talk with teachers, students, local group – anyone who may have some advice or other perspectives for you to consider.

If you have these documents, have they been updated? It’s very handy to have them on a regular schedule of updates – maybe doing it all every two years if you don’t have many. You can break that up and review a section of them every six months or so, and end up looking at the whole thing every two years.

Once you have these document created and up to date, be sure you share them widely! These are not secrets – their value is in their transparency to everyone. Talk about them with any new staff members, and be sure they have a copy of their own. Put a copy up on the website. Every so often, hand them out to patrons in bookmark form. Tell your stakeholders about them at community meetings. (Please don’t link to PDF documents on your page – it’s not user-friendly. Just copy that text into a page on your site, so everyone can find it. This is also much easier for you to update.)

One final note about policies and procedures: These are not an excuse to micromanage a library. Remember that a library is a place to say “Yes!” Actively avoid living down to the stereotype of the fussy, shushing library staffer. Let people talk in the library, let them check out any book they want, encourage the feeling of community! Don’t use policies as a weapon against individuals or groups you don’t like. Let them express the openness to all that is part of  the library culture!

We have talked about a lot of theories and ideas for policies and procedures; now let’s get more ideas from Karen on how these work out in real library work!

Additional Resources:

We are providing a few sample ideas here. CMLE members – get in touch with us if you want to talk about your policies and procedures. We are here to help you!

Books Read

I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson

At first, Jude and her twin brother are NoahandJude; inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them.

Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor.

The early years are Noah’s to tell; the later years are Jude’s. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they’ll have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant, award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

In the Midst of Winter, by Isabel Allende

During the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his sixties, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and what at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice.

As these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love. Allende returns here to themes that have propelled some of her finest work: political injustice, the art of survival, and the essential nature of—and our need for—love.

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, by Will Cuppy

This light-hearted romp through history sets off with the conundrum of the two Egyptians, carrying on to explore the Strange Bedfellows of Attila the Hun, Charlemagne and Lady Godiva, ending up in Merrie England and the roamings of Christopher Columbus, et al. It is a journey through the annals of history with the heroes and villains of the past as your fellow travellers: Lucretia Borgia, Lady Godiva, Henry Viii, Elizabeth I and George Iii. As Will Cuppy’s profiles of the good and the great make you realise that the truth of history is far stranger than the fiction!

Conclusion

Thanks to Karen for coming in to work through this topic with us! Be sure you are subscribed to this podcast to get all the library skills directly to your favorite app each week. And you can check out our shownotes for each episode to get all the info we discussed, along with the links to more resources. Every episode we have created is on our website: cmle.org.

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Thanks for joining us this week! And check back in with us next week for another library competency!