On-Site: That’s A Wrap

Monday 3/30/09. 3.5 hours. Mary Jane and I finalized the last two policies for the personnel manual: Sick Leave and Hiring and Staffing. I suggested a few changes to the Sick Leave policy that Mary Jane put to paper after last week’s lengthy discussions. Hiring and Staffing was a rewrite and combination of three existing policies: Position Descriptions, Transfers, and Hiring and Vacancies.

Mary Jane expanded on information she’d given me in five areas:

• The process of creating an annual budget.
• The nature of the relationship between the fiscal officer and the director. They are both appointed by the board of trustees so there’s no reporting responsibility one to the other.
• Factors considered when hiring an assistant director. Mary Jane says she hired her assistant director with expertise in areas that were not her strengths.
• Relationships between the director and government entities. She reinforced the importance of building relationships with all levels of local government, school district superintendents, the county MRDD, and other libraries in the region.
• Property management and insurance. We talked about contracts for services, using locally owned services as much as possible, and different kinds of insurance that are necessary. I had never considered, for example, the the director and the board who require insurance to protect their personal assets in the event they were sued for library-related reasons.

It’s been a pleasure to shadow Mary Jane and learn about directing a small library system – especially the system that serves my home community. The staff of DCDL were all so open to sharing their knowledge and experience with me. I recommend DCDL to other students looking for a practicum site; they will be warmly welcomed.

Off-Site: Last Policy Writing

Sunday 3/29/09. 2 hours. Completed work on the last two policies: Sick Leave (suggested changes to Mary Jane’s work) and Hiring and Staffing (integrating segments on Employment of Minors and Employment of Relatives, plus minor editorial changes to other sections). Transferred all policy documents to a flash drive to take to tomorrow’s final on-site meeting.

Off-Site: Policies Polishing

Thursday 3/26/09. 2 hours. Devoted some time to formatting and organizing the policies Mary Jane copied to my flash drive on 3/24. I now have all the policies and just have a couple more to edit to complete the project. I also began work on my project report.

On-Site: Policies Complete But For A Handful

Tuesday 3/24/09. 5 hours. Mary Jane and I spent the afternoon going through the personnel policies manual one policy at a time. We confirmed the policies that were complete, the new policies that the board of trustees has approved, and the policies we hadn’t looked at yet. We tweaked some of my policies and reviewed others for the first time.

Don Yarman, the assistant director, Mary Jane and I hashed out the Sick Leave policy. After looking at the sick leave offerings of several comparable libraries, we determined that the amount of sick time full time staff at DCDL accrue is in line with them. Some of the researched libraries also offer sick time to part time (20 hour/week minimum) employees. We had a wonderful free-flowing discussion of all the pros and cons of part time sick time – why staff deserve it, when they could use it, how it might be abused, how much it would cost, how much was appropriate, maximum number of cumulative hours, etc. There’s nothing simple about a seemingly simple decision to provide few hours of sick time. By the end of our session Mary Jane’s printout of the existing sick leave policy was completely covered with her hand-written notes. Thankfully, she’s going to rewrite the policy and spare me deciphering her cryptic scribblings.

I brought all my assigned policies on my thumb drive. It has been a challenge to keep all of our drafts in electronic and paper forms coordinated and up to date. We went through all my policies, made final changes and saved the final documents to both my thumb drive and her hard drive.

I’m going to meet one more time with Mary Jane next week to finalize the remaining policies and discuss a few more topics in depth. That should wrap up the on-site portion of my practicum.

Off-Site: Policy Writing

Monday 3/23/09. 3 hours. Continued rewriting the Administrative Leave and Progressive Discipline policies. Also tweaked the Emergency Closure policy.

Off-Site: More Policy Research

Sunday 3/22/09. 3 hours. Mary Jane and I established early in the policy evaluation state that it was not necessary to have one since we wrote in the manual’s introduction that the library conforms to all federal/state/local laws. I read in an online HR journal that an Equal Opportunity statement is an essential protection for an employer. I researched and crafted a new Equal Opportunity Statement that is far more inclusive than the original policy that addressed employment only. The new policy also directs staff to the federal EEOC Web site for more detailed information.

On-Site: Levy Campaign Meeting

Thursday 3/19/09. 2 hours. With approximately six weeks left until election day, the full committee met as a group for only the second time. The meeting was lively! Marilyn, Mary Jane, and Shea spoke on behalf of the speaker’s bureau, finance, and PR committees.

Library administrators have been very busy speaking before anyone who would have them: business groups, homeowner’s associations, mom’s clubs, etc. Fundraising hasn’t been as robust as hoped; there’s lots of goodwill in the community but not many dollars. PR has created several effective information pieces, yard sign designs, and direct “vote for libraries” flyers.

Discussion focused on how to allocate the committee’s very limited funds. A volunteer agreed to call around to get the best price on yard sign although there was disagreement about the probably costs – speculation ranged from $2 to $15 each. Email was touted as a virtually no-cost communication tool. Another volunteer stepped forward and pledged to coordinate the door-to-door campaign in Lewis Center/Powell area subdivisions. Mary Jane reiterated that the campaign is intentionally low-key with the biggest push in the last 2-3 weeks before the election.

The meeting ended with solid direction and actions planned. I volunteered to go door-to-door in my subdivision and to write letters to the editors of the weekly and daily papers.

On-Site: Miscellaneous Plus A Board Meeting

Tuesday 3/17/09. 5.5 hours. Mary Jane was running a little late – she had lunch with Patrick Losinski, the director of CML – so I worked on policies and talked with DCDL assistant director Don Yarman. Mary Jane and I looked over more policies and talked about the upcoming board meeting.

I took part in a meeting about the levy campaign. Don Yarman, Mary Jane, Shea Alltmont and Marilyn Horn discussed the status of the campaign, assigned tasks, and planned the agenda for the Thursday general campaign committee.

The 4:30 meeting of the Board of Trustees included the approval several revamped policies, discussion of architectural drawings of the proposed new branch, and news of the levy campaign. The meeting closed with a touch of humor as this cartoon was passed around:

Off-Site: Clean-Up Day

Sunday 3/15/09. 2 hours. This was a clean-up and organization day for me.

• Organized paper files in preparation for building my practicum notebook.
• Read and made notes on policies that Mary Jane rewrote and gave to me for review.
• Reformatted policies that I wrote to conform to the new DCDL standard. The original personnel policies manual was hobbled together from forms, memos and other documents created by many people over 12 years and needed a facelift.

Mid-Point Meeting With My Advisor

Friday 3/13/09. 1 hour 15 minutes. Prof. Matteson and I met to review my progress. We had a good talk and I left her with copies of the policies I have revised or written from scratch.

We also discussed a minor KSU bureaucratic nightmare. I registered for my practicum in Spring 2008 and have taken an incomplete until Spring 2009. When I switched practicum advisors in December 2008 KSU added me to a second practicum section. Oops! Fortunately KSU identified the problem and made the necessary corrections.

Prof. Matteson thinks I’m having a productive practicum and I agree. Everything is on track to a successful completion of my MLIS program..