Looking in the mirror–and other items at PLN
This week’s post at PLN Highlights, repeated here for your edification…
What’s new at the PALINET Leadership Network?
- In Looking in the mirror, Peter Bromberg offers a dozen questions you should ask new employees to help gain a clearer picture of your own library–and five questions to ask yourself about where you are and where you’re going. Steven J. Bell asks “are you where you want to be professionally?” and suggests that you define your own signature statement–and Barbara Kelly expands the “signature statement” idea to suggest stepping back and making sure your library has a clear, authentic, understandable and real signature statement of its own.
- Service and policy complements the existing Service attitudes roundup (primarily non-library notes), offering notes from several library writers. Barbara Kelly notes ways she’s been delighted by deviations from policy–that might not be deviations at all, but rather flexible, service-oriented policies. Tyler Rousseau takes on the “teach them to fish” attitude in reference services, suggesting that sometimes “just give them the ichhyo…” might be the best course of action. “Karen K.” offers some lessons in customer service and Walt Crawford offers examples of unusually good customer service and the remarkable effects of being just a little more helpful.
- Jeff Scott adds the perspective of a rural public library director to the discussion in Directors, leaders and work-life balance. You’ll be seeing new additions to other existing articles (especially the sets of notes from non-library sources); this one happened a little faster than most.
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