Learning to Spin Plates

Most days being a rural library director feels like being one of those jugglers who spins plates. I keep running around from one plate to the next, trying to give it just enough spin to keep it going, but not so much it flies off the stick and crashes to the floor. I run as fast I can from one task to the next, hoping I get there in time. Or to use the hat metaphor, I’m switching hats so fast, I can’t remember which one I have on. And the truth is that sometimes it doesn’t work. I fall behind, don’t make it to the next task on time, and things don’t get done.

In this job there are a lot of plates to spin, or hats to wear. My job description lists my responsibilities as covering, administrative services, collection management, service and service promotion, personnel management, business management, communication and public relations and facilities management. And those are just the beginning, because under each one is a host of individual tasks. Take collection management, for instance, it involves maintaining the policy, selecting books, ordering books, processing books, paying for books, answering questions about books for every area in the library.

Here’s a list of tasks library directors do. Finance includes creating the budget, balancing the budget, doing payroll, and paying bills for starters. Personnel includes advertising for staff, interviewing, hiring, training, supervising, scheduling staff, evaluating, and even firing. There’s all the little things that no one thinks about, like overseeing circulation, answering patrons questions, answering staff questions, training staff to answer patron questions, finding missing items, and trouble shooting computers, which usually involves crawling around on the floor. Then there’s programming, the part I love the most and get to do the least, which includes developing programs, doing programs, getting grants for programs, and finding volunteers to help with programs. There’s scheduling: scheduling programs, community rooms, meetings, repair visits. Or supplies, which need to be ordered and picked up, There’s filling in when someone is sick, creating manuals and policies, doing the annual report, maintaining and updating the website, writing the newsletter and the many things that we do but forget we do. The list is overwhelming. And for the rural library director, please don’t forget shoveling snow, taking in the garbage cans, plunging the toilet, or calling, waiting around for and arguing with repair people!

Some days it feels like the jobs of a “real” librarian, what we got into this business for, go by the wayside. Reader’s advisory, reference questions, story hour often take a back seat. I am supposed to do it all in 35 hours a week. It’s hard to figure out how though, so usually I'm working extra hours and becoming very irritable.

There are always people willing to give advice. The biggest items of advice I get are to use volunteers, delegate to staff, or cut back on programs. Those suggestions make me think the person giving advice has no idea what they are talking about. Volunteers require training, supervision and scheduling, all things that take up more of my time, not less. Delegating to staff would be great, but it assumes there are staff to delegate to, or staff who have the time to take on more jobs. And of course stopping programs is cutting out a library director’s heart. It’s what we’re good at, what gives the library and the job, heart and soul. It’s something I can’t consider doing.

So what’s the solution? The truth is most days I don’t have a plan, a scheme, an answer, other than to just try and keep it all together. I settle for keeping the most important and immediate plates spinning, wearing the most important hat today. And sometimes, I just have to take a plate down, or even let it crash. I also keep nudging the board for that elusive long range plan, which just might find someone else to wear a couple of these hats. Spread the hat hair around – that should be our motto!