SLP Challenges

I don't know that I spoken yet about the interesting predicament that my library found itself in this summer. On top of the usual chaos that comes with the Summer Reading Program, our Head of Youth Services gave birth to her first baby in early June - right before the chaos began. While we were all thrilled about the baby, the rest of us had to scramble a bit to figure out how summer was going to work. After all, it is our busiest time of year and we would be without the person in charge. What's a library to do?

Well, we all had to step it up a bit. The library director took responsibility for managing the children's department and making the big executive decisions. Myself and the other assistant kept most of the day-to-day stuff rolling along. Thankfully we've both been through SLP a few times so we knew pretty much what to expect. Programming was unfortunately cut back a little because we just didn't have the man-power to have so many events. We did hire some extra LTE (limited term employee) help, but given their position and lack of training they were mostly there to help with SLP check in and keeping the area clean. Mostly we learned flexibility and how to tackle problems as they come.

This summer was certainly challenging and contained some high and low points. Even though we had some leadership from the director, she also had her regular job duties and the rest of the library to worry about so she wasn't physically there to help at every moment when we would have liked. The LTEs proved to be more helpful than expected given their training and expectations. Our total number of participants was sadly down just a little bit from last summer, which we attribute to the fact that our HoYS was unable to do school visits. While some programs were cut from the summer schedule, the ones that were held proved to be huge hits.

One big lesson that I take from this experience is that it's so important to make sure that more than one person can do a given job. Under my library's current union contract, myself and the other assistant can only be given so much responsibility, so we weren't aloud to take on all of the HoYS' responsibilities when she was gone. If we had been able to take on some additional responsibilities (programming, decision making, etc.) then things might have been a lot easier. I also think that it's huge to have the entire staff involved at least in some aspect with planning. Because of the responsibility structure, the HoYS did all of the planning for SLP...and then wasn't there to see it though. Those of us who were there to implement the program weren't involved in the planning so there were a few holes in our understanding of how things were supposed to work. If everyone works together on all stages though, then it's easier for things to flow smoothly when something goes wrong.

Despite the challenges, SLP proved to be a major success. The kids all had a great time and it was fun to see so many faces at the library. Even if there were a few bumps along the way, nothing burned down so it couldn't have been that bad...right? ;)