{"id":481,"date":"2013-03-25T22:35:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T06:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/?p=481"},"modified":"2013-04-05T16:21:54","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T00:21:54","slug":"stick-neck-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2013\/03\/stick-neck-out\/","title":{"rendered":"“When you stick your neck out, sometimes you get your head chopped off.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or something like that. (It’s a possible mis-quote of my department head. He was trying to make me feel better with this statement, and it was surprisingly effective.)<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the story of Librarians Build Communities (LBC) in Alaska. To jog your memory: LBC is an advocacy program, where librarians do a few hours of volunteering, using library skills outside<\/em> of libraries, to showcase how valuable our skillsets can be to our communities. I was on last year’s ALA Emerging Leaders group, working on the LBC project, and one of the to-do items on our project was “Host LBC in each group member’s home state.” So I pitched the idea to the Alaska Library Association Executive Council, with the aim of running LBC at our state conference in Valdez this March. (I also pitched the idea to the Pacific Northwest Library Association, but I’m happy to say that Kristi Brumley agreed to take that over. Look for it in Boise, this summer!) They thought it was a great idea. Three people signed up to help me run the program. We secured a time slot during the preconference day, and the conference bus from Anchorage to Valdez was scheduled to arrive early enough that we would be guaranteed a ton of librarians in town. Things were looking good.<\/p>\n

As time went on, we lost committee members—one never ever responded to email (I hope she’s OK), and the other is having a baby, like, next week—so it was just two of us running the program. My partner in this enterprise, Jonas Lamb, was super great, though, so at least that worked out well! A good two-person committee can do a lot! <\/p>\n

We found out that our conference happens during Valdez’s spring break (pretty much ruling out work with schools or kids) and that, with a total population of 4,000 people, there’s not a ton of need for volunteers. The United Way was stumped for project ideas. Luckily, the Senior Center was pretty happy to work with us, so we offered to bring some laptops and help teach the senior citizens how to use Facebook, or email, or whatever they wanted to know. It was a project that really appealed to me, since I love<\/em> teaching people to use computers. We were warned that not all of the seniors embrace technology, so we offered to also do a book-themed craft and maybe a reader’s theater. <\/p>\n

The Senior Center put information about it into their newsletter, which went out a couple of weeks before conference. Jonas got on a local radio show and talked about the program, a few days before conference. I secured the State Library’s laptops for the project and arranged for the conference bus to shuttle volunteers back and forth. We both brought a bunch of craft supplies, to do something like this<\/a>. 20-some librarians signed up—enough that we split into two groups, so as not to overwhelm the seniors. We scrambled and planned and just generally did our best to make the project awesome.<\/p>\n

And we showed up.<\/p>\n

And there were no seniors there.<\/p>\n

We sat around, tried to do the craft on our own, and waited over an hour, but no seniors ever showed up.<\/p>\n

So that was a pretty massive failure, in terms of community outreach. We probably got glitter in their common room, but other than that, we didn’t make any kind of difference or teach anyone anything. <\/p>\n

I hope I don’t sound too dejected. I ran several programs for this conference, and the others were much further along the success spectrum (falling somewhere between “not what I was going for, but people seem happy” and “everyone’s delighted, and some of them are doing what we’d hoped”—and this was my department head’s point, in the quote that titles this post: you win some, you lose some). I think I’m just a little mad because Jonas and I put a ton of time into it, which makes it sadder that it flopped. I’m not really sure either of us is willing to run it again next year, even though it will be in Anchorage, where there’s a lot more opportunity to volunteer. (Speaking for myself, I’d be on the committee. I’m just not willing to lead or co-lead it.) <\/p>\n

I can’t put my finger on any way that Jonas and I could have made this project more likely to succeed, other than maybe putting out a press release in the local paper or something. It was a small community, somewhat inopportune timing, and maybe just too pretty a day for the seniors to show up. It’s nobody’s fault. I’m a tiny bit grumpy about it, but not particularly guilty. Not really beating myself up. And, in its own way, it was still pretty fun. I joked, to everyone who asked how it went, “Well, we built community within<\/em> libraries, anyway.”<\/p>\n

In case you’re interested, here are some photos of the preparation and the event itself:
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