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February 21, 2008
How Everyone Contributes
If you ever wonder about the way that an organization works, you need to look at the way that people behind the scenes operate. At the Kresge Library, we have twenty positions. It is easy, in a library, to focus on the number of "professional positions" that you have, or how many librarians you have one staff. We have 8 (myself included).
But the way that I look at the library is that we all have a role to play and we all contribute to the general success of the operation. While it is sometimes hard to articulate this, one example came over the radio this morning.
Morning Edition's Susan Stamberg did a piece on the Script Supervisor this morning. When a movie is made and acknowledged during the awards shows, like the Oscars, we have awards for actors, directors, pictures, cinematographers, art directors, etc. But there are critical roles in the making of a movie that rarely shine in the light.
For a library to be productive, you need great people doing professional work. You need to convey to everyone that their work is critical to the operation of the unit. This is true if we are working with faculty on a research project, with students on a MAP team, and with staff as well compile course packs. It is also true when we collect the mail, when we check in periodicals, when we update web-pages. I hope I convey that. I guess it is something that we always need to work on.
Posted by cseeman at February 21, 2008 08:59 AM