What are ways our organizations can unite support staff and librarians? On this show Machelle Keen, User Services and Facilities Coordinator for Vanderbilt Libraries in Tennesee, talks about this important aspect of development for our organizations and how, as a library support staff member for over thirty-three years, she created a conference to help do this. Her passion for uniting, supporting, and developing all members of our teams bridges the gap between support staff and librarians to help everyone’s talents shine in providing excellent library services.
Transcript
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Adriane Herrick Juarez:
This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership Podcast, where we talk about libraries, and leadership, and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations and strategic insights in the profession.
What are ways our organizations can unite support staff and librarians? On this show, Machelle Keen, User Services and Facilities Coordinator for Vanderbilt Libraries in Tennessee, talks about this important aspect of development for our organizations and how, as a library support staff member for over thirty-three years, she created a conference to help do this. Her passion for uniting, supporting, and developing all members of our teams bridges the gap between support staff and librarians. Enjoy the show!
Machelle, welcome to the show.
Machelle Keen:
Hi, Adriane. Thanks so much. I’m so happy to be here.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #1: And, I’m so happy to have you here. Today we are talking about bridging the gap between support staff and librarians. You have been working as a library support staff for over thirty-three years and have a real passion for this topic. Will you please share what initially drew you to start thinking about this and talking about it with others? 01:35
Machelle Keen:
So whenever I first came—there was this conception that library support staff or library assistants, basically what we were called, were just either the clerical help, or the person that checked out a book, or the person that gave directions to the bathroom, which is something that we all in libraries get every day. But then there were a lot of other important things that library staff do that weren’t being recognized. So I felt like there was something there that needed to have a gap bridged, and that’s what I’ve been working on.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #2: That’s wonderful. You’re right. Everyone’s contributions to our teams are so important. What gaps have you seen over the years that have the potential to come between support staff and librarians? 02:38
Machelle Keen:
Library assistants are typically the first person that you see when you walk in the door, because librarians are much more specialized. The typical patron has no clue who they’re talking to. They don’t know if they’re talking to an administrator, if they’re talking to a library assistant—if they’re talking to a librarian. Their objective is to find the answers that they need, if they can, from the first person that they see. This whole concept doesn’t diminish what a librarian’s role is, but it embellishes what an assistant’s role is, because it means that their part is very important, because they have to make a decision, Is this something that I need to kick up to a librarian, or is this something that I can handle myself?
That’s where that whole bridging of the gap comes in. Where do we realize that we need to include a librarian in this, because they need more extensive help than what I can provide? It’s all about the best way to serve our patrons—is what the final answer is.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #3: Absolutely. So given what you’ve said, it makes so much sense to try and bridge these gaps so that everyone in our libraries feels comfortable working together to best serve our communities. What strategies do you suggest for library teams to begin bridging the gap between support staff and librarians? 03:59
Machelle Keen:
The biggest thing that we have been focused on is that all of us are support staff at every level in the library. We’re all doing something in our job that supports some aspect of the library functioning. Each part is critical to making sure that our patrons get what they’re looking for—that’s the key to everything. What they need is our goal.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #4: You are so passionate about doing this work that you started a local conference to support these efforts. Will you tell us about that? 04:45
Machelle Keen:
Thanks. Yes. My current director is incredibly supportive and believes that all staff at every level should be developed. When we were looking—originally for things for support staff, because we had a lot of people asking, What can we do to develop our staff? I was one of those. We realized that almost everything that was available was strictly targeted at librarians and not support staff—and getting them to the level they needed to be supported.
I said to her, I think there may be a niche that we can fill with this. She looked at me and she said, Okay, write a proposal and bring it back to me. I spent a week and I wrote up everything that I could possibly dream of. We sat down and she helped me tweak it. Then she looked at me and she said, Okay, so now it’s your turn to present this to the university librarian. I’m going to get an appointment, and I’ll be there to back you up, but you have to do the presenting.
I was very nervous I have to admit. But I went in, and she was there with me. I presented in ten minutes. I had a budget. I had a mandate to include all of our staff. We have nine libraries that we support, so all of the support staff would be included—eighty-eight people. We got it all set up and started that process.
One of the things that the university librarian requested was that after we did it for our group, flip it in six months and make it an area thing where we included the regional libraries around us—even if we did the same exact thing, just to make sure that we were making this available to other support staff, that they could have the same experience that we had, and that’s what we did.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #5: That’s marvelous. What do you focus on at these conferences? 07:06
Machelle Keen:
The biggest thing is that we focus on the fact that everybody within the library needs to be developed, from the administrative assistant, to the library assistant, to the subject, librarian, to the director. Our conference welcomes everybody with open arms, whether it’s them presenting or whether it is them participating. We believe that everybody should be included, and it’s a very inclusive conference. That’s our biggest thing. It’s really, I mean, we’ve had all of those. We’ve had directors of libraries in big cities to just an administrative assistant that has just started and wants to learn what the library world is really about.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #6: Given that, what would you recommend for others wanting to start
initiatives to bridge the gap between support staff and librarians? 07:57
Machelle Keen:
The big thing is, as a support staff, you have to be willing to present your ideas. It’s not easy. Sometimes you just have to pull your bootstraps up and say, Hey, I have this idea and I want to share it, and I would like your help to develop it.
Then as supervisors, you have to be open and willing to have these support staff grow and develop their ideas—help them move their ideas forward. My boss is good about—if I take something in she helps tweak it. It’s a team effort. It’s not us against them. It’s a together thing.
I never knew that I was good at presenting. I never knew that I could develop a conference. At the beginning, I felt like I was swimming in the deep end [laughter], but I had all the support I needed. If I got to a point where I didn’t know what to do, there were plenty of people around that I could go to and say, Hey, how do I fix this, or what’s the best way to look at this? And that—being able to have that resource is just immeasurable. You can’t even begin to imagine what that does for not only morale, but for growth, and for being able to share things out to others—to say, Oh, hey, look, we did this at our library and have you thought about doing this, or what are you doing at your library that we could possibly implement? I can’t tell you how many things, when I have gone to a conference, I have brought back and implemented and it’s just gone over like gangbusters. So that makes you feel really good about the things that you’re doing.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #7: Absolutely. And I’m guessing you’ve had great feedback from the support staff level and the librarian level about this. What have people said to you about what they gain on both sides from this? 09:56
Machelle Keen:
There is rarely, rarely, ever anyone that has anything bad to say. Almost everyone is very thankful that—especially support staff are included. That has been the biggest thing because, you know, like I said before this, there were not a lot of options. You could go to the conference, but it was so targeted toward librarians that sometimes it was like, I don’t even know what they’re talking about. I don’t know what that acronym means. Because, you know, in libraries we’re big on our acronyms [laughter].
That’s the thing, we have made it so expansive that everybody feels included. I think that that’s the biggest thing, that we’re all part of the library world from, like I said—from the administrative assistant all the way to the university librarian. If we are opening our arms and welcoming everybody in, that’s inclusivity, which we are big on developing right now, and I think it’s a big bonus for us in the library world that everybody’s being included.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #8: All of us working together is truly the key to success. Is there anything else you’d like to share? 11:19
Machelle Keen:
One of the things that we are doing right now as we speak, is that we are reframing the conference. We’re bringing it back to Vanderbilt. We’ve changed the name. It’s going to be the Southern Library Support Staff Conference. We’ll be hosting from Vanderbilt. If anyone’s interested I’m very happy to put you on the mailing list. You can send me an email. It’s Michele, m a c h e l l e dot keen, k e e n—at Vanderbilt dot edu.
If you want to present what you’re doing at your library, we will send the request for proposals out to you. If you would like to attend so that you can find out what things are happening around the South, you’re very welcome to do either of those things. We are very open and we have like sixty-five slots to fill. So we are looking for people to do presentations, so please feel free to join us.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #9: What a great opportunity. Thank you Machelle. Do you have any favorite management or leadership books or resources and why? 12:38
Machelle Keen:
I have two that I’ve been using a lot in the last couple of years. One of them is Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I attended a course here at Vanderbilt through our Employee Learning and Engagement Team, and it was a six week course. The biggest thing is that it helps you to open up and explore things that you never even thought about. It’s one of the best things that I’ve ever done. It helped me to open up and expand where I was and what I was doing.
Then last year at a conference, one of the ladies that presented said she had done a book club with all of her library. The book that they used was The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy, by Jon Gordon. I actually read this while I was on a plane going to a conference, and though I don’t condone writing in books I took notes, because I didn’t have a notebook and it was my own copy. I have actually read it twice since then—just to go back and gather more ideas. But it’s all about the positive energy you put out comes back to you, and then the negative energy just kind of drags you down. I’ve always kind of felt that way, but this book really lifted it up and made it where I was like, Oh yes, this is what I’ve been talking about. Those are the two that I’m doing right now.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #10: Those sound great. Machelle, in closing, what do libraries mean to you personally? 14:29
Machelle Keen:
I started reading when I was about four-and-a-half, five years old, and my mother was smart enough to take me to the local small town public library. The librarian there took me under her wing. Every week when I would come in she would have ten, twelve books ready for me to check out. I just had this voracious appetite for reading, and I still do. I usually read between 150 to 200 books a year, but that was one of the things that really drew me to libraries in the beginning.
Then it also reiterates to me that libraries are a source that doesn’t matter what your standing in life is, you have access to the public library, and you can utilize that. The library is one of the greatest assets that we have in our busy, stressed, overworked world that we can—you can go in and grab a book, and sit down and read for a little while and either get out of your head or learn something new. That’s something that’s very important to everyone, to be able to have access to that.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
That is so important, Machelle. And I think what you’re talking about today, all of us working together to make the kinds of experiences you’re talking about possible, really is the key to having excellent libraries across our nation. Our support staff is so important. And what we all do, working together is really a powerful thing. So thank you for sharing about this and creating this conference that gets everyone involved. I’m very impressed. Thank you so much.
Machelle Keen:
Thank you.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
You’ve been listening to Library Leadership podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes, tune in to Library Leadership Podcast.com, where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right to your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
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