Over the last year I have had the
opportunity to be involved in many interesting projects within the Wiltshire
Library Service. During the Autumn I received an email from our volunteer
co-ordinator asking myself and a colleague to develop and roll out training at
our volunteer aided libraries of which there are ten in Wiltshire. Twice a year
volunteers are invited to a coffee morning with professional staff to receive
training, it also provides a chance for feedback and dialogue between
volunteers and staff. The training we were to provide was to enable the
volunteers to confidently talk about books in the library and provide resources
to help them improve their knowledge and help answer simple enquiries e.g. the
next in a series or authors of the same genre.
Reader development has always
been an area of interest to me but seems to be a dying part of library services
in an age of technologies and budget cuts. This project gave me a chance to
explore this area more thoroughly in order to provide insight on resources that
could help volunteers when fielding enquiries and getting them involved in the
idea of a “reader-centred library”, a phrase coined by Rachel Van Riel of
Opening the Book notoriety. A couple of obstacles that we had to keep in mind
were that not all training sessions were held in libraries and also that the
number of volunteers that attended varied dramatically between five and twenty.
After an initial ideas session we
came up with a basic format for the half an hour session. We wanted to keep it
as informal and participatory as possible and so began with an icebreaker to
get the participants talking about the books that they enjoy reading for the
first five minutes with a chance for feedback to the group. Trying to stop this
conversation in some libraries proved troublesome but at least we have
enthusiastic volunteers! This then flowed into a conversation on why we as a
library service value readers and the importance of being able to communicate
this love with our readership... it reminds me of a phrase we used to use when
I worked at Habitat which was “Our product is our passion”, cheesy but it gets
the point across! We also felt it important to point out the difference on the
way we work as oppose to bookshops. For instance we do not have multiple copies
of bestsellers, forty copies of The Casual Vacancy were ordered in to satisfy a
reservation list of nearly seventy over the thirty-five libraries in our county.
It is not in our interest to buy multiple copies as a book shop would do but
paying at 80p reservation charge is not as bad as paying £12.99 for a book you’ll
only read once. So unlike book shops we rely on our customer service and other
stock, not just best sellers, to keep our readership interested. We take into consideration
our readership when ordering stock; we talk to them and display stock in such a
way as to enable readers to explore new authors and genres.
The final part of the training
was running through a list of resources found in the library both in hard copy
and online which would help volunteers to help with reader enquiries and
recommendations. Resources such as Who Else Writes Like, Fantastic Fiction,
Books and Media and even Amazon which can help find authors and titles.
There was also the option of a
practical exercise if time allowed and volunteers were enthusiastic which was a
crate of books picked out for display with a couple of obvious stand outs e.g
contemporary literature with a couple of aga sagas thrown in such as a Linda
Page or an Emma Blair which would facilitate conversation about what is
appropriate to display and how we put displays together. This could be seen to
echo some of the frontline training provided by Opening the Book which was
adopted by local authorities.
All the information communicated
in the session was contracted into two easy to follow handouts and added to
each of the volunteer libraries handbooks. There was a handout on resources and
one with practical tips on book displays so volunteers went away with the
information and those who were unable to attend coffee mornings did not miss
out.
Due to staff and timing
constraints I was only able to deliver the training in one venue but there was
a group of four Librarians who delivered the training to the ten volunteer
libraries, supported by the Community Librarian of that area. This went
surprisingly well with a good discussion of reading habits and recommendations
and the volunteers responded positively to the information they were given.
From what I gather of the other training sessions this was true across the
board but with the session only lasting half an hour and the mixture of people
delivering the sessions were also unique to the volunteers that attended,
making them more memorable.
This was a first for me in terms
of devising and rolling out library training and it was good to have a group of
experienced librarians to go to for advice and guidance. There was also the
obstacle of producing this for an audience of volunteers who were not aware of
library jargon especially when talking about concepts such as “reader-centred”
libraries and explaining the key term of reader development. It also gave me
the opportunity to work closer with other members of the library service who I
may not necessarily see very often which will help me in future projects. I
really enjoyed my time on this project and am glad that it was received in a
positive light. Following the project through from inception to delivery took
three months which meant balancing it with other core responsibilities which I
felt I handled well and I look forward to the next opportunity.
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