An Old Friend in the Library - when rethinking service imperatives, let compassion be your guide

from an article by Jennifer Burek Pierce in americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/my-mind/old-friend-library.
Are libraries serving elderly patrons in the best ways?  Take a closer look at the experiences encountered by Jennifer Burek Pierce and her friend Doris.

As summer days grew longer and the heat increased, so did my trips to the public library. This summer, I had a companion: a longtime friend’s 84-year-old mother—now another good friend. While I cruised the children’s section, Doris would head to the shelves with large-print books. Her library use heightened my sensibilities about how we serve aging adults.

Despite professional statements about serving the elderly—notably Guidelines for Library and Information Services to Older Adults from ALA’s Reference and User Services Association and Serving Seniors: A Resource Manual for Missouri Libraries—I’ve begun to doubt that these ideals play an active part in our daily practices.

Doris’s library habits wouldn’t, at first glance, seem significant to anyone. It wasn’t until I’d been in the building with her over the course of a few weeks, attempting to find a balance between watching to make sure she didn’t fall and leaving her to her own devices, that I started to recognize the patterns.

On almost every visit, she looked for books in the exact same part of the large-print section. Eventually I realized this shelf wasn’t populated with her favorite authors; rather, that particular row, closest to both an entrance and a self-check station, didn’t require her to walk the full length of the building. Also, someone regularly left one of those round scooting stools in that aisle, undoubtedly to aid young, able-bodied shelvers. Doris could never have used the stool for its intended purpose—to stand on it—but the stool did provide her with a place to sit while she browsed. She is, admittedly, tiny, but you could be a few inches taller and still be incapable of reaching, or even really seeing, a third of the books on these shelves. Plus, I’ve scanned the new bookstore-emulating part of the library that is furnished with real chairs, easy-to-reach shelves, and cover-forward shelving. Large-print titles aren’t to be found there.

Watching the staff interact with her was frustrating. I know they were trying to treat her as the capable, independent woman she would very much like to be—and how she tries to present herself. Once, I came looking for her after finding my own books. She had asked for help locating the DVD of Brideshead Revisited, and a staff member had given her a slip of paper on which three call letters were written in the penmanship equivalent of 10-point type. The item Doris sought was on a bottom shelf at the far side of the room.

I know that libraries are busy places and staffers face many demands. I know all elderly people aren’t the same and that some truly don’t want or need that much assistance. Still, I couldn’t help thinking, “This is how you serve a 4-foot-11 woman with white hair, trifocals, and a hesitating gait?”

My concerns are framed by the time I spend in youth services departments. Think of all the things we do to make those spaces usable for kids: low shelves; bold, attractive signage. Think of all the training and professional rhetoric about establishing ways to interact with teens that recognize their need for independence versus the inherent limitations of their age. Why don’t we strive to serve the elderly in the same ways?

Such an endeavor brings us back to the roots of our profession, to Samuel S. Green’s 1876 article, “Personal Relations between Librarians and Readers,” in which he urged librarians to attend to all patrons’ varied needs. Three years later he wrote, “I would have in every library a friend of the young, whom they can consult freely when in want of assistance” (Library Journal, vol. 4, no. 9).

I would also have in every library a friend of the elderly, tactful and sensitive to their changing needs.

JENNIFER BUREK PIERCE is associate professor of library and information science at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Mapping Out Your Big Picture Communications Timeline

This is from NonProfit Marketing Guide.com by Kivi Leroux Miller http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/resources/strategy/mapping-out-your-big-picture-communications-timeline/

Do you feel like you are just throwing out a bunch of words and pictures into the universe without much rhyme or reason, and calling it your communications plan?

One way to bring some order and focus to your communications plan is to sketch out what I call your Big Picture Communications Timeline.

This is often the first step I’ll do with new clients, because it helps me see all the big parts, both moving and immobile.

This is best done on a big whiteboard, but you can also do it with a big sheet of paper. I think this is one of those times where sketching it out offline works best. Once you are done editing, you can clean it up as you move it online.

Since this is a timeline, pick your starting and ending points. A year, with tick marks for each month, is a good place to start, but if another time range makes more sense for your organization, use that.

Here’s what you plot out on that timeline.
Big Events, Outside Your Organization’s Control

Look at the calendar that your organization, your participants, your supporters, and the rest of the world are living with. What holidays, seasonal events, or other regular occurrences have a big effect on your communications?

For organizations that do political advocacy, the election cycle is often important, so you’d put down filing deadlines and primary and general election dates. For animal shelters, the start of kitten season, when stray cats start to have their litters, is mid-Spring (most kittens are born between April and October).

Food banks benefit from lots of food drives in November and December, but the shelves are often bare during the summer when the people who typically organize food drives (including schools) are busy with vacation plans. Nonprofits that offer after-school sports would chart the season openers and championships for the different sports leagues they play in.

Big Events, Within Your Organization’s Control

Next, add the big events that are within your control. Start with events that you host, including everything from annual fundraisers, workshops or conferences, member meetings, major performances, and lobby days. Then add on similar types of events that others host but that you co-sponsor or otherwise participate in in a major way. I’m not talking about events that one of your staff members might attend as professional development, but those events that your whole organization is involved with as a core part of what you do.

Your Major Story Arcs

On top of these events, layer on the major story arcs within your organization, roughly approximating when they happen. These are the major stories that play out as you deliver your programs and services. These are often tied to events you already have on the calendar now, so start there. Try to map out the beginning, middle, and end of those story arcs.

For example, let’s say a Friends of the Library group holds an annual used book sale in the May. While they will have already marked the sale weekend on the calendar above, now it’s time to build out the story around the book sale. If we treat the book sale as the end of the story, asking the community for donations of used books in February and March could be the beginning of the story and sorting and organizing the books in April could be the middle.

Or, you could treat the book sale (or any other fundraiser) as the beginning of the story, since the money raised there is probably being used for upcoming programming. In this case, the end of story might be a new Story Hour Series in the fall. The middle of the story, in the summer, could be the selection of books, authors, and activities for the series.

With these big milestones and stories in place, it’s now much easier to start breaking down this big picture into smaller chunks of time, like a quarter or a month, and to develop a more specific editorial calendar from there.