Head Tale

It’s flown by but today marks one month since I started as the Branch Manager at RPL’s Regent Place Branch.

One word that keeps popping in to my head when I think about my new job is “comfortable”. What I mean by that is any new job, even one you want or are looking forward to, is going to have some butterflies. But I haven’t really felt that with this job and at least part of the reason why this may be occurred to me the other day. When I went back to library school, I think “Branch Head” was probably the library job I was most familiar with and also the most likely role I saw myself filling when I finished my Master’s.

It turned out to be a long and winding road to get there – rural branch supervisor, organization development specialist, business librarian, outreach & homebound services librarian – but now, here I am, seven years into my career as a librarian (seven years?!?) and I’m finally in the job that I thought would be where I was most likely to end up in the first place!

The timing of my move to this job feels right too – I’d been encouraged to apply for the Regent Branch Head position by a manager the last time it came open but didn’t feel the timing was right for a host of personal and professional reasons. Then, when my ODS position was eliminated and I had to bump to somewhere else at RPL, my union local inquired about whether I could bump into the RP Branch Head position. But unfortunately, it was a payband 10 position and I was (at the time) in a payband 9 position and even though both are librarian positions and I was qualified to be RP branch head (in all honesty, with my years of experience and public library background, more experienced than the person who was in the job), they wouldn’t allow me to “bump up”.

So anyhow, via a very circuitous route, I’ve ended up where fate may have put me a couple times before and it’s only been a month but so far, so good.

Here are some of my favourite things about my new branch…

1. Regent was my home branch before I became an RPL employee and it remains the closest to our house. That means I can come home at lunch to see Shea and Sasha, something that wasn’t really an option when I worked downtown (this is also a nice parallel to my first librarian job in Weyburn when Pace was born and I also got to be home with the family every lunch hour).
2. It’s the newest RPL branch having re-located just over a year ago so everything in it is basically brand spanking new while other branch heads spend time dealing with stuff like replacing carpet and crumbling stairs and layouts/shelving/designs from other eras. Meanwhile, RP incorporates a lot of modern library ideas including BISAC-based shelving for our non-fiction, lots of self-check machines, a video game collection which I believe is currently the only one in the entire RPL system and more.
3. Selfishly, I’m lucky that someone else was responsible for doing all the “heavy lifting” of overseeing the transition from our old location to a temporary location to our current location and then, before I arrived, a decent amount of time passed while existing staff were able to “work out the kinks” in the new branch.
4. I’ve got a number of new staff members – basically half my staff is new when you count myself, a couple new clerks I hired as my first duty as branch head, an LA who has been on sick leave but has just returned, not having worked a day in this new location plus a senior public service clerk who was transferred in a few months ago. Having a balance of experienced and new staff is great for being able to maintain the institutional memory and community connections but also brings in “fresh eyes” and new ideas about how we might do things.
5. Although downtown Regina has lots of restaurants and shopping, the location of Central Library means there’s not a lot super-close if you want to “pop out” quickly for food or whatever (City Hall Cafeteria = hidden gem) – everything’s at least a couple blocks away (and more once you consider that many destinations are in the Cornwall Centre which you have to walk miles to get to places like The Dollar Store or Shoppers or Tim Hortons or the food court or whatever.) At Regent, we’re in a strip mall that includes a couple fast food places, a pharmacy plus there are lots of food and shopping options within a block or two.
6. Regent not only has reserved parking but it has plug-in parking that is FREE for staff. (Compare that to the $60-$110 you might pay for an electrified parking spot downtown!)
7. I can be home in five minutes if I drive and 20-30 minutes if I walk. That also means more time at home compared to when I took the bus downtown for work and have to allow half an hour or more for the commute each way.
8. I’ve got a really great staff who are excellent at what they do.
9. I’ve also got a really good manager which makes a huge difference. He was the Acting Branch Manager for a few months in between the departure of the previous branch head and my hiring which gives him an excellent familiarity with what’s going on at the branch.
10. Again, a silly reason but being close to home means I’ll likely save a ton of cash, both because I won’t eat out 1-2 times a week like I might have when I worked downtown and I suspect even considering wear and tear, the cost of driving will be less than I was paying for a bus pass.

It’s not a perfect branch by any means (is there such a thing?) and there’s lots I’d have changed if I was designing it (and would still like to change now.) But overall, it’s been a great first month and I look forward to seeing what comes next!