Daily Thoughts 9/28/2009

Herman Wouk in Jerusalem, 1955

Daily Thoughts 9/28/2009

This morning I started reading The Cost of Bad Behavior How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What To Do About It by Chris Pearson and Christine Porath. So far the book is about how being civil reduces performance, lowers concentration, and decreases employee retention. It even gives statistics on the specific effect that incivility has on work performance. Want to lose 12% of your workforce due to attrition, create an uncivil workplace.

I started writing my monthly report today. It is due in a few days. It is mainly about creating displays, putting in the new cd racks, adding display tables, updating bookmarks and marketing materials, and similar things. Displays have a large impact on circulation in my opinion. They are very important. This is also true of patron requests. This makes a lot of difference to people. We are ordering a lot more books that patrons request.

Today, I printed out a flyer that lets people know that requests to order material are available. It is on the circulation desk and near the "new arrivals" section. Hopefully, it will be noticed.

I also did some more weeding in the 800s which is moving along every single day. It is an incremental process. I try to do it every single day for an hour. It is like me spending time every day on making sure the displays are up to date as well.

One of the displays that we do is a current events display. I try and find books about topics that are in the news. I generally go to Yahoo news, pick out the headlines and search for a few of the subjects in the headlines. I do this regularly to refresh the display. My main aim is to display newer books that are in the news as well. It is more than books, I also try to display audio and video with the current events display. I have to create a sign for the current events display. This is something I will do tomorrow. A little self reflection sometimes gives you new ideas.

Today went pretty well.

Tomorrow is the day the Banned Books Week displays go up. All of my displays are going to be cleared out and we are going to put in displays of banned books. Think hard of what it would be like to live in a society where books were banned. Imagine if the world of Fahrenheit 451 were real. There is so much which is said in that book which is so close to what is happening now.