2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
There are a million details to keep track of. Fortunately I have a very motivated
staff, and we have good relations with the myriad of other parties affected. But
one crucial point is that you have to keep a close watch on it. No one—No One—
cares about your project as much as you do. Planning is good, contracts and
Statements of Work are all very well, but there’s no substitute for keeping watch all
the time.
We have identified some issues with the whole off-site concept Library staff will
retrieve materials for use by the College and Post communities. We expect to send
a van once a day, a trip of about 40 miles one-way, so some delays in service are
inevitable. Faculty have expressed understanding, but worry about the loss of
browsing and the unavoidable delay. Our microform collections will be in the cave,
and we have several patrons who regularly research them on weekends. They will
have to do a little planning.
Clausewitz famously spoke of friction, the general tendency of things to not work
right or get muddled in wartime. It’s true when moving a library, too. Are there
enough shelves where we need them? Did Kansas really have to reduce the bridge
over the Missouri to one lane just when we needed it? We’ll we have a van and a
driver to zip down to the cave every weekday, but how much more staff time will
be eaten up paging and reshelving? What’s the tornado plan for the temporary
building, which will essentially disintegrate into shrapnel during a windstorm? Did
anyone bring cookies?
As I write this, the move to the cave is nearing completion, and the move to the
temporary building starts next week. I have no doubt that plenty of friction will
arise during and after our move. We will have the opportunity to experiment with
some service features that may or may not pan out. For instance, staffing a
reference desk in the main classroom building, which is about 200 yards away.
How we handle the photocopiers, scanners, fax machine, and digital sender is still
somewhat up in the air. Our summer reading program will not depend on masses
of moppets from the Child Development Center inundating the library, but will
instead have librarians traveling to the kids with armloads of delectable books. If
the off-site location for our microfilm works well, we may relocate those resources
to a less accessible place when we return; after all, I haven’t bought a fiche
collection in ten years. I’m retiring a platoon of analog microform reader-printers in
favor of two digital ones, which should enhance the abilities of our researchers.
And, needless to say, there is the exciting and terrifying issue of technologic change
in the library profession as a whole. We know we are increasing network resources
when we return, in an attempt to entice more customers and provide a better
environment for our core academic users. Will we be adequately mobile-friendly?
Can the Army’s administration keep up with the need for usable, accessible,
content-rich web pages? How much manpower should I devote to our (justly)
popular digital library (http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/)? Will our reserve
shelves be replaced with e-resources next year? Next week? Stay tuned. If there’s
one thing for sure, it is that change is coming.