Head Tale

Today is the two month anniversary of me being at Regina Public Library.  Hard to believe it's been that long already but in some ways, I have to work to remind myself that it's only been a short time overall (I often counseled our new branch librarians at Southeast Regional Library not to feel overwhelmed soon after they started since it would take at least a year with them going through every element of the job – from Summer Reading Club to year-end reports – to feel truly comfortable.  My old boss trumped this, telling me that he believed people weren't comfortable in a job until they'd done it for 5-7 years!)  I hope it doesn't take me 5-7 years to feel comfortable at RPL but there's probably some truth in that view too – I guess it all depends on how you define “comfortable.” 

Anyhow, with those thoughts in mind, I decided that it might be fun to compare and contrast working in a rural system with working in an urban system.

At RPL, if I have a meeting at a branch, it's a 10 minute drive, no matter which branch.
At SRL, I once made a four-hour round-trip to attend a tea for an hour in honour of a librarian who was retiring.

At RPL, there are about 30 professional librarians, the majority located in Central where I work so there is lots of opportunity for exchanging ideas and thoughts.
At SRL, there were exactly four professional librarians of which, three were in the building where I worked in and only two in my half of the building.

At RPL, there are support staff to assist when you are planning an event or workshop or designing a poster or whatever.
At SRL, I found myself doing everything from stuffing the information packages to designing the posters to ordering Dilly Bars for our snack breaks at our staff workshops!

At RPL, saying the word “parking” (at least at Central) is akin to yelling out “Goddamn!” in church.
At SRL, there was parking but it was a gravel lot that turned to slush in rain or snow.

At RPL, I take the bus for twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes back in the afternoon meaning I don't have to start my car, fight traffic and I get a lot extra reading done.
At SRL, it was a five minute drive to work.

At RPL, I stay for lunch because there's not enough time to get home, even if I drove myself instead of taking the bus.
At SRL, I was home for lunch nearly every day.

At RPL, my time feels a lot more flexible in terms of when I take breaks, etc.
At SRL, because of the small size of the organization, all staff started the day, ended the day, and took their coffee and lunch breaks at the same time with very few exceptions.

At RPL, there's a lot of cutting-edge work being done with technology including blogs, wikis and all that good stuff.
At SRL, there wasn't (though I did manage to utilize a few things – sometimes with permission, sometimes without! )

At RPL, DVD's are one of the highest circulating items.
At SRL, every local libray board decides if they want DVD's in their community so they're much less prevalent, even as they're equally popular in the rural system as in the city system.

At RPL, I will likely not have any direct interaction with board members (unless I do something *really* dumb!)
At SRL, I sometimes attended local library board meetings and occasionally had to interact with or present to the regional library board as well.

At RPL, staff access is restricted to the library's open hours plus a few extra hours before the library opens in the morning. 
At SRL, almost all staff had 24-hour access to the building.

At RPL, I share an office with the library's webmaster (which is not a big deal – we get along very well and share many common interests.  Plus the design of the office makes it seem like we almost have our own offices.)
At SRL, I often joked that I had two offices since I had an office of my own but frequently went into the office of the person I'd replaced to look up documents or take advantage of the extra space in his office.

At RPL, the library is only closed for Christmas and Boxing Day.
At SRL, the library (HQ anyhow) was closed for the week between Christmas and Boxing Day (though staff had to use their own holiday time to do so – but I don't think anybody min
ded!)

Anyhow, those are some comparisons and contrasts of my two public library jobs so far.  Knowing very well that people from each organization read this blog, I hasten to add I make these points not to say that one is better or worse than the other – each has its own strengths, weaknesses, advantages, disadvantages and if forced, I honestly don't know if I could pick a favourite betwen them.  (Er, on second thought, since I'm now at RPL, I'd likely pick them – especially dependent on who was asking! )