The Quality Library A Guide to Staff Driven Improvement, Better Efficiency, and Happier Customers by Sara Laughlin and Ray W. Wilson

The Quality Library A Guide to Staff Driven Improvement, Better Efficiency, and Happier Customers by Sara Laughlin and Ray W. Wilson

This book is about library processes and how to analyze them using numbers and charts. There is a focus on changing the process before criticizing the person which I find to be an interesting philosophy.

This book was hard for me to follow because it is focused on numbers and charts more than qualitative processes. At times it seems very bureaucratic. However, even if you do not get the numbers, it does show you how to track a process from beginning to end in a library. There are some simple diagrams like the quality circle in the book which is a circle of study, act, plan, do.

The back of the book has two appendixes. One of these is a list of common library processes. The other is a list of common measurements used to track library activities. I found the list of common measurements to be quite interesting. It includes qualitative measures like customer satisfaction, new ideas implemented, community skills developed in addition to the pure numerical measures like circulation of books, head count, and number of reference questions answered.

The most useful part of the book was the opening chapter. It included a way to map a library as a system. This map included mission, vision, values, measurements, inputs, outputs, and feedback loops. This book will help you understand a different way of looking at a library; the viewpoint of the library as an efficient system.

Daily Thoughts 5/19/2009

Edward Lear, illustrator for A Book of Nonsense

Daily Thoughts 5/19/2009

I walked up to my local library. I am very glad it is still open. I picked up a few books to read, Escape From Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This story is a sequel to Inferno about a man who escapes from Dante's version of The Inferno. It is a bestseller in the science fiction and fantasy category. The second book which I picked up was The Quality Library A Guide To Staff Driven Improvement, Better Efficiency, and Happier Customers by Sara Laughlin and Ray W. Wilson.

I have started reading Escape From Hell. Quite frankly, I am not finding the setting to my taste. It is interesting, but not quite what I want to read about. The initial meeting between Sylvia Plath and the main character in hell is surprising.

I have also had the chance to read the first chapter of The Quality Library. This book is very eye opening. It has a lot of things in it about library processes which I have not spent much time thinking about. There is worksheet which includes mission, vision, values, measures, inputs, outputs, suppliers, customers, processes and feedback mechanisms for a library. It is very interesting looking at the single filled out sheet for the Pace University Library from April 2004.

I am on my third day of keeping a food diary. I am supposed to write everything down for a week before I can use it to make any analysis of what I am eating with the book Emotional Eating. Writing everything down changes what you are doing. I ate a half a package of salted cashews instead of a whole one.