Participatory Services–Reflections From an Evolving Library

As we delve deeper into the concept of hyperlinked libraries, I keep thinking of the library I work at and the changes we’ve undergone, particularly in the last year. I’m starting my third year as a school librarian, though I was a teacher at this same school for several years before. We have an impressive collection of books that many people adore, but I do think the library’s approach in the past was ultra-traditional; there also wasn’t really room for change or new ideas. We hired a new director last year, however, and she has made quite a few changes, some of which have impacted our library at a fundamental level. When I first started in this MLIS program in 2020, our library simply did not reflect most of the interesting approaches and theories I was reading about in my classes. In the last year, however, I have felt more and more connections between my work and my courses, and I have felt so proud of the work we are doing. We’ve been working hard to get more people engaged in the library, so a few concepts really stood out to me in this week’s reading.

 

Radical trust:

I love the concept of radical trust mentioned in our lecture for this module (Stephens, n.d.). My director has used the same phrase during some intense discussions, so it jumps out at me whenever I hear it. In the context of our library, concerns arose when she removed our security sensors at the doors, and again when she added an option for self-checkout. It’s a phrase I had not heard before, but I find it conveys a key concept at the heart of community building (itself an important part of school environments). Without knowing the term, it was also at the heart of my classroom practices, and I believe it brought out the best in my kiddos. Instead of teaching our kids (11-18 years old) that we’re watching them or we’ll know if they do something wrong, we can show them that we will trust them. And if they break our trust, which certainly happens when kids are learning about their boundaries, we’ll give still give them another chance to prove themselves. In doing this, I hope we model behaviors they can take into our wider community and model.

I mentioned the self-checkout issue above, and that too interested me in this module’s readings. We introduced a self-checkout option last year via an iPad and app. Many students loved it, but faculty and staff were horrified, including library staff. People wondered whether it would replace library staff, of course. Once again, people expressed concerns about books getting stolen, leading to more discussions about radical trust. I found the explanations in “Automatic for the People” to be especially helpful, and I wish I had read that article last year (Zulkey, 2019). Zulkey presents automation and self-checkout as a means of expanding services and making the patrons’ experiences better; it frees up the staff for other projects and other interactions with patrons, making the overall experience better: “I told that journalist, the conversation would regard whether we repurpose one of our staff, who is doing transactional work, to do more transformational work enhancing library resources and programs,” (Zulkey, 2019).

This (self-checkout) would be one time when I am actually glad that we didn’t immediately use feedback for decision making. Self-checkout has been quite unpopular with campus adults, though it’s widely popular with students. With time, I think our adult patrons and staff will see the benefits of this approach, though it wasn’t obvious to begin with. It’s an example of a time when feedback on what people would like to see in the library is useful (programming, interactive displays, etc.), though the feedback on our method of being able to provide those additional services (automation) is not yet useful. I suppose this is where leadership and expertise on the part of a librarian can temporarily take precedence, and perhaps the tone of the feedback will change over time.

 

Participation at all levels:

One thing we haven’t really done yet is incorporate students into our planning and formal feedback. My director and I have discussed it, but I think it just feels overwhelming at the moment, while we’re still trying to get a handle on some of the changes we’ve already begun to implements, particularly in regards to our collection. We’re in the middle of a massive weeding project (trying to trim down a never-before-weeded collection of 135,000), we’re moving towards genrefying, and we’ve been very focused on providing opportunities for interaction and engagement in the library through clubs, displays, programming, and a small amount of digital engagement as well. We’re starting from scratch on these projects, and we’ve made a massive effort to include faculty and staff in the weeding process as much as is possible. I’m really proud of our transparency and openness, but additional projects and engagement will probably expand down the road a bit, so to speak. I think once we have a handle on the collection later this school year, I’ll be looking to incorporate the kiddos into our planning processes more.

I particularly loved the idea of teens participating in designing library spaces (Costanza, 2015; Mack, 2013). The idea of passing control to teens is probably daunting for many, particularly when budgets and schedules are involved, but the results in The Mix in San Francisco are stunning (Costanza, 2015). I’ve seen our kids do so many incredible things when given the opportunity, and I love the idea of presenting our kids with a blank slate and seeing what they can come up with. I think it would be complicated process, but it looks so rewarding, particularly in terms of engagement! Once we’ve finished weeding, we are hoping to redo the carpeting, shelving, and some of the furniture in our library. I am not sure how our leadership would feel about allowing kids to control so much, but perhaps we would be allowed to invite the kids to redesign the Reading Rooms, which are two large spaces currently designated for them anyway.

I was also considering the merits of inviting the kids to help design interactive displays and activities. We already involve parent groups quite a bit throughout the year, but we haven’t invited the kids yet. As I finished working on an interactive display for Banned Books week, it occurred to me that I should have invited students to help with (or possibly take on) that process. The next few displays will be presented by parent groups, but the next time we are able to plan a display, I plan to invite the students to help suggest topics and plan activities.

 

eBooks:

I have one final topic for this module, mainly because it made me chuckle. I’ve had many conversations with teachers who worried that we were moving towards getting rid of all of the books, particularly because of the combination of offering a new eBook app one school year and implementing our large-scale weeding project during the next school year. The funny thing is that our eBook checkouts were acceptable during COVID-related shutdowns, but in general, they’re not great. Our kids prefer paper books, though the adults in their lives always have trouble believing me when I tell them that in an effort to assuage their fears of going digital. In “The User Is (Still) Not Broken,” Bryan Kenney discussed this exact issue, and even mentioned the fact that teens do not like eBooks, despite what others assume (Kenney, 2014). I’m going to keep this article handy and show it to people the next time I engage in such a conversation! I particularly like the way Kenney worded it: “And, no, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between readers’ ages and format preferences, except that teens seem to really, really hate e-books (unless that’s the only format they can get Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy in),” (Kenney, 2014). It’s so funny to me that the assumption is always that kids prefer digital everything; whenever I offer eBooks as an option to my kids even the sweetest, most polite ones tend to sneer. Are eBooks cringe, to use their slang? They do love access to audiobooks, though. Between that and fleeting interest in eBooks for travel, the kids’ usage rates are only just high enough to keep the app around.

 

 

Resources

Casey, M. (2011, October 20). Revisiting participatory service in trying times. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2011/10/20/revisiting-participatory-service-in-trying-times-a-ttw-guest-post-by-michael-casey/

Costanza, K. (2015, August 28). In San Francisco, teens design a living room for high-tech learning at the public library. YOUmedia. https://youmedia.org/news/in-san-francisco-teens-design-a-living-room-for-high-tech-learning-at-the-public-library/

Kenney, B. (2014, January 27). The user is (still) not broken. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/60780-the-user-is-still-not-broken.html

Mack, C. (2013, February 2). Crowdsourced design: Why Los Angeles is asking the public to create the library of the future. Good. https://www.good.is/articles/crowdsourced-design-why-los-angeles-is-asking-the-public-to-create-the-library-of-the-future

Stephens, M. (n.d.). Hyperlinked library participatory service & transparency [Lecture transcript]. Panopto. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://sjsu-ischool.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=2a19a4b6-e945-4d2e-abf1-aef3014172a5

Stephens, M. (2016). The heart of librarianship. ALA Editions.

Zulkey, C. (2019, September 3). Automatic for the people. American Libraries. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2019/09/03/automatic-people-self-service-libraries/