I really wanted to put programming next on my list of what makes a good children’s librarian, but I’ve decided to give precedence to budget and organization.  A hard choice, and perhaps programming should really be number four on the list, but let’s see if I can justify this decision.

Budgets are hard.  Very hard.  Librarians love books, obviously, and when reading book reviews in the assorted review journals at our disposal we see many, many books that look fabulous and exciting and just perfect for our library.  But the selection process must be driven first by how much money we have available for materials, and then we need to make sure that we’re fairly dividing our money spent amongst the areas we need to address.  And this is where that amazing thing called Microsoft Excel comes into play.  Kathy, the treasurer of the Friends of the library, taught me how to use Excel, and in that lesson she said to me, “Excel is the best program ever written – it’s awesome.”  She’s right, of course.  With Excel, it’s so easy to create a spreadsheet divided by month and category (the categories being dependent on how your library sorts the collection – at our library, the divisions are JJ, JE, J, AR, YA, CD’s, DVD’s, Replacement copies, and books on CD), and to use that spreadsheet to make sure no one category is too heavy, or another one shortchanged.

And then, of course, Excel works beautifully for an ongoing record of monies spent on program supplies and performers.  Once set up, it’s so easy to add the $7.47 spent for refreshments for a book group, or the $22.01 spent for workshop supplies, or to lay out the performers coming in the year ahead and predict how much money will be left for other programming expenses. 

Which leads nicely into organization.  I’ve been accused of being, well, wicked organized, and I agree that I’m guilty.  My personal philosophy on organization is this:  it’s only responsible to leave a clear paper trail in any job as complex as that of children’s librarian.  As an example, one week I wasn’t in on Friday, and on Thursday I had forgotten to do the prep work for the teen volunteer-run Saturday Storytime.  Ooops, my bad.  Luckily, though, Lisa was able to go into my computer files and find the “Storytime Today” door sign in those files.  But even more than a simple example like that, it’s also important for our own sanity of mind to have everything clearly in writing.  At the end of a summer reading program, I may think to myself, “Of course I’ll remember which prizes were most popular, and how many I ordered of each kind!”, but the reality is that no one’s memory is that good, and I’d be kicking myself come December if I didn’t keep clear records of all those statistics to aid in my ordering for the coming summer program.  So, organize, organize, organize, and keep a shelf full of notebooks with all that organized information in paper form, just in case the computer crashes. 

And next we have:  Programming…