2023-04-28 SPLAT Curiosity Report: Volume 14, Issue 1

Featured Story

Re-Launching a Legacy

Several years on from the worst of the COVID-19 turbulence, my library has struggled to re-establish successful adult programs. I don’t have time or capacity for comprehensive program-building right now, but I’ve wanted to do something to help close this gap in our services. So, I looked into relaunching one of our more successful adult programs from before 2020 – a movie night.

Movie night had been successful for years and had a devoted following of older adults. Mostly we’d shown classic films, or movies carefully curated to appeal to the regular attendees. It seemed like perfect low-hanging fruit, with one exception – we no longer have our old movie license! It was a system-wide subscription (I think with Swank) that didn’t see enough use to be cost-effective to begin with, so it was dropped while my library was shut down in 2020. We do have the ability to show some films through other licenses, but these are either:

A)      Documentaries
B)      International films
C)      Independent films
D)      Very old
E)      Some combination of the above

This was not the same kind of selection our old group liked to see. I spent hours combing through our collection and was eventually able to pick out 3 documentaries that were interesting, short-ish, and not too explicit. We purchased drinks and popcorn, did what we could to promote it, and we’re giving it a shot! As of this writing I’ve shown 1 movie – 3 people came, but only 1 stayed to the end of the program. We discussed the documentary afterwards, and it turns out he had been a regular at our old movie night. He said that he only comes to the library one night a month, and just happened to see me setting things up. The customer gave me some feedback and agreed to spread the word to other folks he knew from the old program. With any luck, I’ll be able to build from here.

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t approach program-building like this. It’s backwards to take a resource and ask, “how can I offer this to customers?”, instead of figuring out what customers would actually benefit from us offering. But I think that many of us are still in a process of piecing things back together – both in our services and ourselves. If there was ever a time when we should cut ourselves slack for chasing low-hanging fruit, it’s now. Best of luck to everyone trying to breathe new life into old programs!

By Simon Clifford

Fail Forward

We’ve all been there. You pour your heart into a program, and no one shows up. You try something new, and you fall on your face. Sound familiar? Fail Forward is the place to share your failures, and give you the opportunity to share what you learned from them. Did you promote your program in a different way after no one showed up? Maybe you took a new approach to the new thing you were excited about? Awesome! Share your story via our online form so others can learn, and realize that failure is often part of the process.

Two Departments 

Working in a hybrid role between two departments has its benefits. For one, it’s fun to be tasked with so many different responsibilities. Take for example how, in one department, I bring mobile circulation to a couple of schools each month. In the other, the majority of my work is made up of programming. Often, I’m even splitting time between departments on the same day! The variety keeps things fresh.
 
On the other hand, it can be frustrating to maintain two distinct sets of responsibilities and duties with two distinct schedules (not to mention the need to sync up those schedules each week as timelines and responsibilities shift).

It can be very challenging.

I have on more than one occasion mismanaged my allotted time between these departments, giving more to one at the expense of the other. I have also (as a consequence of said mismanagement) gone over my total hours for the week with reckless abandon.

So what have I learned? How have I overcome this failure?

To be honest, I don’t think I have yet. But I have made inroads into improvement.

One such inroad was made when I started using a workOS at work. It hasn’t completely solved the challenge of maintaining the division of time across calendars. But it has helped me be more efficient and more focused.
And in one of the two departments I work with, 100% of the people are using it to work smarter.

By Chris Thielen 

Crush Corner

Is there a library you follow on social media who is always doing new and exciting things? How about a blog you follow that inspires you? What about a new idea, book, or resource that you want to share? Library Crush Corner is a place for those working in Idaho libraries to share what inspires them, and who or what they’re crushing on… in a professional sense. Share your story via our online form so we can publish it in a future issue!

Board Games at the Brooklyn Public Libraries, New York

The Brooklyn Public Library in New York has many board games in its collection. Their website shows they have gone the extra mile to categorize the fun. This is done in many ways from the player’s age, game type, and player count. The collection has over one hundred games, even for young children (ages 2-6 years old), and their patrons can check out up to three games at a time.

Their loan process is as simple as placing a loan request, then the game is transferred to one of their branches that handles games. Then patrons have three weeks to play the game(s) before needing to return them. They specify that the games cannot be returned via book drops.

By Jessica Fleener

SPLAT explores the ever-evolving library world and supports library folks as they adapt to meet the needs of their communities. Library folk throughout the state of Idaho volunteer to serve on the Special Projects Library Action Team (SPLAT). Learn more about SPLAT at https://libraries.idaho.gov/splat/ 

SPLAT is brought to you by the Idaho Commission for Libraries and was made possible, in part, by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (LS-246156-OLS-20). The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.