Developing a team management structure in a public library

Library Trends, Summer, 2004 by Betsy A. Bernfeld

Teton County Library consists of a main library (about 24,000 sq. ft.) in the town of Jackson and a small branch in Alta, Wyoming. Annual circulation is about 325,000, collection size is about 100,000 volumes, public Internet use is about 97,000 sessions per year, staff is comprised of 34 full-time employees and another 25 or so part-time employees, and the annual budget is approximately $2.6 million. It is a good size for a laboratory: small enough to be able to experiment, large enough to accommodate the tests.

The first team at the Teton County Library sprang right out of the woodwork, actually log work, as the library was housed in a little log cabin at the time. It was May 1994, and the present-day 24,000 sq. ft. facility existed only in blueprints. The library was just launching a political campaign to get a special use tax on the ballot to fund construction of the new library. At the same time, a fundraising drive was underway to pay for the building site. While the planning for these major events was being conducted in the back room by the director, Library Board, and consultants, the regular staff sat around a table in the reading room trying to figure out how to help.

The consensus of the staff was that they could generate a story a week for the local papers to raise the library's profile in the community. The children's department was already sending in press releases about its programming, and there were plenty of adult services that could be publicized. Some spectacular, at least showy, events could be helpful as well. The conversation in the reading room went something like this:

"It's probably a dumb idea," Sidney began. "I have a couple of llamas and we could march with them in the Old West Days Parade with signs that say 'LLamas for LLibraries.'"

Cindy, an artist, quickly piped up, "I could make some banners." Jenny offered a bag of colorful ribbons, someone's boyfriend had a black powder rifle, the school librarian had more llamas, children from the summer reading program could join us, there was a fake handlebar mustache in the lost and found ...

The once-dumb idea assumed lavish proportions, and, without even realizing it, the staff had launched the Parade Team.

In spite of the fact that the children got tired of leading the llamas, so the adult services supervisor, whose fake mustache was falling off, was trying to control the reins of three llamas with one hand and hold the black powder rifle in the other, and the llamas all had to go to the bathroom at the same time in front of the judges' stand, the library made the papers and won a second place ribbon plus $200 for the building site fundraising campaign.

Spurred by this triumph, the Outreach Team was created to continue the publicity efforts, and then the Move It! (to the new library) Team was created when those efforts were successful. With the exception of a construction project coordinator, no new staff was added to accomplish this additional work.

In the new building, once again there was no additional staff, in spite of the fact that there was one more public service desk, an online catalog, and a long row of public Internet machines and word processors to tend. Also, the Library Board handed over $400,000 to build new collections and called for a new strategic plan, immediately if not sooner, please. As the newly appointed library director, I briefly consulted S. R. Ranganathan's classic five laws of library science ("Books are for use. Every book its reader. Every reader his book...." [Gorman, 2000, p. 19]), and then went looking for a big sister.