Our Work and How We Do It

Rural Library Director's jobs

I went to teach a class in Internet Safety at the Ainsworth Public Library in Williamstown. While I was there, the librarian showed me her chart of all the jobs she does. She sometimes has to go back and forth with her Board of Trustees because they think certain things are her job that aren’t, or they don’t want her to do certain things that really should be part of her job. This is her outline. Every separate color is a different set of responsibilities. You may have to blow it up sort of largeish to read it. This librarian works about 20 hours a week.

8 thoughts on “Our Work and How We Do It

  1. why does this not surprise me one bit? when i was director of very small public library in nearby county, the library’s budget was less than $30K, and my salary was a third of that. i was expected to do custodial work and landscaping work on top of my library duties.

  2. Brilliant! I should have had one of these when I was the director of a small library in western Nebraska. One of the City Council, during a council meeting, actually asked, “What do you DO all day, exactly?”

  3. Oh man, that’s impressive. Tell me that she’s being paid a really nice salary with benefits for this job!

    I’ve got to tell you Jessamyn that I’ve seen a lot of ads lately for academic library positions that require an MLS, an additional master’s degree, a foreign language, and at least 2 years of experience — for the princely sum of $30K annually. My reaction? I fall down and laugh, then I cry.

  4. I needed to make something very much like this for similar reasons. I found that the easiest way to build it and easily edit it was to use Freemind. Fantastic for mapping out job responsibilities and activities.

  5. Good God; this looks like about three different full-time jobs.

  6. and she didn’t mention the bit about being the handyman – shovel snow, fix broken hinges, unplug toilet, and shlep out the trash, among other fun activities. Being a small library director is never boring! But my back is tired…

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