I'm going to get our recording started here and welcome you to today's session, especially to our presenter, Cindy Fesemyer, who is the principal and founder of Fesemyer Consulting, and she also teaches at the UW-Madison iSchool Continuing Indication and she's a trustee for the Madison Public Library.

Welcome, Cindy, we're so glad to have you here.

I'm going to shift this over and pass the ball on over to you.

Welcome.

>> CINDY FESEMYER: Perfect.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Thanks to you and Kendra for doing the back end and a special thank you to all the folks at WebJunction and OCLC for having me on today.

I'm very pleased to be able to join you today on what is for me in the Midwest in Wisconsin a very dreary, snowy kind of day.

Hopefully you have a little bit of sun where you are.

So is let's get started and I'm going to tell you a little bit about me.

So although as Jennifer mentioned I am the principal of a small consulting agency, and I consult on library stuff, strategic planning and community engagement and things like that, that's a very recent switch for me.

Prior to that I was 2½ years at the State library here in Wisconsin, and I served as the consultant to the libraries in the state on topics of adult and community services.

Prior to that, and the one that's really important, I was seven years as the library director in Columbus, Wisconsin, a small rural library that's located maybe about 30 miles northeast of Madison, which is the capital of Wisconsin.

So a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today draws on my experience as a library director.

Along those lines, let me tell you about the first time I created this slide deck.

It was about five years ago, and I did it for a conference here just in Wisconsin.

And when I created the deck that day, I had planned a whole day off for myself, and this was a side thing to do.

This wasn't necessarily part of my job.

So as long as I was spending some time away from the library, I wanted to make sure that I packed a hot of things be into the day.

So I'm going to tell you about what I didn't do that day, despite having planned to do it.

I did not take in a professional meeting, as Jennifer mentioned, I also work with theie School for UW Madison's library school.

I did have that meeting that day, I had a personal appointment to have my hair done, and I set aside hours in the afternoon to work on this slide deck.

So what I did is I went to that meeting, I had my hair done, and as I was walking back from having my hair done, thinking about the shied deck, I noticed around me that it was a gorgeous, gorgeous fall day.

And if you're from a place that has four seasons, you know that there are sometimes just those quintessential fall days that you don't want to miss.

So what did I do?

I switched gears, I didn't create the deck five years ago that's similar to what we're going to be talking about today, instead I had just been attending a webinar similar to this, talking about self-care and how to take care of yourself as you take care of a library and a community and the staff you work with and your trustees and all the people that you're responsible for working with and serving on a daily basis.

I heard about something new in that, and it was something called walking mediation.

I've heard a ton about mindfulness, and mediation, and I tried, and I tried to sit quietly and focus on my breath and do all the things that kind of start you along that path.

And it wasn't working for me.

Then a friend told me about a thing called walking mediation.

Where you walk a little slower than you normally would if you're in the woods or walking through your neighborhood, and you keep in mind one thing, and you keep it in your mind as often as you can, so it sort of substitutes in for that focusing on your breath thing that you would hear a lot with the practice of mindfulness.

So for me, it worked really well.

The thing I focused on was the color red.

On a cool, fall day, that was the perfect thing to do.

And it was a way for me to get out of my own head a little bit to, on this day off, notice the world around me and not to think about what was happening at that library that day, or what I needed to do next.

Next time I went in.

And I know you all can relate on-to-that.

I tried this mediation, and it kind of worked.

I was able to be mindful and look for the color red for like maybe a minute at a time.

So I considered that a success.

That's the first time I didn't do this deck.

The second time I didn't do it was last month, it was again fall in Wisconsin, and I had time marked down on my calendar for doing some things related to my job now, writing a proposal to a library, getting ready for Thanksgiving, the menu, that kind of thing.

And updating this slide deck.

I happen to notice during lunch that it was another beautiful fall day, so I did the same thing.

And I'm really excited to tell you that as I was reflecting on creating these slides and this presentation for you today, I was excited to realize that five years later, five years after making that initial bunch of slides and updating them, I regularly practiced walking mediation.

Now I just think of it as going for a walk.

And ask I try and take a walk every day, just to break up my day.

I started doing this also when I was a library director.

Eat lunch for 10 minutes, and walk around, just to breathe fresh air.

I was pleased to see five years later something I wanted to commit to actually stuck, and when I go out I don't necessarily have in mind that one thing, especially when I walk around my neighborhood.

But when I do go out and go for a hike in the woods on purpose, a place I had to Drive to to get to, I really do very much practice that.

And just look for something specific, one of my favorites is in the spring to look for that bright chartreuse green, like early sprout of something that you'll see coming up underneath the trees.

Yeah.

Just a little background on when I was creating this presentation for you.

And it's a little exemplary of what we're going to talk about.

So let's talk about some down and dirty tips and tricks on how to try to achieve that balance between work, your library, and your life.

Whatever that entails.

I know it's tough, the reason the title of the program is the Meth of That Work-Life Balance is because I know it's impossible some days.

Some days it's not, though, so you need to practice to get better at it.

We'll talk about things you can do that make work for you.

As Jennifer said at the top of this, it's also going to be a very interactive time we spend together, so I'll let you know when it's time to start entering your thoughts into the chat, and we'll share ideas together, but in the meantime, if you have questions along the way, please enter them into the chat.

And Jennifer will be lovely and monitor that for me and just interrupt me with questions, and I'm cool with that.

It's kind of us just sitting around having afternoon coffee together.

My first tip is to work your required weekly hours.

I know that's very common sense, but I also know from seven years in a rural library, that it is impossible to work for me, full-time was 40 hours a week, you may work 25 hours a week, whatever your required full-time hours are, just try hard to work those hours in a week.

Some weeks that's not going to work.

So you can see on the slide here that these are little snippets from my Google calendar.

And you can see in the top row I marked myself as taking a day off and really only working 30 hours that week.

Because the following week I knew was the Wisconsin Library Association Conference and I would spend, let's be honest, more than 50 hours between the sort of 2½ days of that and still needing to work in my library.

So I plan ahead, and I planned time off, and you'll see that I mark that on my calendar.

For me, by putting it on my calendar, it helped me stick with it a little better.

If the day said "off" I would actually maybe not check my work email.

And it would cue me in to just don't do work today.

I also want to say that it's important to work your weekly hours because that is a realistic way to plan your time.

If it realistically takes 70 hours a week for you to do what is supposed to be a 40-hour-a-week job, there's something wrong with that job.

So along the lines of working your required weekly hours, it's really important to communicate your schedule with all of the interested parties.

So this bar here in gold that says what my work hours were going to be that day, I cans back when I was the director, shared that Google calendar with the staff at the library, and we always had a Google calendar up on all of the circulation desks, those computers, I also shared that calendar with my family.

So it was a way for me to communicate to them, am I going to work late.

So I don't know if you can read it, but that's the second one on a Tuesday, I was working a 12-hour day and I wanted to make sure that, for example, my husband knew I wasn't going to be home for dinner, and that he was the one who had to feed the kids.

So just create a method that works for you to communicate to the staff when they can expect to see you in the library, and this is really important, because if a call comes in for you, it would be nice if they could say oh, she's not in today, but she'll be in at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, can you call back then?

Or you can expect to hear from her then.

And then equally important in your private life, if you have someone that you coordinate daily things with, find your method.

When I first started in the Columbus library in Wisconsin, for things like this we literally had paper notebooks next to the circulation computers at the two circulation desks.

And people left notes to each other in that ultimately we moved to a more virtual way of doing that that didn't rely on paper in a place.

But just find your method.

So along those lines, this is my first invitation to you to chat.

And we call this a chat storm.

I've borrowed this phrase, "chat storm" from a very smart colleague with her permission, and what I would like us to do is, yes, as Jennifer says, share to overone in the chat box, and tell me what are your favorite organizational tools?

For me, Google calendar, it was and is and probably always will be until whatever the next cool thing is, it is a must.

And I'm judicious in who I share my calendar with.

Now I have adult children and so there were some calendars I share with them, so they know if I'm going to be out of town for a long stretch of time or something like that.

So what I'll do is read off some of the stuff, I'm seeing lots of people seconding Google calendar, using it on their phone as well.

Somebody uses Trello, I really want to be a professional at Trello bullet journaling.

Oh, a big wall calendar, super old-school, I do that as well.

It helps me to have it in multiple places.

Sticky notes, Microsoft Xcel, outlook calendar, I never made that work because I couldn't figure out how to incorporate my home calendar into that as well.

You love Trello and use the calendar on your phone, and a hard copy planner.

Wow.

So Beth, you're a total overachiever, good for you.

Short-term to-do lists, long-term to-do lists, Mac calendar, notes, reminders, I also use the reminder on my phone, love reminders.

It helps me remember to take a medication daily, otherwise I never would.

Okay.

So white boards, there's also Google jam board that can do stuff like that, sooner and later lists.

Yes, you get the basics of how the chat storm works.

The awesome thing Jennifer mentioned at the top of the webinar is that this whole chat transcript will also be available afterwards, so you don't need to write furiously to remember the good ideas that you get from each other.

That will all come to you in your email shortly after we finish the webinar.

So let's move on to a couple more sort of tips that I have to share with you, and I know you all are full of tips as well, and there will be opportunities for you to share those along the way.

So something that I think is really important, but also really easy to put off is to train people early and to train them often.

It is, I get it, very overwhelming to tackle the concept of training folks to do their job or to cover for each other, or whatever.

But what I'm telling you is if you're in the right frame of mind to do it, and you have time to do it and patience, it pays a dividend down the road.

You invest at the front end, and you reap the rewards afterwards.

So a good way to start is to try to create a dedicated training time for you and everyone at your library.

Now, for some people, that might mean that you can have somehow a monthly staff meeting.

For me my staff was quite small, there were a dozen of us, maybe eight people who worked on desk.

And I was very lucky to have a library board president who was a former librarian, and he would cover the desk for us during the lunch hour, which was often dead in the library, we would eat our lunch together and spend 45 minutes once a month having our staff meeting where we shared information, but we also cotrained each other.

Now, for some of you that's completely impossible.

And I get that.

Maybe once a year you have an in-service and spend half a day with your doors closed to the public and the staff trains on some new technology, or something.

Or tours a local library near you or something like that.

So however it is, however often you can do it, do carve out that training time, and then stick to it.

Along those lines, put it in writing.

So if you're meeting monthly, make sure it's on that calendar.

Make sure staff knows that it's coming.

Maybe you have an agenda that everybody can add items to in the month leading up to your monthly, or you ask people in writing what topics they would want to tackle in an in-service meeting coming up next month or something.

So getting it in writing helps people think about it ahead of time, come to the meeting ready, and it helps you structure your time together with your staff, which comes at such a premium that you want to get as much out of it as you possibly can when you're together.

I think it's also really important in these kinds of meetings to let others lead.

This is something that took me a while to learn.

It took me a little while to trust that the staff members who I didn't know very well, or at all, really, when I first started in the job, that they knew so much more about so many things related to the library than I did.

And I took that opportunity to let them showcase with each other their expertise.

So one was a notary public, and she talked about that for us, one was a student and had to learn about the Microsoft suite of products, and would share that.

It was a really great way eventually every other month one staff person would pick a database in our sort of suite of databases that we offered to the public, and train the rest of the staff on the use of it.

So one, they were becoming the expert, and two, they were sharing their expertise with us, which helped them rise up as leaders, and also upped the stats usage on those particular databases for months after we did a training on it, because staff knew enough to feel comfortable to recommend it to the patrons.

Along those lines, that's an awful lot like cross training, right?

If multiple people know how to use an individual database, then if one person isn't in the library, there's somebody else who can still share that database with another staff person.

It's important to do that among the jobs that are in our position descriptions as well.

So if ploy A and employee B both know how to cover books, let's say, then if employee A goes on vacation, employee B can do it while they're out of town for a couple of weeks, instead of the books just sitting there and not being used because nobody else knows how to put the covers on the books.

That's just an example.

I know a lot of people know how to do book covering.

But it makes it easier to cover those shifts if someone is away because they're sick or because they're on vacation.

It also creates more collaboration between staff members, so if you say, hey, you two, you staff person, know how to do this thing, I would love it if you would train this staff person on how to do it too, so they can cover for you when you take that vacation coming up.

It gives them time away from the rest of the staff to get to know each other a little bit, which is really important, and often lacking in our kind of stressful jobs, is just that personal connection.

It gives -- it's also sort of sets a precedent for a culture of collaboration.

Where people help each other.

It detracts from, I'm the expert and I'm the only one who can answer that question kind of mentality, and gets around to, you know, yeah, I think I can help you.

That person showed me this the other day, so let's take a stab at it and if with need to, we'll grab that other person for us.

The other thing it does is, I believe it gives the staff that you work with on a daily basis, it gives them the opportunity to step back from their very specific job and to see the bigger picture of the library if they understand more what the staff people that they have been working beside probably for years, if they understand what those folks do on a daily basis, they'll start getting the bigger picture of the many, many tasks it takes to keep the library dooshes open on a regular basis, and to provide services to patrons.

The last thing I want to say about this is that it's really helpful if, say you've got some people who both know how to do a job that is part of a manual, maybe you have a manual on how to catalog materials or something like that.

So if two people are -- one person is teaching another person how to catalog, you may ask them to look through that how-to catalog, or, how-to manual at the same time, and as they're going through, they'll realize oh, we don't do it that way anymore, now we do this.

And you can ask them to update your user manual at the same time.

So you get a little more bang for your buck, you've got the most current method written down for you, but you also have the staff collaborating on that very tangible outcome of the procedural manual.

Okay.

So the other thing that this does, in addition to creating a culture of staff sharing, and mutual support, and let's face the it, not every staff person is into supporting the rest of their staff people, there's always one or two people who aren't into it.

But you do the best that you can and maybe some of these tips can help.

The other thing that it does is it gives you the opportunity to figure out for yourself how you can delegate your own jobs.

So if you're starting to think about delegation, the first thing to think about is who's in charge when you're away.

So for me, at my library it was sort of written in our policy manual if the library director is away, this person is in charge.

So we always had that, but we were a small staff, and there were only two of us named in the policy that wasn't always the case.

So if you just sort of let people know who the go-to person is with problems, that might arise while you're away from the library that day, or that week, or whatever it is, let the staff know.

Let the library board know who to get in touch with, and make sure that that person knows how to get in touch with you in case they're faced with a situation that they can't handle.

So you can also think about your own stuff, you have an incredibly jam-packed position description.

As the director of a small and/or rural library, I know really well that there's nothing you don't do.

One way or the other, you're in charge of everything.

A big urban library director is too, but they have many levels of people below had them to help with taking care of the building, or attending meetings, or whatever it is.

I didn't have that.

So what I needed to do was figure out instead of running myself ragged, which ultimately does nobody any good, could somebody else do one of those things that I do on a regular basis?

Or a couple of those things?

And could a couple of people help cover different tasks?

And start thinking about that.

You don't need to make big changes right away, but do consider as you go through your daily routine at work, is there anything that somebody else is well suited to doing, and maybe could take off of your list and add to their list if they have a little bit of bandwidth?

That said, I understand that bandwidth is an issue, so taking care of your own bandwidth, sometimes can't be the priority because you need to make sure that your staff members are doing well and hanging in there.

And it's when you feel like you have a moment to breathe that you can make that assessment and decide if there's anything you can delegate.

Even if you detective gait, schedule yourself for two weeks of vacation when you vow not to work during them, you still need to be reachable, because no matter what, bottom line, you're still the person in charge of the library for your community.

So just make sure that people have your cell phone number, your email address, whatever is the best way to get in touch with you when hopefully you're even out of the state on a lovely annual vacation, remain infinitely reachable.

So let's talk for a little bit about cross training.

I will just reiterate that I know it takes time and effort to structure a trust -- cross-training program.

It especially takes time if you're cross training someone on something you do that you're going to delegate to them or disloample for you.

But -- have them cover for you.

What are the best things that staff need to be cross trained on?

Your jobs or their jobs?

So what isn't good to cross train on, Marie asks.

Agree.

Almost everything should be cross trained, and ultimately, that's the gold standard, right?

If there's at least one backup for every task, one staff backup.

But I'm seeing -- so there's administrative stuff, coding bills, back end things, book processing, front desk duties, oh, my gosh, in my speeches there's nobody who shouldn't be capable of working the front desk.

It's a must.

We're a service industry, we all have to be ready to take our time there.

As much as possible, somebody says.

Facilities.

Oh, I totally agree.

Especially the weird also problems, says one person.

Totally agree on that.

The buildings, my building was 100 years old, it was quirky beyond belief.

And it's nice if you're not the only person who understands the quirks so when the -- that one toilet flushes weird the day you're off, somebody else can maybe take care of it, or maybe they know the phone number for the plumber.

Daily stats.

Agree.

Inner library loan, cataloging, tech support, lots of tech support.

Databases, copy machine.

For me we had a fax machine too, so lots of that.

I like that Tina says who to contact for what.

I always had a list in the back behind in the staff area that had all of that listed out so if I wasn't there, although I will say the nice thing about working in a small town is, everybody knew the electrical guy and everybody knew the plumbing guy, because he also worked at their houses for the folks who lived in town.

So there was some nice economies of scale that you'll realize working in a smaller municipality.

Beth mentions the problem is she's a control freak, so delegating causes her anxiety and panic.

I'm not trying to out you, I'm right there with you.

I'm the same way.

But you won't know if you can do it unless you try.

And you won't get good at it unless you practice it.

So pick your favorite staff person, cross train them on something, and start.

And see if you don't see that you get a little more breathing room somewhere down the road.

So next I want to talk about kind of a controversial issue between me and some of my library colleagues.

We have virtual cocktails every now and then, and because we're all over the country, and we talk about this a lot.

So many of my colleagues are perfectionists, like we just heard about from Beth.

I used to be a perfectionist myself.

I needed to do it all myself.

However, I had to let go of things at some point because I wasn't sleeping.

And that's no good.

You can't lay in bed thinking through all the things you forgot to do that day and not getting sleep because you need to be fresh for the next day in order to be your best self with your community that you work with.

So when I am -- what I am encouraging you to do is to embrace good enough.

Good enough is my mantra.

Truly my mantra.

And you know that saying, fake it till you make it?

I faked it a lot.

And I've mostly made it.

There are some things that is not true for, but here are a couple of tips I have for you on how you can try it if that sounds like a nightmare to you.

Like it did to me in the beginning.

One is to change your expectation.

You know that if you do that thing, it will get done exactly how you wanted it done.

Duh.

However, if somebody else does it, I guarantee, it will not be done exactly the same way as you would have done it.

It just won't.

Better, worse, who knows, it will be different.

That's not necessarily bad.

Because it gets you some time away.

So if you have delegated a task to somebody and they're covering for you while you're supposed to be on vacation, maybe you can rest easy knowing that they're getting it done good enough while you're gone.

You can be like me and go and do it your own way the right way when you get back, but I kind of double dog dare you not to do that and just see if you can live with good enough and chances are, you probably can, because there are bigger things that you need to tackle that day.

The other thing that this does, though, is with the staff that you work with, it creates teachable moments.

So if you have taught somebody how to do this thing that you also do, and they do it remarkably poorly, it gives you the opportunity to continue training them, to get them up to speed, and be good enough to pass muster so that you feel confident in their ability to, like, get it done.

Maybe not to your level of expectation for yourself, but they get it done, well enough, and I challenge you to try.

I know that's hard for some of us.

It's hard for folks in our profession, especially.

The other thing I want to encourage you to do then is when you're finding small moments of time for yourself because you have staff who are cross trained, and you've delegated some tasks, at the beginning of the webinar here, you told me -- heard me talk to you about working with the library school here in Madison.

And I did that not because it paid me a whole lot of money, though the extra money was nice, because I didn't get paid a whole lot as a library director, I did it mostly because it felt really nice to be needed and to be appreciated for a skill set that I brought that I could share with other folks through teaching.

So I encourage you to truly do what you can to feel like a professional.

Find some way to share your skill set beyond the walls of your library, beyond your staff, beyond your municipality, out in the profession, out in the world in your county, in your state, across the country.

Something that helps you feel like, I really am good at that thing.

When you find yourself talking about it.

And the reason I encourage you to do that, and this is to us especially who are in the small and rural communities, it is to keep small libraries in the limelight.

So often when we go to conferences, it's big libraries who are presenting about a big very well-funded project that they did to teach staff to do something.

And the fact is, I feel like small libraries are very adaptable, and they adopt new technologies and new ideas very easily without very much forethought, because you can have an idea and do it when you're at a smaller library.

So share that along the way, and that keeps a little bit of a focus on small libraries, because you know we're often forgotten in publications.

And in conferences.

So we can't be remembered unless we participate in the culture that helps keep sma at the forefront of our profession.

The other thing this will do to help feeling like a professional, is help you develop your professional interests.

So for me, I had an interest as a library director in community organizing, community engagement.

And I got trained on it.

And that's now what I consult on 10 years later, or whatever, and it was because I took the opportunity to share my passion with others through giving conference sessions, or doing webinars like this, that I was able to gain the confidence to quit my day job and be a full-time consultant.

So you need to develop your professional interests so that you get something back from what you do every day in your library.

So that you feel like you're still growing as a professional.

If you feel like you have nothing to learn, that's a problem.

There's always something to learn.

It's always changing.

So keep up.

But pick the one or two areas that are of particular interest to you personally, and continue to develop those.

You don't need to be the best at everything, but pick one or two things that really resonate with you.

And then the other thing that it will do is help you decide what you want to do more of.

For me, when I was a library director, I wanted to train more people on community engagement tools.

And so ultimately I left the Columbus Public Library in Wisconsin and went to work for the State library, where I was able to develop a pretty deep training program on the topic of community engagement for library people around the state of Wisconsin.

And for me, that was a real trade up, because I got to put away the phone number for the local plumber in Columbus and I got to talk to people around the state for the thing that I was most passionate about as a library professional.

So figure out a way to do more of the thing that you love, but in order to do that, you need to figure out what that thing is.

And then once you have, and once you feel really confident in your abilities in that arena, pitch a conference session.

Do it for your state library association.

You don't have to do it for ALA, right off the bat.

Just -- or some consortium of library folks in your region.

Pitch a teaching session and share your experiences with other folks.

Find like-minded people, and have dinner together and stoke each others' passions and support each other as you learn more about that.

Feeling like a professional was really hard for me in the beginning.

I know we all suffer from imposter syndrome to some extent, or other.

Focusing on my one or two passions really helped me develop what feels to me like pretty quickly within the profession.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Cindy, I wonder if it would be a good time to pause and maybe have you speak to some of the comments and questions that have --

>> CINDY FESEMYER: Which I've been ignoring, so bring them on.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: That's good.

There was a little discussion around handbooks and having information, documented so that as you cross train or delegate that information would be there, and I just -- somebody had asked, oh, I'd love to see a sample of that, but the person had said they were -- they hadn't gotten around to it, they don't have the time.

So I just was curious, I know I've heard some strategies, vight digital, so it's on all of the computers, and then how do you update it.

Can you just talk a little bit about your hand -- your -- the handbook, the bible of the library procedures?

>> CINDY FESEMYER: I sure can.

Yeah.

That handbook was key for me when I first started in my role as library director, and every time we brought on a new staff person it was key in training them and getting them up to speed.

For us it was paper in a binder, on a shelf underneath one of the circ desks.

And it was up to, between me and one other staff person who was super, duper detail oriented, she was the one who did the majority of our cataloging too, and every year we would go through those policies and procedures and choose one or two sections to update.

The two of us who reviewed it were not necessarily the ones to update it.

We might say, it looks like this guy needs to update that one, because that's what he's really good at, and that's what he does a lot in the library.

But keeping it up to date is important.

It was obviously a word Word doc, but we literally printed it off and print the out the new chapters as we revised them and put them into this horribly shabby looking binder and as Jennifer mentioned, it was kind of biblical.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Did you child neglect binder?

Somebody re-- did you check the binder.

Someelse mentioned having other folks create the content in the binder.

You want people who know how to do those processes are the ones weighing in.

Then -- some folks brought up challenges around delegating, how do you fight that feeling when you delegate that we're slacking or not doing something that we as the director should be doing?

>> CINDY FESEMYER: Here's how I fought that feeling.

I had a huge list of stuff I wanted to do someday, if by delegating one or two tasks I was able to actually for a half an hour pay attention to one of those things, I felt like I was winning.

So I know we all have longer-term projects, and the thing is, longer-term projects can't stay long-term forever.

At some point, especially when it's facilities related, you really do need to pay attention to it.

Or plan ahead.

And do a rash of cross-training and delegating, because you know you're going to be embarking on, I don't know, relandscaping around the library because you're getting leaks in the basement or something like that.

And that will surely take a lot of your time.

You can't let your tasks not happen during that time.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: And then there definitely were comments around the duties, which duties really should only be done by the director, or the questions around pay grades, should these people be doing these things.

So -- and I know that, and you know that varies depending on your library, the size, what kind of staff you have, if you have lots of volunteers.

So I think somebody -- somebody had mentioned listing all of the tasks and then I think one way is empowering folks to see that they are able to do certain tasks and maybe putting the suggestion to them what additional task would you like to learn how to do.

So I don't know if you want to talk about those tasks that maybe fall out of pay grades and how you deal with actually somebody else mentioned the challenge of working with staff who have been there for a long time, being a little bit resistant to cross training new staff.

So there's a lot of dynamics and personalities in there too, I know.

>> CINDY FESEMYER: So true.

So true.

I'll just say amen to that.

Personalities are magnified when there are very few of you in a small library, and let me just say I feel Y ya, totally been there.

I want to talk about the pay grade thing.

I was always aware of that.

We were not in a library that was unionized, but I was still aware of how much people were paid, and the differences in pay between people according to what their title was.

And so there's two things.

One, unless it was infinitely necessary because something was going to explode, I didn't ask people to do things that were so far outside of their job description that it was like abusing their hourly wage, basically.

That said, I was -- I mentioned I was there seven years in Columbus.

Over that time, I was able to very slowly change the municipality and the library board into believing what people should be paid, and I know by no means do you all have this opportunity.

But it took me years to get the city to realize that library work is just as valid as city streets, or the local utility, or whatever it is.

And that our pay needed to be maybe not exactly what they make, but closer.

So I advocated for more pay, and I paid more people along with a title bump so I could give them more duties.

That pay raise was never massive.

But nobody got paid a ton, so an extra dollar an hour and a title raise made a difference to some people.

I know it's pie in the sky for many of you, but it's something that takes time to build that municipal perception of the folks who work at the library.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Thank you.

>> CINDY FESEMYER: Okay.

So if you haven't been doing it already, let's just for fun take a stab and throw into the chat what you are professionally awesome at.

As I mentioned for me it's community engagement.

I can't imagine of working in a library or an organization at all that doesn't in some how overlap with and work with the community.

So I see Tina says the same thing.

Partnering.

It was everything to me.

Streepic planning, that's awesome.

Programming, grant writing, collaboration with schools.

Fantastic.

I definitely had some favorite partners along the way and they were my go-to people.

Right after my heart Julie says free programming.

Wow.

You could teach a year-long class in that to library folks.

Somebody else says weeding.

I loved weeding.

It was my favorite task because I would pick -- I always weeded the nonfiction, so I would pick a Dewey range and start and finish and walk away and look at the shelf and see that it had some breathing room, and I got a lot of personal satisfaction out of weeding.

Community outreach, community engagement, tech, a lot of people in tech, partnerships, you guys are awesome.

You get it done through partnerships and collaboration, right?

Well done.

Okay.

So let's talk just for a short while about ourselves.

We've been talking about ourselves as library professionals.

And just to let you know that I've been seeing in the chat that many of you are saying I don't have an MLS.

I never thought you did.

So many people don't.

There's no reason you have to have an MLS.

There's a lot of common sense and a lot of just keeping organized keeps you on track.

So yeah, I know very well that that's the case.

But -- so when you actually have time away from the library, what I want to do is give you tips on how to enjoy your own company.

At the very top I mentioned to you I was walking back from getting my hair done when I actively decided not to write the webinar slides the first time.

And that's a big small moment for me, is to walk there.

Within the community, my library was in, I swear, half the town was walkable within 10 minutes of the library.

And I very often took the opportunity to walk to the hardware store, if I could actually carry the thing back, or walk to get a cup of coffee, or walk out to lunch.

It just helped me take a breath for a moment.

So I personally like walking.

You can tell from the picture on the slide that really often the achievable, outcome for me was getting a yummy coffee drink from my favorite shop, where incidentally I got to know the owner very well, and we partnered all the time because I bought coffee from her on a regular basis.

So keep partnerships in mind too.

And I see someone saying a town where there are stores.

Sorry, I know some of you don't have stores because you're very rural.

Maybe you just walk to the gas station to get that cup of coffee?

Hopefully you have a gas station?

But another thing I like to do to enjoy my own company is to read like for fun during my lunchtime.

We didn't -- we had to give up our lunch break room, so we didn't really get to take breaks together anymore in my very small building.

So I would just go in a corner with my lunch and have a book that I loved reading.

And that's how I enjoyed my own company when I was at work.

But then when I was away from work, if I had to, I would -- I had my email, but I had it to do through the web browser.

I didn't install the app to read my email really easily.

And I didn't get notifications on my phone.

But if something was up, I would sparingly check my email on my phone, not on my computer, because that was too much like work, so when you're off work, don't check your email.

But if you have to, check it sparingly.

And seriously, quit looking at your phone.

Mine is sitting right here, right next to me.

But I'm not looking at it.

Looking at your phone for work when you're off of work is not what you want to be doing.

You crack me up, Karen.

Also, and I really mean this, if you do end up as we do all the time, getting sucked into doing work on your day off from home, put it on your time sheet the next time you go in.

I had to put in a time sheet every two weeks to be paid, and if I worked an hour on a Saturday afternoon, because something was going crazy on a day that I had off, I wrote down that hour when I got in on Monday morning.

And on a good day I would leave an hour early, it was clearly never a one-to-one, but I tried to give myself a little bit of time off when I worked during off hours.

I encourage you to do the same thing.

And truly, if there was nothing mega, I didn't check at all.

They had my cell phone, they could text me if something really crazy came up.

So, this is why you need to take care of yourself.

Because if you don't, and you start showing your mental and physical wear and tear at work, to me that's akin to martyrdom, and people don't like that.

The staff that you work with don't want to see how hard it is for you to come to work every day, and keep all the balls in the air, even though it is, that's nothing that they need to know.

So do what you can to not feel that physical and emotional wear and tear that would show when you interact with folks.

And the time off, it's for you.

It's not for your library, it's not the day to go in and catch up on that stuff because you know, you're not going to be on desk.

It's for you to recharge so you can be present for the folks that you work with on a daily basis.

And when you are doing errands for yourself out and about in town, build some of that me time in.

Walk around your own town, stop and get a cup of coffee, get a sandwich to go from your Faye Ritt place.

Build me time in where you can.

So I want to know, what have you done for yourself lately?

Paula Abdul, What Have You Done for Me Lately tell me what you do to keep yourself sane, or to keep yourself grounded.

You've been hearing about it from me, it's walking, it's a good cup of coffee, I could schedule a half a day around a good cup of coffee.

A massage.

Wendy has a massage tomorrow.

I'm so jealous, that's awesome.

An episode of your favorite T.V. show every night.

I do that too, it helps me stop thinking about all the things.

Which is also what yoga and reading and going to the theater, and taking a walk, and playing board games.

All of that.

One big tip from Marie is to use all of your paid time off.

And that feeds into that martyrdom thing.

If you don't use your time off, and lose it, I feel like that's human tragedy.

Use your time off.

Couldn't agree more.

I got in a fight once with my husband when I found out he lost vacation time.

Our kids were little, I could have used help.

What?

Pet the cats.

Yes.

All of those things.

So I want to say in the same way that you're planning your workdays, plan for your days -- your days off as well.

So I told you at the top that I started by having a professional conversation, getting my hair done, and writing this webinar.

This is what that day looked like.

He to man it because if it wasn't on my calendar it wasn't going to get done.

And I would just sort of get sidetracked and do something else.

So that said, it's possible to delegate and cross train at home as well.

Think about if you live with somebody, or if you're really close with someone who lives by, is there anything that you can do to help each other taking care of house chores?

This is another really good place to be okay with good enough.

I know my husband and I raised two kids, so believe me when I tell you, good enough, that is how I got to be okay with good enough, was the toilet is 97 going to be as clean as it should be, but it's clean, right?

And then the big thing I want to leave you with, to get over the guilt.

So this is just a riff on something we've all heard, but truly, behind every great library -- behind every great library is a director who's pretty sure they're screwing it up.

And I couldn't -- I just believe this wholeheartedly.

I thought they're trusting me to run the library, who am I to do it?

It's imposter syndrome.

I knew there were many things I could be doing betterment I definitely had shortcomings in some areas I never really fixed.

But I worked with people who could fix that on behalf of the library for me, I just want to let you know that you're not alone if you feel like there's something you screwed up that day.

Believe me.

And then this applies to personal things too.

Behind every great cat lover is a cat owner who is pretty sure they're screwing up their cat.

So I encourage you as a result to take a chance on something new for yourself, ask someone you like or respect what do they do for fun to get ideas.

I learned about that walking mediation by talking with a group of friends, about mediation in general, and how it didn't work for me.

And someone said, try this.

And they were right.

And keep an open mind.

I was starting to get very negative about mindfulness and mediation because it just didn't work.

Someone said try this walking mediation thing, I thought sure, I'll give it a whirl.

They were right.

And then put a new spin on something you do.

For me, again, the walking mediation, I'm an avid day hiker.

I love to put on a day pack, bring a snack and just be out in the woods in my hiking boots for a half a day.

So to spend a portion of that time just quietly being mindful of what was around me made a really big difference for me.

And the thing is, to try and put work, kids, cats, yard work, put that all out of your mind when you're taking a chance on something new, something that polite become a habit for you somewhere down the road.

So as a final chat, go ahead and put in the chat something that you would like to explore for yourself.

What something you want to learn more about.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: While those are coming in, I had a question, somebody asked if I could ask this on their behalf.

They were pretty much -- work pretty much as a solo librarian, besides them there's a part-time clerk who does low-level paperwork.

It's incredibly difficult for this person to find time for those small moments for them to take a break.

Basically, because that equals the library closing.

Any advice for someone like this.

>> CINDY FESEMYER: So it's -- you're in the impossible situation in trying to strike that balance.

And I feel you, I've worked with many, many people who were solo librarians in the same way, or ostensibly solo librarians.

The library isn't open seven days a week.

And on your days off, truly let them be days off.

Of course if the pipes freeze you need to take care of that.

That said, from someone in the Midwest that gets snow.

I don't know where you are.

But truly, honor your time off.

The thing on -- that I find really difficult is on professional development stuff.

So I said, remember feel like a professional and can give a conference session.

Like you can never even attend sessions if you're a solo librarian.

However, within my county, there were 10 libraries in my county, we banded together and so that people could walk away from the desk now and then, we would cover for each other.

We small town directors, so there was one library like super close to me, 10 miles away, and we would sometimes, I would work the desk so she could do a personal thing.

And she would do the same thing with me.

And creating a relationship like that, I mean, it was a real game-changer for me.

It just takes work to try and figure that out for yourself.

So all I want to say is I feel for you.

I know it's very difficult, and just get creative.

And talk to others who have the same problem and maybe you -- together you can find a solution.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Thanks, Cindy.

>> CINDY FESEMYER: Yeah, you all are going through -- leave it to library folks to have the coolest hobbies.

Painting seashells, rescue, public speaking is a fun thing?

Maybe that's something you want to be better at.

That's awesome.

Thank you for participating in these chat storms along the way.

Jennifer, there we go.

So what I want to do is share with you a really important time with me before my twin daughters were grown and out of the house as they are now, we took a really big, well-planned, well in advance family vacation to Ireland, and this is us in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

I promise you, I checked my phone now and then, but I was on a different time zone, people really didn't bother me while I was gone.

They let me have my time away, and it was lovely.

But I had to plan and plan and plan to make that happen.

But looking back, I'm so thrilled that we did.

So okay.

We have just a few minutes left.

Are you seeing from the chat any pressing questions or really great ideas, Jennifer?

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I haven't seen any more questions come in.

I did want to acknowledge the folks who were affirming how important it is to be able to say no.

Because I know Cindy and I had a discussion about setting boundaries, and I do believe that's really important to learn how to communicate that no and really use those as signals, that's a flag for you to be thinking about how to fit that in, or how to delegate, or how to have the conversation around it.

>> CINDY FESEMYER: Agreed.

And so I am a very glass half full aspirational thinker, so the twist that I put on that is not to learn how to say no, but to say yes, and.

And I know that's a stand-up thing, but I mean it.

When some patrons says, crazy idea, crazy idea, can you help me do it?

Yes.

And have you considered going to the chamber of commerce and asking them that very question?

That kind of thing.

So I want to say that turn no on its head a little bit, but get to the same result as no.

And that would be a very wise and useful skill for you down the road.

Someone asked for my contact info.

There it is right there.

Along with my website.

If you have any questions, or thoughts, seriously, pop me an email.

I'd love to hear what's going on with you.

Anything from chat, Jennifer?

Or are we good?

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Excellent.

I don't see any -- somebody says how about big library directors?

>> CINDY FESEMYER: That's a whole other thing.

Thank you all so much for hanging out with me.

And thanks so much for really contributing to those chat storms.

I know we're going to have a really great resource list that Jennifer will share out with us after this.

Thank you so much, everyone.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Excellent.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Cindy.

It's so great to work with you again.

And thank you to all of you who joined us, I will send you an email later on today once the recording and the chat and all the other resources are posted.

And I'll also send you a certificate next week for attending today.

And we hope to see you at future events.

And one more thing, as I wrap up I'll send you to a short survey and if you have time now, that's great, if not the link will be in the email.

But we love to collect your feedback, both to share with our presenters and to help us guide our ongoing programming.

So thank you again Cindy, and everyone, have a great rest of your week.