1/29 - This webinar will be rescheduled as soon as a new date is available. We apologize for any inconvenience. 

The Massachusetts Library System is pleased to announce that we have partnered with ALA Publishing to provide opportunities to learn library management skills from leaders in the field. This series is free for Massachusetts library workers, sponsored by a grant from the Manton Foundation. While information is scaled to smaller public libraries, all Massachusetts library staff and volunteers, in any type of library, are welcome to register.

Library managers carry a ton of responsibility. You are accountable for your staff, accountable to your patrons, and must ensure that the doors stay open and the lights remain on. In small and rural libraries, managers often bear the sole responsibility for building maintenance, budgeting and bill payment, not to mention staff supervision, dealing with community representatives and trustees…the list goes on.

On top of all that, you have to handle the day to day responsibilities of library operations like answering reference questions, cataloging materials and managing circulation? How can you do it all?

In this workshop, rural library management expert Gwin Grimes will show you how. You’ll learn how the principals of time management and prioritization apply uniquely to the environment of the small, rural library. You’ll learn where to micromanage, where to delegate and how to make sense of it all.

Gwin Grimes was hired in July 2016 as director of the Jeff Davis County Library in Fort Davis after a long career in 070.4 and a subsequent foray into 374/641.7. Her other experience working in a library was in the early 2000s as a graduate assistant in Information Commons at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth while she pursued a master's degree in liberal arts and later was hired to work full time in the library's circulation department. When she is not working as the only full-time employee of JDCL, she studies for her master of library science degree as part of the Transforming Libraries into Community Anchors in Rural Texas cohort at Texas Woman's University.

Learning objectives/practical takeaways:

• How to prioritize tasks in a constantly changing environment, a.k.a. the juggling act
• To make lists or not to make lists -- what was the question again?
• Delegation for people with control issues (that’s us)
• It’s more than just training
• What to do when you are the team

REGISTER