Library Volunteers Welcome!

Library Volunteers Welcome!
Author: Carol Smallwood
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016-09-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1476623821

Volunteers are crucial to the daily operation of any library. Finding and retaining the right people, motivating them and matching their skills with projects is challenging. This collection of 30 new essays brings together the experiences of numerous individuals across the U.S., providing ideas, projects and best practices for volunteer recruiting and management. The contributors--among them library board members, heads of special collections, directors of state library associations, outreach coordinators, archivists and researchers--discuss a broad range of topics in five sections: recruitment and retention; policies and process; mentoring and empowering; placement, programs and responsibilities; and outreach.

Teen Volunteer Services in Libraries

Teen Volunteer Services in Libraries
Author: Kellie M. Gillespie
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2004
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780810848375

Aimed at both experienced and new volunteer managers, this guide offers practical advice about starting and maintaining effective teen volunteer programs in school and public libraries. With sensitivity for teens' special needs and their lack of experience in the workplace, it covers the basics of interviewing, training, and supervising. Included are profiles of several library volunteer programs with sample forms and promotional materials, lively anecdotes from the library world, and tips from successful managers of teen volunteers.

Making the Most of Teen Library Volunteers

Making the Most of Teen Library Volunteers
Author: Becca Boland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2020-03-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1440865639

When teens volunteer at the library, they gain new skills, make connections, and build their resumes, while libraries benefit from a new generation of advocates. This guide shows librarians how to establish or develop a teen volunteer program. Advocating a flexible approach, this book speaks to every library, including both public and school libraries. From small libraries with no budget to large libraries with seemingly endless budgets and everything in between, all of the concepts covered can be scaled up or down to meet the needs of the community being served. The book begins with the big picture, discussing benefits to teens, libraries, and communities; it then reviews volunteer types and volunteer possibilities for teens, including the traditional roles of shelving and programming as well as passion-led projects, programming opportunities, and special initiatives and drives. Specific volunteer roles are described in depth, with instructions for practical applications, and concrete examples and experiences from various types of libraries illustrate principles discussed. Readers will also learn how to establish volunteer partnerships within and outside of the library. The book ends with a discussion of methods for evaluation and assessment.

Short-Term Staff, Long-Term Benefits

Short-Term Staff, Long-Term Benefits
Author: Nora J. Bird
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

This book offers a novel, more efficient, and mutually beneficial approach to attracting, training, and working with short-term staff in ways that benefit all involved: the organization, the short-term staff, and library personnel in general. After recent cutbacks in funding, many libraries now suffer permanent gaps in their staffing—gaps that have necessarily been filled by temporary staff and volunteers in order to complete essential work. Unfortunately, short-term staffing presents its own issues. But having temporary staff doesn't have to be problematic or frustrating: this book shows how short-term workers can offer libraries much more than just a solution to being shorthanded. This book will help readers better plan and more efficiently manage short-term staffing arrangements, covering how to best work with community volunteers, students earning service or academic credit, library school internships, grant contract staff, librarian post-graduate residencies, and work-study student employees. The authors present models of temporary staff human resource development and demonstrate how to apply them effectively in libraries of any size, describing how to train and enculturate short-term staff into your organization to maximize productivity. When temporary and long-term staff are set up to work together properly, having temporary staff benefits the organization with more than just their labor—the situation can refresh and update the skills of incumbent employees, too.

Library Volunteers--Worth the Effort!

Library Volunteers--Worth the Effort!
Author: Sally Gardner Reed
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2010-07-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0786484101

Faced with ever growing patron demands, tight budgets, and limited personnel, libraries are relying more and more on volunteers to assist the paid staff. But for every professional who "manages" volunteers there is a horror story--a "problem volunteer" who lacked the talent, commitment, team spirit, personality or available time to do the job. How does the busy librarian develop and manage a successful volunteer program? This is the guide to implementing and managing a volunteer program tailored to the needs of the individual library. Issues such as recruitment and placement, training, development, and evaluation, and the "challenging" volunteer are discussed. Sample applications, advertisements, press releases, job descriptions, and skills and aptitude tests are also included.

Library Volunteers

Library Volunteers
Author: Allison Renner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2019-04-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1538116928

Volunteers are one of the most overlooked and underused resources available to nonprofits and other organizations. This guide will help find willing volunteers in the community and utilize their skills in a way that benefits the volunteer as well as the organization. Overseeing volunteers can be a daunting task. On top of all of the other duties library staff are typically responsible for, creating a volunteer program from scratch can seem nearly impossible. The work doesn’t stop once the program is created: volunteers have to be trained and retained; job duties have to be written, assessed, and refreshed; the benefits of the program need to be documented and weighed. While “volunteer coordinator” is easily a full-time job, it rarely is in the library or nonprofit world. Anything that can make volunteer management easier on library and nonprofit staff will benefit everyone involved. Library Volunteers: A Practical Guide for Librarians covers every aspect of volunteer programs, from creating, to recruiting, to retaining and keeping the opportunities fresh and appealing. It has information pertaining to elementary age, teenage, and adult volunteers, including innovative and unique volunteer positions that can be offered to them. The book covers both school and public library settings, but the information provided can be adapted slightly to benefit any organization that has a need for volunteer help. It looks beyond the scope of the library to include information on outreach and partnering with community organizations to provide volunteer opportunities to library patrons and volunteers on a broader scale. It is a complete handbook for library and nonprofit employees to use to solve any volunteer issue they might have.

Serving New Immigrant Communities in the Library

Serving New Immigrant Communities in the Library
Author: Sondra Cuban
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2007-04-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0313094624

Build strong bridges with new members of your community. With this insightful guide, you will learn how to assess your current organizational performance with immigrants, gather data, and use that information to gain support for organizational initiatives. You will also discover how to adapt policies to better fit changing needs, overcome language barriers, develop public relations strategies that reach immigrants, and build culturally relevant collections, services, and programs for a changing community. Filled with quotes, anecdotes, and profiles from the author's research with immigrant communities, the book provides both a positive vision and practical plan for serving immigrants in your library, school, or organization.

The Relevant Library

The Relevant Library
Author: Vera Gubnitskaia
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1476633177

At a time when libraries are no longer the leading proprietors of information, many library professionals find themselves rethinking their purpose. In this collection of new essays, contributors share their experiences and ideas for keeping libraries integral to changing communities. Innovative approaches and best practices are discussed for strategic planning, packaging, branding and marketing, funding issues, physical spaces, collection needs and trends, partnerships, programming and services, professional education, and staffing.

Gender Issues and the Library

Gender Issues and the Library
Author: Carol Smallwood
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2017-11-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1476664730

With the legalization of same-sex marriage and the explosion of LGBTQ news coverage in recent years, gender studies is a subject of intense interest in popular media and a part of the curriculum at many colleges. Libraries realize the importance of supporting the field yet many have difficulty finding resources and programming ideas. This book provides case studies and a range of innovative solutions for better meeting patron needs. Twenty-seven chapters are arranged into sections covering Research and Library Instruction, History and Herstory, Programming, Collections and Beyond, and Resources.

Social Justice and Activism in Libraries

Social Justice and Activism in Libraries
Author: Su Epstein
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2019-04-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1476635102

In a rapidly changing world with myriad conflicting voices, the library's role as a place of safety and inclusion and as a repository of knowledge cannot be overstated. Librarians must serve as community leaders with a mission to educate and inform, ready to model the principles they support. The question for many is: how? Experienced librarians offer ideas and guidance in seeking new creative paths, working to support change in library organizations and reexamining principles that may be taken for granted. Theoretical foundations are discussed, along with practical ideas such as the creation a book groups for the intellectually disabled and partnership with social workers or advocates for employees with disabilities.