Reflections from above
Well, today marked the end of my month and a bit as acting branch manager, Sydenham Library. Looking back on over the past month, it has given me a new appreciation of what my boss actually does.
I guess from the point of a worker, it is very easy to sit back whenever something goes wrong, or something just does not seem fair, and wonder to yourself "What exactly does my boss do, it doesn't seem like she does anything". Why, yes, to an extent they do none of the labors that make the place function, they are like the mortar in a house. When we think of a wall, we think of the bricks, and they make up the wall... but there is one thing we really don't think about that is holding all those bricks together... the mortar.
When I was first asked to be acting manager, I thought to myself, this is going to be a breeze, the place will pretty much run itself, and I will have so much extra time to get little tasks I have been putting off for ages finished. I can now say, out of all those little tasks, I probably only got around to doing one. I can always tell when I am challenged at work and enjoying it, cause the days and hours just fly by. This experience was like that, it feels like only a couple of days ago I was waving off Inna thinking of what pranks I can set up in her office for when she returns.
This experience has also given me the opportunity to see how things flow from the other side attending co-ordinators meetings and the like. I can see why sometimes despite our constant nagging at the branch, it can be difficult for Inna to commit to trying different things, or improving some workflows.
It appears to me that libraries have so much potential to deliver valuable services to the community and help people better themselves and become technologically more advanced, and lets use the catch cry, become life long learners. I think there is really only one thing currently holding libraries back from achieving this with fantastic results... Librarians. The sooner all these old dinosaurs retire and die, the better. I know it sounds a bit Nazi like, but fire the librarians and burn the books. Whilst trying to give the world the impression that they are now hip, know what a blog is, and can be cool. They are a bunch of scared little old ladies who are too obsessed with trying to keep the piece with everyone, and try to create a model of services and workflows the suite everyone... when basically different areas have different needs, and different needs are often addressed in varying services and procedure to match those needs.
If you are a librarian reading this, yes congratulations you are actually using a fang-dangled computer and reading one of those modern bloggy-who-ze-what's-it's... but maybe you should retire now - Why we are at it, lets change the name library to 'community learning centre', 'technology and information hub'.
To close... the biggest thing I have learnt from my manager stint... write everything down in a diary. It's bloody hard trying to keep track of everything that's happening, and where all your staff are. I shall now go back to being mortal.
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