What to do when there's too much work

I've felt guilty lately.  I have a lot of work to do and not enough time to do it all in.  I like to blog regularly, but it's not a necessity, so it's something I do irregularly right now.  That got me to thinking about how busy librarians are in general, and more specifically, how our responsibilities have changed. 

When I was chair of the Liaison with Users Committee, we did a survey of liaisons to see what the responsibilities are across the nation AND to discover how liaisons feel about their work.  We found that there isn't a national standard; no one responsibility is shared by everyone across the nation.  We also found that librarians are becoming increasingly frustrated.  They are not sure how to fit all their work into a regular work week.  They don't all feel that their work is appreciated by their administration or understood by their patrons.  They don't feel they have the necessary training to do their work well.

I don't want to make this a doom and gloom entry.  I am instead pondering where we should go from here.  At the same time our committee is writing up our results, I am teaching a class on management.  We are covering strategic planning right now.  I want the class to think about these issues in the same way I wish every manager in a library would.  I want us, as a profession, to take the time to decide what matters to us most and to then plan our services and products around that.

A good example of this is in LJ.  The article discusses how a public library has outsourced book selection, freeing the librarians to do collection analysis that they would not otherwise have had time to do.  Is this  a decision I think every library should make?  No.  But it does seem like it fits well within the goals that this library has.  I like that they are willing to make a decision, in order to do what is best for their organization.  They may be taking some heat for it (not all press is complimentary!), but they are working to improve their collection.

Good on you, I say.  I want to see more libraries making strategic decisions, acknowledging that our work has changed even as our worlds have changed.

Comments

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