It's nice to think you've gotten it right

After I wrote about our library's problems with donations the other day, I went on to use my collected thoughts to write some donation guidelines for our library's blog. I ran them past the administrator and she agreed that this pretty much covered the issue so I posted them and crossed my fingers that some of our patrons would actually read them. Aside from making plans for a little signage on the library door for when we're closed, I figured that was pretty much it.

Not so. I was gratified to read about our new guidelines on one of the big library science news sites, LISNews, and even more flattered to garner a "how it should work" from my librarian role model, jessamyn. Don't get me wrong--it's not the fame that tickles me but rather the hope that if the Big Kids think I've hit the right note, maybe it'll actually help work to guide our donors to better practices. That would indeed please me.

Comments

[Elabeth]

Just out of curiosity, why is your library only open in two hour-ish bursts?

[salt]

why is your library only open in two hour-ish bursts?

Because this is a tiny community (maybe 500, although the population doubles or maybe even triples in the summer months) and we are entirely volunteer-staffed and grant-supported. The state grant sets a minumum of 10 hours per week of service, and by going with short periods spread afternoon and evening over three days of the week, we end up being available for just about everyone who wants to get in and we don't wear our volunteers out. After all, asking for two hours out of someone's week is a little more gentle than asking for half a work day. Keep in mind, too, that here in the Bush where we often have to wait days for mail or fresh milk when the weather is too poor to fly or boat, we operate to a slower rhythm than one does in the city: we don't really have to get in to the library today so long as it's going to be open tomorrow or maybe the next day.

[Elabeth]

I knew there would be a good reason so I just had to ask. haha

The town I grew up in had about 1200 people. We couldn't manage to sustain our own library :( It's really awesome you guys have been able to pull it off in such a small community.

[salt]

We couldn't manage to sustain our own library

Aw, that's too bad. But odds are that you live in a community where you can drive to other communities that do have libraries, so that you still have access to library service of some sort. Here, since we're not connected to the road system, we have to fly or boat to get anywhere else. That's done on a rather less frequent schedule than most of us turn around library materials, making us a poor fit for other libraries' circulation policies (although the library over in Homer has in the past been gracious about mailing things back and forth when we've had folks here working on specific research projects). I think that this isolation makes for a bit more incentive to keep our own facility going, then. But without a doubt, this would not happen without the state funding, small though it is, and the continuity of a handful of volunteers, some of whom have put in on the order of 30 years at this work. In fact, our administrator was honored by a recent governor's wife in a statewide award for her long term volunteer contribution to our library. I'm rather pleased, really, that this community can adapt to traveling to shop for groceries or to see a doctor, both of which services are rather limited here, but continues to invest their time in maintaining a library.