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Pump Up Your Programs
In 2005, San Diego County Library had 4,188 programs for youth, from birth to the age of eighteen. In four years, that number has nearly tripled, to 12,061 programs a year. Divided by 365 days, that's 33 youth services programs a day (a convenient stat to recall since SDCL is comprised of 33 branches and 2 bookmobiles)-a youth services program at each branch every day of the year. Program attendance more than tripled, from 96,002 to 289, 395. It's no surprise that other stats show correlating increases. Annual circulation, which was just under 4 million in 2005, is now solidly north of 8 million.
These great numbers can rightly be credited to our stellar staff and the steady leadership provided by library administration, but if one workplace habit can be identified as the reason for the increases, it staff's intentional promotion of best practices.
Best practices are by definition the ideas and procedures that work in most situations. Example: Taking a break from Wednesday morning storytimes for a few weeks to regroup or (gasp!) go on vacation? Best Practice: Invite families to make a Wednesday morning playdate at the library, a time for parents to get much needed peer contact and for the kids to socialize. There's no interruption in the family routine and when Wednesday morning storytimes reconvene, families return and hopefully feel just a bit more nurtured by the relationships they've built. This works whatever your community demographics. It is a proven best practice.
By sharing best practices, we've been able to replicate successful programs from one end of the county to the other. San Diego County Library produces and distributes three in-house email newsletters devoted to promoting best practices (Adult Services, Youth Services and Branch Best Practices). In a large system (we cover an area nearly 4,000 square miles), it's a convenient way to concisely share ideas, show photos, and offer contact info for follow up. For San Diego County Library, the email newsletter is another example of a best practice.
We've also made a concerted effort to package programs that work so they can be shared widely. We currently have more than two dozen kits for use as after school programs, activities like legos, card games, reader's theatre - plug and play programs. We've created more than two hundred (English and Spanish-language) storytime kits, complete with books, puppets, craft ideas and master copies of early literacy information to hand to parents. Staff who work with teens have several dozen teen program kits to use, including a recent carnival addition. Teen Services Librarian Jennifer Lawson and her Teen Advisory Guild (TAG) advisors put together a circuit of activities for teens to perform at the annual county-wide TAG gathering. In a race, teams of teens went from booth to booth performing wacky tasks like spelling words YMCA style and immunizing wild (stuffed) animals - maybe the most popular. The program was a great success - a best practice program - so Jennifer packaged the pieces with clear instructions to create a Teen Program Kit - one of a couple dozen that see heavy rotation through the branches.
Now teens who couldn't get to the TAG event can still enjoy the activities. Branch staff can spend their time interacting with teens, not starting from scratch, gathering bits and pieces, buying things they may not have use for after the program. By following best practices in packaging programs, the economy of scale is hard to deny. It saves material funds as well as our precious staffing hours. Doing more with less seems to be the directive these days. Identifying and promoting best practices will help us to do just that.
Submitted to California Libraries by:
Pat Downs Bright
President, Youth Services Interest Group
Posted on August 18, 2009 9:13 AM | Permalink