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The

Library-Changing Magic of

Tidying Up

Victoria Kerr

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Table of Contents!

Overview

How It Happened

“Holistic” Cleaning

Future Steps

Introductions

“Why?”

Physical Spaces, Electronic Spaces, Materials,

Processes

Not just the physical...

What comes next?

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01

OVERVIEW

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Introduction

UI Libraries

2015-2019
2021-present

“Post” COVID changes

So, first of all, it’s important to clarify: I love cleaning! It’s something I enjoy and derive immense satisfaction from, but this isn’t just something for people who love cleaning to do, and I’ll get into that more later. As for the rest of my introduction, if you’ve spent any time on the RSF discussion listserv, you might recognize my name - I am the Summit representative for University of Idaho, past member of the Summit Standing Group, and current member and soon to be leader of the Fulfillment standing group. I am currently the Resource Sharing and Reserves manager, a fancy way to say I oversee our interlibrary loan office and handle all the course reserves. On the right you can see my dad’s cat, Max, and my kitty, Lutz - cat photos are obligatory, so I had to.

I’ve spent a lot of time in libraries - I grew up visiting the UI library before I was even a university student because my dad was the in-house technology analyst and network specialist up until a few years ago. I worked in the UI library as an undergrad until I went off to get my MLIS (in Denver!) in 2019. After coming back home with impeccable timing for spring break in March of 2020, and thereafter finishing my degree online, I was hired initially as the night supervisor at the UI Library in late 2021.

There was a lot to adapt to - the library had opened back up fully, and while masking restrictions were still in place, people were eager to return to normal. But normal, “post” COVID, was different. Processes in the library, how people accessed materials, and the equipment we used had changed dramatically due to the demands of remote school and work.

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But Why??

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02

“Holistic” Cleaning

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Holistic

relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts (Merriam-Webster)

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Okay, but LITERALLY.

Yes, that literally.

Physical Spaces�
Electronic Spaces�

Historical Documentation
Up to date documentation

Materials

Processes

But what does that definition mean for cleaning? I use this term because this cleaning process has turned into a cleaning of the entire library ecosystem, and has expanded and inspired more than I initially thought it would. The big question at the end of the day is how to make the library itself better, and that’s the question that all this cleanup serves.

In a holistic sense of cleaning the library, it’s not just physically cleaning the spaces. Of course, that’s a huge aspect - especially with the numbers of users we have moving through our space. But, for me, holistic cleaning of the library is to make work easier, more enjoyable, and something that I don’t stress about - work is already hard enough, and tends to be a place that many people hold some degree of resentment towards.

So to make things easier, and clean holistically, perhaps it’s my recent-MLIS-grad-optimism or something, but my way of cleaning delves into everything. Of course, physical spaces - but also electronic spaces, where documentation, in particular, is something that really piles up. Also cleaning our materials - going through what’s on the shelves, what’s online, and ultimately (we hope) making our materials more accessible as a result of all this. Finally, a huge aspect of cleanup has been processes - how things get done!

Of course, breaking it down like this isn’t exactly holistic - but it’s easier for a presentation.

Going back to what I mentioned about this not being just for people who enjoy cleaning - cleaning with a goal like mine in mind - making work easier and less stressful - could be a good place to begin. Identifying stressors, or pain points during the work day, and working to change those so they aren’t causing stress is a good starting point, and can make it easier to identify where cleaning can be done. Start small, and let it snowball.

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03

How It Happened

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The very real straw that broke the metaphorical camel’s back:

PHYSICAL SPACE

This is our current surplus pile; believe it or not, this isn’t very much stuff. Two years ago, we had probably double this amount just in the basement, as well as furniture on other floors that needed to be removed.

Staff turnover meant accrued items had piled up - all around the library, but for me the biggest issue was circulation. Alongside staff turnover, and thanks to the changes that COVID caused, workflows changed, but the way we had our physical spaces set up hadn’t caught up. As with most libraries, we’ve been moving to more digital organization, resources and workflows, lessening use of paper by an incredible degree. Some examples of things that we got rid of from circulation are: a cash register and two safes (we hadn’t handled money at the desk since ASK ALISA), many keys - literal boxes full of keys - that we didn’t know the origin of or if they even could be used anymore, paper documentation for all our old guest cards and all of the previous shelf searches for missing items, and at least one big box of laminated COVID signs that were no longer in use. The cash register and safes went to surplus, while the keys went to our admin assistant - the paper documents were recycled, and all laminated signs unfortunately had to be put in garbage.

A big focus of cleanup, particularly in the past year, was our reserves room. It’s currently being turned into a new A/V studio, so after I had done a big initial clean, we ended up having to remove all of our materials from the room anyway. It was a good chance to downsize and reconsider how we store things in circulation - we have a lot of built-in cupboard space that previously had held stacks of old paper materials, but had been emptied. We now have everything organized, and well labeled - seriously, a label maker is VERY worth it for a workspace.

And in terms of other physical spaces, we’ve used the past few years to really re-assess how - and how much - spaces are used. There’s a lot of old furniture that was no longer used - two huge wooden display tables for our directional maps, for example. In removing that old furniture, particularly items that are broken, it allows us to see what we can reuse, and innovate new ways to use our space.

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Documentation

Electronic Spaces

Website

Course Reserves

Historical

Current

Web Team

Updating Website

How-tos

Records

As far as electronic spaces go, this is one aspect that I have let fall somewhat by the wayside, but do intend to pick back up again.

Probably the biggest aspect of electronic spaces that I’ve done work in is documentation. We moved from a shared drive to SharePoint a couple years ago, and everything that was in the shared drive and the historical drive were dumped in without much organization. And, as I’ve mentioned, a lot of things in the library had changed. Most of the documentation were, to put it politely, relics. When I first began working as the night supervisor, I did handle updating our student employee libguide and creating a completely new set of instructional basics for incoming student employees. Our Access Services Manager has taken it a step further and created an “Access Services Basics” document that is given to students as both instructions and reference.

But, to double dip in my listed spaces, much of the documentation that I’ve dealt with concerns course reserves. Reserves management has changed a lot in the past few years, especially since UI started using Leganto, the Ex Libris reserves management system within Alma. I took over as our reserves manager in 2022, at the very end of the year, and the reserves manager before me was kind enough to write up a full document on how to do reserves. That is a document I’ve expanded and updated as Leganto and my processes for reserves has changed.

But for course reserves, we also have so many historical records and scans and e-reserves. There’s been fairly high turnover in the reserves position for the past few years, and everyone does it differently. But we had been maintaining some records and scans since the 1990s and very early 2000s, which were not being used and were only serving to take up more electronic space. I maintain recent reserves records - two years in Leganto - and scans for classes. This has allowed me to see what needs rescanning or accessibility processing, which has really helped since there’s been a massive turn toward e-resources for course reserves.

Finally, I also help with our website! Our web team manages and updates the library website, and my biggest project so far has been giving the course reserves page a complete overhaul. This is what it used to look like.

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Materials

&

Collections

A/V Collections

Technology

General Stacks

CD-ROMs, VHS, DVDs

Big and Small

Books, you know?

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CD-ROM/DVD-ROM

VHS

DVD

A/V Collections

Discs on Reserve

Moved for accessibility

ALL WITHDRAWN

Tapes on Reserve

ALL WITHDRAWN

Re-barcoding

Reorganizing

I’ll start with our A/V collections. When I started this, the biggest mess we had was in our reserve room - we had book reserves, CD-ROMs, and VHS tapes held in there, where nobody could see them. The first immediate decision that was made was to get rid of all the VHS tapes, giving any that were relevant to our special collections and archives. A similar thing occurred with the CD-ROMs - with the agreement of our assistant dean, I moved all of them up to our third floor to see if anyone would check them out once they were in a more accessible place.

As you can probably guess, they did not get checked out. I received the approval just a couple months ago to get all of those fully withdrawn since they are no longer used, and many of them cannot be run on computers anymore.

With DVDs, we’re doing a more complex sort of cleanup - we formerly stored the discs in binders in our reserve room, but since we lost that room, we returned all the discs to the cases. It was a fairly successful process! But in doing so we did realize we need to change the location of our barcodes, and reorganize the DVDs. I’ll speak on this further in a bit, but it is a project I am still working on (and greatly enjoying).

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TECH!

A Practice in Learning and Teaching

As far as technology, the biggest issue was that we didn’t know what we had, what the tech does, and how it could go wrong or have issues. For us in Access Services, it isn’t necessarily a part of our job to be able to use this sort of tech to the level of being able to help others understand and use it. Our collection of tech used to be under the librarian in charge of the A/V studio, but it no longer is, so we have had to adapt and learn.

The biggest undertaking was doing an inventory of everything we had - as of the creation of this presentation, we have 144 items in our tech reserves. The majority of those items are small tech - things like phone chargers, calculators, and headphones. They’re cheaper items that have much lower replacement costs, and tend to see the most day to day use. The other items are what I’ve taken to calling our “big” tech - items like laptops, cameras, and mobile hotspots. These are bigger ticket items, and items that tend to have multiple parts and more complex systems of usage. The laptops and mobile hotspots definitely see the most usage out of these bigger items.

In the inventory, I reassessed what the purchasing costs of these items were/are, and updated our fee structures to properly reflect replacement costs. We do still enforce fines on our tech, and we changed that, as well, to a two-tier system. Small tech has a maximum fine of $20, and large tech a maximum fine of $70.

After cleaning up the records and our digital information, I also reassessed the physical state of our tech. The laptops hadn’t been cleaned consistently when they were returned (and, believe me, they get NASTY) , so I started doing that. We had spare tech items in our reserve room, and it was a good opportunity to put together some other kits for check out - we now have a speed flash kit, and an LED video light kit. With the loss of our reserve room, we also then had to find a new location to store all our tech, and we were able to relocate them to a storage closet in circulation. Of course, I also keep track of how many items are in each kit, and if any go missing so they can be replaced.

Just a month or so ago I took a further step in cleaning up the electronic records of our tech reserves location - we had a number of items in lost status - aka, the patron had never returned them. I followed the same protocol we use for AAR to get rid of loans and allow for withdrawal, deleting the loans and ensuring the replacement charges stayed on our users accounts, and then having our technical services withdraw those items.

As much as I probably complain about our tech reserves, it’s a fantastic collection, and we have some cool stuff that students are really enthusiastic about trying - like our sewing machine. I’d like to continue refining this collection so it’s easier for students to access.

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Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

General Stacks: Binder Project

Check shelves

Mend, withdraw, reshelve

Pull misshelved, mending, missing

Process mending, withdrawals

And finally for our general stacks: the binder project.

Technically it’s not the binder project anymore, since we did order an iPad to be used for it, but we still call it the binder project.

I went over this previously in an RSF community call, and the process hasn’t changed much - it’s mostly become more streamlined. First, we check the shelves against a list that has been generated from analytics, and look for things that are out of order, misshelved, not on the list but in the right spot, or in need of mending.

Everything that is in order and in good condition is left on the shelf, and everything else is pulled. Mending is assessed to see if it qualifies for withdrawal, and otherwise is processed into our mending desk and sent to our mending room. If books don’t exist in Alma but were on the shelf, they’re either re added if necessary or fully withdrawn. All withdrawals go through our technical services department, so any unmendable books or other withdrawals will end up there to be processed out.

Finally, withdrawals are completed and recycled. Books in need of it are mended, and they and anything that was misshelved are sent to be reshelved.

A byproduct of this process is that it has helped us find a lot of books that simply were not in Alma, whether because they were withdrawn and left on the shelf, or because there was some technological blip that removed their record. It’s also giving us a better idea of what books are actually missing from the shelves.

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04

The Future

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Planned Projects

Binder Project

Shifting and Facing Shelves

Vinyl LPs

Finish DVDs

Surplus (again)

TOUs

So, for the future, of course we’re still trucking on our “binder” project - we’ve moved from printing out sheets to an iPad Mini and Apple pencil, which has saved a lot on the sheer amount of paper our other two floors would take. Following the binder project, we’ve been having students make the shelves look nice, and we will be doing a full floor shift of our fourth floor once the project wraps up up there.

Related to the binder project, I want to go through our vinyl LPs - we have a collection of them that’s seen better days, and if anyone has any recommendations on how to shelve them and keep them looking nice, please share. We need help.

And as for the DVD project I mentioned on a previous slide, I am re-barcoding the DVDs so that the barcodes are inside the cases, which both saves them from wear and tear, and forces whoever’s checking the DVDs in or out to look and see if the disc actually is inside the case. This has also been an opportunity for DVDs to get new cases - multi-disc sets get to go in multi-disc cases, which take up WAY less room than putting every disc in its own case. And, as if that isn’t enough, this has ALSO provided the opportunity to rearrange the DVDs and create actual oversize DVD sections. With proper signage once I’m done, I hope that this will make it much easier for our users and for our student employees to keep things in the right place.

Of course, I will need to do surplus again - we’ve gotten into a cycle with it that’s much more sustainable, and as more areas of the library are updated, keeping that cycle has been essential.

The last big thing that I hope to tackle is the streamlining of TOUs across the UI as an institution - we have 10 libraries under our institution and not very much organization in the configuration, and it’s something big that really needs to be done.

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Takeaways

Constant reassessment
Input from others
Find a small starting point
Focus on the stressors

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Thanks!

Contact:

victoriakerr@uidaho.edu

208-885-6559

Special thanks to Lori Hilterbrand for allowing me to steal the great title.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Holistic. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved July 28, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holistic

also, clean your computer screen

CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon, and infographics & images by Freepik.

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Any Questions