ASSOCIATES (vol. 3, no. 3, March 1997) - associates.ucr.edu
*FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF UP: A PERSONAL VIEW OF STACKS MANAGEMENT IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY* by Roberta Stuemke stuemke@uwosh.edu I've been a Stacks Manager for over ten years now - and the shelves still haven't fallen down, which was a frequent nightmare of mine when I first assumed the title, late in 1985, after eight years of working full-time at the Circulation Desk. The collections of Libraries & Learning Resources (LLR), housed in the Forrest R. Polk Library serve approximately 11,000 students at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. By 1985, we knew we were facing a major renovation that would eventually require shifting our entire Main Collection, over 300,000 volumes. My supervisors thought that it would be a good idea to have one individual in charge of planning and overseeing that project, and they wanted that person in place well ahead of time. There were other shelving difficulties that we hoped would be solved by having all the stacks-related responsibilities consolidated into one position, originally called Stacks Maintenance. Shelving, shelf-reading, and searching for missing materials were part of the Circulation department, but they were something like unwanted step-children. Circulation student employees would be assigned to these tasks whenever it was felt they could be spared from providing 'direct' patron service - or we were so overflowing with unshelved books that we had no choice but to have someone shelve. As for such things as picking up after in- house use, we wasted a lot of time asking each other, "Do you know if such-and-such has been done recently?" There was little effort devoted to monitoring shelving accuracy or keeping track of overcrowded areas in need of spot-shifting. The result, of course, was that the stacks were in pretty bad shape. We all felt it would be easier to fix things if one person was in charge, rather than sharing the responsibilities with the rest of the Circulation department. I didn't have any special experience with stacks maintenance. In fact, I didn't even have a library degree. I got my B.S. in English, and I came to library work via the civil service examination route. Still, I wasn't particularly worried about my new job. At the start, we all figured the duties could be handled as a mere third of a full-time position. I would still be spending a lot of time at the Circulation Desk, and the remaining third of my time would be spent assisting in the Interlibrary Loan department. I was sure I could find enough information about stacks maintenance in the library journals. Much to my dismay, there was virtually nothing in print. When my casual research failed, I tried several detailed database searches. I couldn't find anything except articles on how to select the right type of shelving for different library media, or how to calculate the amount of shelving needed for a particular size collection. Even these few articles were written more from an administrative viewpoint, and they were of little use to me. Choosing the kind of shelving, and deciding how much new shelving was needed, had already been done for me. What I needed was help in figuring out how best to use what Administration gave me. After several more failed research attempts, it finally dawned on me that we were trying something that was not only new to Polk Library, but also was not a very hot topic for professional research. I would have to build our Stacks Maintenance program from scratch, or from "the bottom shelf up". Fortunately, I wasn't alone. My supervisors and my Circulation Desk co-workers spent a lot of time brainstorming with me, and everyone was open to experimentation. The renovation project hadn't even started yet, so we had at least a year before the major shifting would be needed. That gave us time to get everything else into place first. We established a list of priorities, and used these to decide how the new program would be shaped, expecting that we would be making lots of changes along the way. One of these changes was in terminology: Stacks Maintenance became Stacks Management, mostly because in Personnel terms, maintenance referred only to janitorial duties. The first thing I asked for, and the one decision I have never changed my mind about, was to have my own student employee schedule, student assistant hours devoted to Stacks alone, not shared with the Circulation Desk. The only way to guarantee that certain duties would be accomplished on a regular, routine basis was to first guarantee that a minimum number of student/staff hours would be available, regardless of how many patrons were lined up at the Circulation Desk. So, from the beginning, Stacks Management has had its own separate student assistant allocation. Admittedly, I always feel that I need at least double the hours I have, but I suspect this sentiment is shared with every other unit in the library. One advantage of having my own student staff is that I can see to it that all the workers in Stacks are trained in the same way for every duty in the unit. Gradually, starting from a very basic 'Introduction to Call Numbers' and a demonstration of proper shelving procedures, Stacks Management training has become a comprehensive program that includes a standard orientation lecture, a forty-page manual, call number tests, checklists, and, my newest experiment, self-training guides. No one goes upstairs to work in the stacks without knowing exactly how I want things done. Even if I cannot personally go up with each student, the first time anyone takes on a certain chore, there is a written guide that takes the worker through all the necessary steps to accomplish that chore properly, with questions to answer so I can look at the guide later and be certain that the instructions were fully understood. One of the problems I faced was that I couldn't be a full-time supervisor, present whenever there were Stacks students working. I had other responsibilities that took me away from the area; besides we needed student workers in Stacks during evening and weekend hours as well. So, I had to develop a program that would allow for what I call 'long-distance supervision'. In other words, the Stacks Management student workers have to know what to do even if I'm not present, without having to ask the Circulation staff for instructions. Starting with such simple ideas as a bulletin board for posting 'special assignments', and a student log for signing in and out, I ended up with a set priority schedule that begins with what I call the Daily Duties. I worked out a list of things that must be done everyday, and finally turned this into a weekly pin board that lists each of these chores with a space for a push pin to indicate that each specific one has been done. Originally, the Daily Duties were simply the In House Use pickups of the study areas. We needed to guarantee that these were done on a regular basis, because once we're a few weeks into a new semester, the number of library items left sitting on tables, carrels, photocopiers, etc., grows dramatically, and rapidly gets out of control if not handled daily. When I started out, I kept an incredible amount of statistical data about what materials were picked up, including counts of Main Collection items done according to the primary letter of the call number, to be reported to Collection Development. Eventually, I was drowning in figures, and the pickups were taking much longer than I could afford. So, I discussed things with my supervisors, and we decided that the letter-by-letter count was not necessary. Now, the only pickup statistics we keep are simple counts of the number of items from each collection found throughout the building. As for the Daily Duties, the list on the Pin Board grew to include such things as cleanups to straighten the shelves in the Main Collection, pickups and cleanups in three smaller special collections, reshelving oversized books daily, and searching for missing items. Only this last year, with the addition of Periodical Stacks to my responsibilities, new duties have been added to the Daily Board: processing incoming newspapers, and two daily sessions of collecting and reshelving current periodicals. There is a Self-Training Guide for each chore listed on the Board, and learning how to follow the Board is an essential part of the original Orientation lecture. No one has to ask whether certain essential jobs have been done - if there's no pin next to that duty on the Board, it still needs to be done. This assures that the routine chores get done every day, with a minimum of fuss or confusion, regardless of unexpected student schedule changes or absences. Because the Pin Board allows for a lot flexibility, I don't have to readjust things because a certain student calls in sick or another one comes in to make up some missed hours. Unless there has been a really bad storm that closes the university, the routine chores WILL get done. I myself can be absent from work for several days without having to appoint another staff person to cover everything for me - once trained, the students can maintain the routine work with little supervision for at least a week. Once the Daily Duties have been done, the students are instructed to follow some set priorities in deciding what needs to be done next. First, they do work on any special problems that have come up, such as straightening a particular row of shelving that's been decimated due to an assignment given to three different sections of the same class on the same day. After these come the other routine responsibilities of the Stacks Management unit: shelving, shelf- reading, and both major and minor shifting projects. With this list already established, the students can easily figure out what to do throughout their scheduled hours at work, whether I'm around or not. This system has proven itself to be remarkably adaptable, so that I could easily expand it to include the new Periodical Stacks duties. The old sign-in log has evolved into the present Activity Log, which serves many different functions. I use it to verify the student timesheets, to watch for the signs of specific problems or irregularities in student worker performance, and to do time- studies. When needed, I can give my supervisors pretty specific figures regarding how much time per week is needed to keep up with the shelving or to handle the in house pickups, which can help when it's time to divide student assistant funds. The Log is also a regular reminder to the students that even if I am not around, I am still their supervisor, and they are answerable to me. When shelving was handled only by Circulation Desk students, it was frequently considered 'dog-work', almost like punishment, to be gotten through as rapidly as possible so the students could return to the important work of helping patrons at the Circulation Desk. This problem was one of the earliest things I had to solve. I did it not only by hiring students specifically for Stacks Management, and by emphasizing the importance of shelving accuracy over speed in their training, but by establishing the measurement of shelving accuracy as an integral part of the overall Stacks Management program. The Circulation department had been experimenting with random accuracy checking before I became the Stacks Manager. Everyday, a different student would be assigned to shelve, tagging each book with a slip of colored paper, so that a staff person could go up and check all the tagged books as soon as the student finished. My first attempt at monitoring accuracy was to expand this system, by assigning each student a number and giving them packets of numbered tags. This way, I could check virtually every single book that had been shelved, making note of the errors. There were some definite advantages with this program. Shelf order improved drastically, since any shelving errors were corrected within 24 hours; I had examples of errors to use for instructional purposes; and I could provide concrete statistics on the numbers of books shelved and the accuracy rate of the shelvers. The shelving accuracy rate rose rapidly until I could virtually guarantee an overall shelving accuracy of 98% or better over the course of a semester. We had much better success when searching for materials the patrons couldn't locate, and shelf-reading was easier because the basic order was better. I got very attached to this system. However, it gradually grew to such proportions that it became more and more difficult to maintain. As each semester wore on, and the returns grew heavier, I would have to exempt the best students from tagging their books, simply because I couldn't keep up with the checking. There were days when I would pull tags from upwards of 1,000 books, and then I had to sort the tags, count them, and tabulate the results. It all became very labor intensive, and finally I developed a different, much simpler system, once again based on random checking. Now, whenever a booktruck is organized for reshelving, fifteen call numbers are selected at random for a checklist. Once the truck has been shelved, either I or an experienced, specially-trained student searches for those call numbers, keeping track of the errors and of the items that cannot be located. In addition, approximately one of every ten trucks is processed for expanded checking, with an additional forty five call numbers listed. The first truck a new employee shelves is always processed for expanded checking, but otherwise, the shelvers don't know how a particular truck has been processed, and none of them know which books have been listed for checking, so they are encouraged to be equally careful with all of them. We now check an average of 20% of the books shelved, and the overall accuracy rate has dropped a little, to between 96% and 97%. The stacks are not in quite as good order, but it's still better than if we did no monitoring at all, and the time needed is considerably less. I miss the beautiful results of the original system, but I don't miss the hours of extra labor it required. One thing I still do not feel that I've found is a truly effective way of handling is shelf-reading. This job always seems to end up on the bottom of the priority list. The other duties, especially keeping up with the shelving and the searching, although not more important, are more immediate and urgent. Especially since I would like to maintain the good reputation we have so far had with the Library Appeals Committee. Even cross-training, so several of the Circulation/Reserve students are also trained for Stacks duties and can be sent up to shelf-read whenever the Desk is slow, is only a partial solution. Short of finding more funds for student help, I have not yet been able to think of a good solution to this problem. Now, do you remember the major shifting project that was the reason for creating a Stacks Management position at this library in the first place? I have now planned, executed - and obviously survived - three different major shifting projects. I've learned enough to no longer promise that I can get a particular project completed in a set time period, because there are always too many variables. I've also learned that planning a shifting project need not be as complicated as some ALA guidebooks propose, especially when the amount of shelf space has already been decided by someone else and cannot be altered. I try to do a shelving survey every summer. I include in that survey an estimation of how many shelving units are 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% in use. With these figures, I can calculate how much space is currently used for each call number area, and can plan a shifting project on the basis of assigning the same percentage of shelving to each section. The only times I have to make deliberate adjustments in these calculations are when we know that particular subject areas have changed drastically. For example, several years ago, when the PZ3 and PZ4 call numbers (our old method of classifying the fiction materials) was dropped in favor of the PR and PS classifications, the shelving patterns in those sections changed as a result. I did use the more elaborate system once. Several years back, I proposed erecting some new shelving in one study area. My original proposal was of the 'quick and dirty' variety, limited by the amount of shelving available in storage and the space available if we took over one study area for stacks. I used the 'percentage of shelving in use' system mentioned above, and had the proposal ready to turn in within two weeks. Once the plan had been accepted by library administration, I was asked to provide more detailed figures, so I and several of my students measured every inch of shelving. The final results were within 4% of my original quick and dirty calculations. I think the more elaborate system is of more use at the very beginning of planning for renovation, when trying to calculate the amount of expansion room that will be needed over a period of five or ten years. The special challenge of being a Stacks Manager is that there is always something happening, something changing. I don't necessarily panic as much as I used to at the idea of such changes, because things change virtually every semester, and now I know the program can absorb such changes without requiring its complete dissolution. Also, there is a little more information available now, and more people to call on for help, because more libraries have Stacks Management positions than when I first took the title. I think this shows a greater concern for making the best possible use of available resources in this age of 'downsizing' everything from overall budgets to staff and student assistant allocations. I think the one change here at LLR that I'm most pleased with is one of attitude. Shelvers now take real pride in their work, frequently wanting to know what their individual accuracy rates are. People no longer talk about work in the Stacks as though it doesn't provide the kind of direct patron service that the Circulation Desk does. Even my own opinions have changed, from a feeling that stacks-related work was not quite as important as anything involving direct patron contact, to the realization that the services performed in Stacks Management are among the most basic direct patron services the library provides. After all, a library is only as good as the material it provides to its patrons; no matter how good a collection is, if the patrons can't get to the material they need, the library is failing in its most important task, that of disseminating information. Perhaps as a result of this change in perceptions about this work, my position description has also evolved, so that I no longer 'wear three hats'. Periodicals/Stacks Management is now a full-time position, as perhaps it should have been all along, but back in 1985, nobody knew what we were getting into. I doubt that any of the procedures that I've developed over the last eleven years are really earth-shaking innovations. I'm sure that similar problems have resulted in a variety of solutions in academic libraries all around the country. I would have liked reading about some of those solutions, because maybe we wouldn't have stumbled as often. Still, I think we've accomplished a lot here, and have established a good foundation for future accomplishments.