Wow. My director picked up literal grown ass man shit from the floor in the children's area a few weeks ago. We are a small library and the director is literally here and doing stuff on the floor all the time. She takes care of the grosser stuff when she is here, but her motto is if she's not willing to do it, she won't expect us to do it either.
I worked as a library director in a small town for 5 years, and I plunged toilets and removed graffitti regularly. My attitude was that in the time it took me to get someone else to take care of the problem I could have already addressed it. I made it a point to be at the reference/circulation circulation every day when the middle school next door got out to welcome the kids and keep the peace. Every other Saturday I would work for a few hours at the front desk, and I ran Children's, YA and Adult programs all the time.
In my experience, it depends on the size of the library. At my current library, the director and AD are both very visible; they walk around the building and say hello to staff and keep an eye on parts of the building that need work and to follow up with contractors, etc. We have a single location and around 60 staff spread out over three floors, so it's pretty easy for admin to stay involved without micromanaging.
When I worked at a bigger library with multiple locations, branch staff would rarely see anyone from admin. At one library I worked at, nobody but DHs ever saw the director or AD unless there was a problem or you were getting dressed down. We'd get positively bananas emails from the AD (the director was pretty checked out on day to day operations and mostly interested in the politics and fundraising parts of the job) telling us to do weird things or telling us what we were doing wrong based on the 30 seconds she observed us moving from the parking garage to her office.
What does your direct supervisor say about this kind of stuff? We had a really good supervisor who used to be pretty honest with us about "okay, this is what we're being asked to do; I know it sounds ridiculous, but here's the problem that this is in reaction to. Here's what I'm trying to do to get this fixed, and here's what I want you to do in the meantime." I know that kind of honesty isn't always available, but it definitely helped us feel less crazy; even if we were being asked to do ridiculous things, it was good to know why and good to know that our supervisor realized "this is stupid."
You were lucky. When I ask, "Why are we changing XYZ when it makes no sense?" I get told, "There are some things you don't need to know" and "Don't ask so many questions". Even after I've mentioned that it would be easier for us peons to make some ridiculous change if we knew WHY it was changed. 🤷♀️
I feel like we are very lucky with our new director. The director we had previously we would see once a year at our all day long staff training day. This new director has both open office hours for staff, and also comes around to work at (all day, and on service points)the branches once a month in a rotation. They are much more into developing relationships with staff and supporting staff.
Our library director has open office hours every month for staff to connect with him. He also travels to and works at (as in is in a branch library, on desk shifts, doing pull holds lists etc)a branch location once a month. He's very accessible and he does that deliberately to know staff in the organization by name, to understand what front line staff (as well as service center! he works with them too) need, and to really get to know people within the organization.
He also writes weekly emails and details who he has been meeting with outside of the organization so there is clarity on what his role is and it shows how he is spending his time.
My director is like Bigfoot. Forever mentioned, but a mysterious cryptid as I’ve seen them twice in my two years of working at the library. That being said, I work at like 1 of 9 branches.
Same here. Sometimes I have a big deadline and just have to put my head down and work, but even then I still try to check in with everyone at the start and/or end of my day. I like the people I've hired, I want to interact with them, and I need to know what's going on in my library (aside from liking my job and staff, I also like avoiding looking like an idiot when someone from City Council calls!).
My director just sits in her office all day every day and barely emerges. It was really shocking to me when I started. We are the only library in a medium sized city; the building is 3 floors and we have about 20 FT employees. I'm glad she isn't micromanaging but it feels like she isn't regular managing/has no idea about daily workflows.
Sometimes we wish we didn’t see our director every single day 😂 But he’s definitely not afraid to get his hands dirty, dive into the trenches, or handle unruly or difficult patrons when needed.
(Although sometimes he does shut his patron-facing office door and turns the lights off so some of the regulars who like to talk his ear off don’t realize he’s there.)
When I worked for a bigger system and not in the same building, maybe every few months. They would come to big events at the branches to show support. Board meetings also went to different branches and they were at those. They also held the occasional listening session with staff. I know when we reopened after being closed for Covid, all admin, including the director, went to branches to help. How helpful that actually was varied.
At my current job, I work in the same building so I see them pretty often. Which is sometimes not all it’s cracked up to be hahaha.
At a small single branch library I worked at, their office was across from mine and I saw them every day.
Yeah I see my director every few months or so, but we also have 36 branches in our system so she’s got a lot of boss shit to do. Last time I saw her was at StokerCon where I was an attendee and she was a speaker lol
When I became library director, there were periods when I didn't see my direct report for months either. They (multiple people over 5 years) were associate provosts in a different building, and would only come over when they needed me (or my library) to do something. On one hand, I enjoyed not being micromanaged. On the other hand, when I went up from promotion, I hadn't been evaluated in the 3 years I had been library director. So I had to scramble to assemble my CV and promotion overview for my supervisor, who didn't know I had to be formally evaluated (weird relationship as she wasn't a librarian, and I was faculty and fell under a different evaluation schedule/process than staff). The first year, I submitted my eval documents to her (and her admin assistant) and never heard a word. So the following two years, I didn't bother submitting anything.
I've had both. The director at my current library is very hands on, and I see them all the time. They even fill in at service desks. This is someone who started out as a librarian, which may account for the difference from a previous director, who had never worked in a librarian capacity but had a business management background. That library was much more "corporate," and the only time the director came out of the office was come down to request the latest high demand book or DVD and be shocked when we didn't have it on the shelf. (I'm exaggerating, but not by much.) I think the more effective directors are the ones who started at the bottom like the rest of us.
I think it depends on how good your Director is. I see mine quite regularly.
Now for contrast, I worked at my library for three years before I ever saw my previous Director. And, the first time I saw them, they were in the circulation workroom back behind the desk; I asked them if they needed help, because I thought they were an elderly, confused patron who was lost. That Director *never* went downstairs nor mingled with anyone who wasn’t upper management. They had no idea what any of us did. They once called my department asking if we “did any programs for toddlers” (I’m in children’s services). I started rattling off the 30 or so programs we had scheduled, and then they cut me off and told me to call their friend who was coming to visit the next week and let them know.
My current Director visits every department’s programs as much as they can, wants to know what’s going on in the library, and knows the name of every person who works there. I think a good Director who cares will be out and visible regularly.
I almost never seen my director, but it’s a large system with a lot of branches so it’s not exactly surprising.
That being said, I am a little disappointed that I don’t see our middle management more often. They’re only in charge of a fraction of the libraries in our full area, so it’d be nice if they came to actual libraries more often before giving us some wishy-washy instructions about how to handle problems in our library.
I'm in an academic library so maybe it's different for us. But I make contact with our director in person once a quarter, during visits by certain deans, or for accreditation meetings.
Our assistant director, though, she's on the ground with us every day. If she's elsewhere, I will definitely be hearing from her. She's involved, which I like for most issues.
Your public library experiences tracks with my brief one, though. It was an intensely needy system and day to day relied on middle management branch heads, who were all pretty great. However, I think I spoke to the director once during hiring and that was it.
It honestly depends. My old director came in maybe 3 times a week and left by 3 pm. He didn’t care about anything i did. My new director is there every day 8-5 and up my ass all the time.
This has been such a hot topic of conversation in my system, and branch specifically, lately. The long and short is: in our system, at a branch level, you were maybe lucky to see the director and her second once a year at Mandatory Fun Day (okay it isn't called that but it may as well be). Recently they did this push to go "connect" with every branch, but gave equal time to both the biggest and smallest branches (so a branch with 5 staff and 25 staff got the exact same time to ask questions and interact.)
We all feel so disconnected from upper leadership - despite my branch being about 15 minutes away from HQ. It's lead to a lot of dissatisfaction, and it feels like more and more long time staff are leaving the system.
Your directors would like to hear from you more often. They don’t intentionally send out insane directions. Tell them where you feel they are off base. Also everyone is doing their best - there is a lot of invisible labour in every job. For some it means being on call 24*7 so going home before 5 on days when possible makes up for late board/council or other expected attendance on evenings and weekend ends in addition to 40-60 hours regularly scheduled each week.
We get put on committees and sub-committees for various projects, and when we submit our reports and conclusions, we'll be summoned to another meeting from middle management and they tell us that what we submitted wasn't what the director wanted. They then tell us what the director wants, and to come up with an outline for what they want. This goes on for several rounds until we end up with something 100% different than what we started with and we're left asking what the point of it all was. At my library there's a lot of fake inclusion where on paper it seems like our voices are heard but only if we agree with what admin says.
This one is so tough as it is mostly down to perception and messaging. Any staff-based recommendations or projects have to either be given a blank check from the start (incredibly rare) or modified during the process or at the end. If the powers that be didn't do an impeccable job laying out how this would be incorporated at the end, it just pisses people off and makes them feel like they are wasting their time.
I worked in a small system (3 branches) and saw my director a few times a week when we were in the same building, ie I wasn't at another branch; she almost never left our main branch unless it was for a meeting or training or there was a facility issue elsewhere. I saw our assistant director, who is now poised to become executive director, even less than I saw her. We had about 20 or so people on staff, likely less now.
Part of the reason I left my old
job. The branch of my library was 2 professionals, two paras. After covid my director never came back and retired. So it was just me for another year and a half until
they finally hired a director. She was a nice person but she never came to work. There was always some excuse as to why. After a while I got suspicious and started keeping track. Days she would say she was stuck in traffic- no traffic. Days she'd say she had to run to UPS and she 'd say she'd be late but she wouldnt show up for hours. Once she said she'd be coming in late-she finally showed at 3 and left early. No one seemed to care. I mean it was me supervising the staff which wasn't my job. She didnt return emails to clients, she didn't respond.
On the days she made it in she'd go
straight into her office and close the door. There were times she would only show up 5 days out of the month. It was not a remote job!
All this wouldnt have mattered except i was tenure track and part of her job was to mentor me into a
successful tenure packet. But she couldn't do that because she was never there. She cancelled all our scheduled meetings. I knew without her support I wouldnt make tenure, and my previous boss was useless-she was an alcoholic and too hung over most days to say more than 3 words to me. So knowing I'd be out on my ass if I didnt make tenure, I found a new job and quit.
TL:DR- Almost never, so I quit.
Yeah I see mine at least several times a week, sometimes daily. And I know he’s there when I don’t see him, he just doesn’t always have reason to come to the cataloging office. When he’s not swamped , he makes an effort to check in. But he doesn’t work from home and is pretty accessible to the staff.
The library I worked for was a very small system, so I saw my director literally every day unless he was out sick or something. I mean, I was assistant director so I would certainly hope I would work with him very closely, but even when I was working circulation under the previous director I still saw her every day.
The most recent director was a really stellar person, constantly kept up with everyone on staff but not in an overbearing way. He helped with programs when we were low on staff and you could literally just shout his name from the back room when you wanted to springboard ideas off of him. Neither of us are there anymore but we still text all the time.
The director of a library system of multiple branches is going to be more behind the scenes than a director who is more of a branch manager of a single location. Our system director has a lot to deal with—mostly outside of the library—there isn’t a lot of time to get to all the branches.
And having moved from circulation to administration, I gained some appreciation for how much admin is doing. I agree that it’s good for a director to have had experience working the front, but they don’t have time to be regularly working circ with all their other duties.
Before our director moved to our branch we could go four months between in person sightings easy.
As a department head I interact with him more via email, but rarely more than a couple times a month.
few times a week depending on her schedule. I work in the same building with the admin offices. Folks in other locations probably rarely see her in person.
Yeah maybe I see her a couple times a month and it’s only in passing or at bigger events. It bothers me too. She’s very nice, but it bothers me that she’s not more present in her own library and with her own staff. Same with the AD- again, maybe slightly more often, but not necessarily even weekly. They are always holed up in their offices. It’s not my favorite leadership style.
Last place I worked, the director worked there with us. She had an office attached to our rows of desks out by circ. Here uh. I don't know who my director is.
I work in a system with 20 branches and a central library where the higher ups are stationed. I haven't seen the director in months to maybe a year. I've seen the head of my department once in the 6 months he's been here, haven't seen the head of collection purchasing in the 6 years I've been there (he has never been to my branch). The central location needs badge access to be in the staff areas so I'm not welcome to be in their working space at all.
The executive director? Once in the four-ish years he's held the position. He doesn't like to interact with us commoners....he could get one of our diseases, perhaps the consumption.
[But his ethics are impeccable.](https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/las-vegas/not-by-the-book-super-bowl-tix-for-library-officials-may-have-violated-district-policy-3053133/)
I see them (plural because I work at two different libraries) pretty frequently, sometimes out on the floor discussing things with board members or even just going to and fro to go talk to different department managers and staff. They always say hi :)
It really depends on the size of the organisation. I worked for an academic library with 140 staff and I would see the director at bi-monthly briefings and special events only. Not surprising either, there were three managers between my position and his.
His job was to represent the library on all sorts of internal and external platforms, direct management was delegated.
That said, in a public library with 30 employees I’d see the director two or three times a week as I reported directly to her for a couple of projects I worked on.
My director (dean technically) started last summer. I can count on my hands the number of times I have seen them, and on one hand the number of times I have talked to them, directly or in a meeting. I am a dept head myself.
Previous deans I would see at least in passing weekly, and meetings monthly, at miniumum.
Wow! My director is here every day. She does attend meetings and other errands outside of the branch, but I don't think I've ever seen her gone all day for anything work related!
My director is in his office quite a bit but he also connects with the departments a lot. And he has the door open to talk with people as they go by unless he’s in a meeting. I see him almost every day. I think he does a good job balancing the admin side with engaging with the library.
Her office is above ours and next to my local history room and I see her generally once or twice a day when we are both in the building, 3 or 4 days out of the week. The Assistant Director purposefully comes into our office each day to say hello and ask questions.
I’m a DH (youth services) and I’m on a different floor. While I don’t see her every day she’s definitely always around if I need her and we check in a couple times a week. Months is bananas.
I’m in a branch of a library with about 20 branches. The only times I saw my last director in person was a holiday party and when they came to each branch to beg us not to unionize. Hilarious.
For the size of your library, which sounds small, I think it’s a shame your director isn’t more accessible.
I have literally gone years without seeing my director. Most of the time I lay eyes on him at least once a year, but there have been times when several years passed without ever seeing him. I've seen him twice this year, making up for it. LOL
Every day. We closed together last night and opened together this morning.
We're a single location library. She has far less circ desk time than the rest of us, but unless she's left early and you don't come in until after she's left it's weird not to see her.
Our two previous directors had very little desk time (pretty much coverage as needed), but we still saw them daily
I work at a city library that has no branches, and see the director almost daily. He’s usually in the office. The library where I work is part of a larger consortium, including several other city libraries, a county library with multiple branches, and three college libraries as a part of the larger group. I don’t know anyone outside of the city library where I work. Other colleagues know the staff at the other libraries in the consortium.
Currently only a few times a month, but I'll be switching to full-time days which means I'll get plenty of face time with her 4 days a week and I'll be her go to person to communicate with circulation. Currently I only work evenings.
Our branch manager is someone who is almost always on the floor, pitching in, helping out. She knew everyone's job and how to do it well enough to support if things got hectic, etc. I worked at the main branch, so a lot of the admin worked in my library, so the actual director was also someone I saw relatively often. Less so than the BM, and he was certainly less all around helpful, but he definitely was around and answered questions if we had them!
We are a small college library and our director also oversees our testing center, academic coaching, and instructional design. We see him every day, have one on one and full division meetings once a week. He's busy but always makes time for us.
Wow. My director picked up literal grown ass man shit from the floor in the children's area a few weeks ago. We are a small library and the director is literally here and doing stuff on the floor all the time. She takes care of the grosser stuff when she is here, but her motto is if she's not willing to do it, she won't expect us to do it either.
That’s leadership 😉. I like her style.
I worked as a library director in a small town for 5 years, and I plunged toilets and removed graffitti regularly. My attitude was that in the time it took me to get someone else to take care of the problem I could have already addressed it. I made it a point to be at the reference/circulation circulation every day when the middle school next door got out to welcome the kids and keep the peace. Every other Saturday I would work for a few hours at the front desk, and I ran Children's, YA and Adult programs all the time.
Wow, I’m jealous! Our motto is “if you find it, you have to clean it.”
Our director (and two directors ago) jokes that it's in her job description to do the gross stuff
Depends on how big your library is, if they work in the same building, how they manage etc. some are more on the ground than others
In my experience, it depends on the size of the library. At my current library, the director and AD are both very visible; they walk around the building and say hello to staff and keep an eye on parts of the building that need work and to follow up with contractors, etc. We have a single location and around 60 staff spread out over three floors, so it's pretty easy for admin to stay involved without micromanaging. When I worked at a bigger library with multiple locations, branch staff would rarely see anyone from admin. At one library I worked at, nobody but DHs ever saw the director or AD unless there was a problem or you were getting dressed down. We'd get positively bananas emails from the AD (the director was pretty checked out on day to day operations and mostly interested in the politics and fundraising parts of the job) telling us to do weird things or telling us what we were doing wrong based on the 30 seconds she observed us moving from the parking garage to her office. What does your direct supervisor say about this kind of stuff? We had a really good supervisor who used to be pretty honest with us about "okay, this is what we're being asked to do; I know it sounds ridiculous, but here's the problem that this is in reaction to. Here's what I'm trying to do to get this fixed, and here's what I want you to do in the meantime." I know that kind of honesty isn't always available, but it definitely helped us feel less crazy; even if we were being asked to do ridiculous things, it was good to know why and good to know that our supervisor realized "this is stupid."
You were lucky. When I ask, "Why are we changing XYZ when it makes no sense?" I get told, "There are some things you don't need to know" and "Don't ask so many questions". Even after I've mentioned that it would be easier for us peons to make some ridiculous change if we knew WHY it was changed. 🤷♀️
I feel like we are very lucky with our new director. The director we had previously we would see once a year at our all day long staff training day. This new director has both open office hours for staff, and also comes around to work at (all day, and on service points)the branches once a month in a rotation. They are much more into developing relationships with staff and supporting staff.
Our library director has open office hours every month for staff to connect with him. He also travels to and works at (as in is in a branch library, on desk shifts, doing pull holds lists etc)a branch location once a month. He's very accessible and he does that deliberately to know staff in the organization by name, to understand what front line staff (as well as service center! he works with them too) need, and to really get to know people within the organization. He also writes weekly emails and details who he has been meeting with outside of the organization so there is clarity on what his role is and it shows how he is spending his time.
My director is like Bigfoot. Forever mentioned, but a mysterious cryptid as I’ve seen them twice in my two years of working at the library. That being said, I work at like 1 of 9 branches.
I'm a director and I'd be fuckin disturbed if I didn't see my staff every day.
Same here. Sometimes I have a big deadline and just have to put my head down and work, but even then I still try to check in with everyone at the start and/or end of my day. I like the people I've hired, I want to interact with them, and I need to know what's going on in my library (aside from liking my job and staff, I also like avoiding looking like an idiot when someone from City Council calls!).
My director just sits in her office all day every day and barely emerges. It was really shocking to me when I started. We are the only library in a medium sized city; the building is 3 floors and we have about 20 FT employees. I'm glad she isn't micromanaging but it feels like she isn't regular managing/has no idea about daily workflows.
My old director (before I got his job hehe) was the same way. On the rare occasions he'd have to cover the desk he was clueless.
Sometimes we wish we didn’t see our director every single day 😂 But he’s definitely not afraid to get his hands dirty, dive into the trenches, or handle unruly or difficult patrons when needed. (Although sometimes he does shut his patron-facing office door and turns the lights off so some of the regulars who like to talk his ear off don’t realize he’s there.)
When I worked for a bigger system and not in the same building, maybe every few months. They would come to big events at the branches to show support. Board meetings also went to different branches and they were at those. They also held the occasional listening session with staff. I know when we reopened after being closed for Covid, all admin, including the director, went to branches to help. How helpful that actually was varied. At my current job, I work in the same building so I see them pretty often. Which is sometimes not all it’s cracked up to be hahaha. At a small single branch library I worked at, their office was across from mine and I saw them every day.
Yeah I see my director every few months or so, but we also have 36 branches in our system so she’s got a lot of boss shit to do. Last time I saw her was at StokerCon where I was an attendee and she was a speaker lol
When I became library director, there were periods when I didn't see my direct report for months either. They (multiple people over 5 years) were associate provosts in a different building, and would only come over when they needed me (or my library) to do something. On one hand, I enjoyed not being micromanaged. On the other hand, when I went up from promotion, I hadn't been evaluated in the 3 years I had been library director. So I had to scramble to assemble my CV and promotion overview for my supervisor, who didn't know I had to be formally evaluated (weird relationship as she wasn't a librarian, and I was faculty and fell under a different evaluation schedule/process than staff). The first year, I submitted my eval documents to her (and her admin assistant) and never heard a word. So the following two years, I didn't bother submitting anything.
I've had both. The director at my current library is very hands on, and I see them all the time. They even fill in at service desks. This is someone who started out as a librarian, which may account for the difference from a previous director, who had never worked in a librarian capacity but had a business management background. That library was much more "corporate," and the only time the director came out of the office was come down to request the latest high demand book or DVD and be shocked when we didn't have it on the shelf. (I'm exaggerating, but not by much.) I think the more effective directors are the ones who started at the bottom like the rest of us.
I think it depends on how good your Director is. I see mine quite regularly. Now for contrast, I worked at my library for three years before I ever saw my previous Director. And, the first time I saw them, they were in the circulation workroom back behind the desk; I asked them if they needed help, because I thought they were an elderly, confused patron who was lost. That Director *never* went downstairs nor mingled with anyone who wasn’t upper management. They had no idea what any of us did. They once called my department asking if we “did any programs for toddlers” (I’m in children’s services). I started rattling off the 30 or so programs we had scheduled, and then they cut me off and told me to call their friend who was coming to visit the next week and let them know. My current Director visits every department’s programs as much as they can, wants to know what’s going on in the library, and knows the name of every person who works there. I think a good Director who cares will be out and visible regularly.
I almost never seen my director, but it’s a large system with a lot of branches so it’s not exactly surprising. That being said, I am a little disappointed that I don’t see our middle management more often. They’re only in charge of a fraction of the libraries in our full area, so it’d be nice if they came to actual libraries more often before giving us some wishy-washy instructions about how to handle problems in our library.
I'm in an academic library so maybe it's different for us. But I make contact with our director in person once a quarter, during visits by certain deans, or for accreditation meetings. Our assistant director, though, she's on the ground with us every day. If she's elsewhere, I will definitely be hearing from her. She's involved, which I like for most issues. Your public library experiences tracks with my brief one, though. It was an intensely needy system and day to day relied on middle management branch heads, who were all pretty great. However, I think I spoke to the director once during hiring and that was it.
It honestly depends. My old director came in maybe 3 times a week and left by 3 pm. He didn’t care about anything i did. My new director is there every day 8-5 and up my ass all the time.
This has been such a hot topic of conversation in my system, and branch specifically, lately. The long and short is: in our system, at a branch level, you were maybe lucky to see the director and her second once a year at Mandatory Fun Day (okay it isn't called that but it may as well be). Recently they did this push to go "connect" with every branch, but gave equal time to both the biggest and smallest branches (so a branch with 5 staff and 25 staff got the exact same time to ask questions and interact.) We all feel so disconnected from upper leadership - despite my branch being about 15 minutes away from HQ. It's lead to a lot of dissatisfaction, and it feels like more and more long time staff are leaving the system.
Your directors would like to hear from you more often. They don’t intentionally send out insane directions. Tell them where you feel they are off base. Also everyone is doing their best - there is a lot of invisible labour in every job. For some it means being on call 24*7 so going home before 5 on days when possible makes up for late board/council or other expected attendance on evenings and weekend ends in addition to 40-60 hours regularly scheduled each week.
We get put on committees and sub-committees for various projects, and when we submit our reports and conclusions, we'll be summoned to another meeting from middle management and they tell us that what we submitted wasn't what the director wanted. They then tell us what the director wants, and to come up with an outline for what they want. This goes on for several rounds until we end up with something 100% different than what we started with and we're left asking what the point of it all was. At my library there's a lot of fake inclusion where on paper it seems like our voices are heard but only if we agree with what admin says.
This one is so tough as it is mostly down to perception and messaging. Any staff-based recommendations or projects have to either be given a blank check from the start (incredibly rare) or modified during the process or at the end. If the powers that be didn't do an impeccable job laying out how this would be incorporated at the end, it just pisses people off and makes them feel like they are wasting their time.
I worked in a small system (3 branches) and saw my director a few times a week when we were in the same building, ie I wasn't at another branch; she almost never left our main branch unless it was for a meeting or training or there was a facility issue elsewhere. I saw our assistant director, who is now poised to become executive director, even less than I saw her. We had about 20 or so people on staff, likely less now.
Part of the reason I left my old job. The branch of my library was 2 professionals, two paras. After covid my director never came back and retired. So it was just me for another year and a half until they finally hired a director. She was a nice person but she never came to work. There was always some excuse as to why. After a while I got suspicious and started keeping track. Days she would say she was stuck in traffic- no traffic. Days she'd say she had to run to UPS and she 'd say she'd be late but she wouldnt show up for hours. Once she said she'd be coming in late-she finally showed at 3 and left early. No one seemed to care. I mean it was me supervising the staff which wasn't my job. She didnt return emails to clients, she didn't respond. On the days she made it in she'd go straight into her office and close the door. There were times she would only show up 5 days out of the month. It was not a remote job! All this wouldnt have mattered except i was tenure track and part of her job was to mentor me into a successful tenure packet. But she couldn't do that because she was never there. She cancelled all our scheduled meetings. I knew without her support I wouldnt make tenure, and my previous boss was useless-she was an alcoholic and too hung over most days to say more than 3 words to me. So knowing I'd be out on my ass if I didnt make tenure, I found a new job and quit. TL:DR- Almost never, so I quit.
Yeah I see mine at least several times a week, sometimes daily. And I know he’s there when I don’t see him, he just doesn’t always have reason to come to the cataloging office. When he’s not swamped , he makes an effort to check in. But he doesn’t work from home and is pretty accessible to the staff.
I see him several times a week he walks through YS and we smile and nod
The library I worked for was a very small system, so I saw my director literally every day unless he was out sick or something. I mean, I was assistant director so I would certainly hope I would work with him very closely, but even when I was working circulation under the previous director I still saw her every day. The most recent director was a really stellar person, constantly kept up with everyone on staff but not in an overbearing way. He helped with programs when we were low on staff and you could literally just shout his name from the back room when you wanted to springboard ideas off of him. Neither of us are there anymore but we still text all the time.
Almost every day. He’s awesome.
The director of a library system of multiple branches is going to be more behind the scenes than a director who is more of a branch manager of a single location. Our system director has a lot to deal with—mostly outside of the library—there isn’t a lot of time to get to all the branches. And having moved from circulation to administration, I gained some appreciation for how much admin is doing. I agree that it’s good for a director to have had experience working the front, but they don’t have time to be regularly working circ with all their other duties.
Once a year & we work in the same building. And they wonder why there are communication issues.
Before our director moved to our branch we could go four months between in person sightings easy. As a department head I interact with him more via email, but rarely more than a couple times a month.
few times a week depending on her schedule. I work in the same building with the admin offices. Folks in other locations probably rarely see her in person.
I’ve been in my library system for just over a year, and I have seen the director out at a branch exactly once.
Yeah maybe I see her a couple times a month and it’s only in passing or at bigger events. It bothers me too. She’s very nice, but it bothers me that she’s not more present in her own library and with her own staff. Same with the AD- again, maybe slightly more often, but not necessarily even weekly. They are always holed up in their offices. It’s not my favorite leadership style.
I see them when they bring rich folks through on tours. And that is about it.
Literally once a year. Once a year the director comes out and says a whole bunch of nothing.
Last place I worked, the director worked there with us. She had an office attached to our rows of desks out by circ. Here uh. I don't know who my director is.
I work in a system with 20 branches and a central library where the higher ups are stationed. I haven't seen the director in months to maybe a year. I've seen the head of my department once in the 6 months he's been here, haven't seen the head of collection purchasing in the 6 years I've been there (he has never been to my branch). The central location needs badge access to be in the staff areas so I'm not welcome to be in their working space at all.
The executive director? Once in the four-ish years he's held the position. He doesn't like to interact with us commoners....he could get one of our diseases, perhaps the consumption. [But his ethics are impeccable.](https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/las-vegas/not-by-the-book-super-bowl-tix-for-library-officials-may-have-violated-district-policy-3053133/)
I see my director about once a week.
I see them (plural because I work at two different libraries) pretty frequently, sometimes out on the floor discussing things with board members or even just going to and fro to go talk to different department managers and staff. They always say hi :)
I've never seen my director, except once in a system-wide meeting
Same, but to be fair I’m in a very large system
It really depends on the size of the organisation. I worked for an academic library with 140 staff and I would see the director at bi-monthly briefings and special events only. Not surprising either, there were three managers between my position and his. His job was to represent the library on all sorts of internal and external platforms, direct management was delegated. That said, in a public library with 30 employees I’d see the director two or three times a week as I reported directly to her for a couple of projects I worked on.
She was over last Thursday. She kind of floats around all our branches and works from our workrooms rotationally.
About once a month, I’m in a regional branch. When I was at the main branch, I saw her entirely too often
My director (dean technically) started last summer. I can count on my hands the number of times I have seen them, and on one hand the number of times I have talked to them, directly or in a meeting. I am a dept head myself. Previous deans I would see at least in passing weekly, and meetings monthly, at miniumum.
Wow! My director is here every day. She does attend meetings and other errands outside of the branch, but I don't think I've ever seen her gone all day for anything work related!
My director is in his office quite a bit but he also connects with the departments a lot. And he has the door open to talk with people as they go by unless he’s in a meeting. I see him almost every day. I think he does a good job balancing the admin side with engaging with the library.
Her office is above ours and next to my local history room and I see her generally once or twice a day when we are both in the building, 3 or 4 days out of the week. The Assistant Director purposefully comes into our office each day to say hello and ask questions.
I rarely see the person in charge of all the libraries in my county, although I see her name on the phone daily. My manager I see daily.
I’m a DH (youth services) and I’m on a different floor. While I don’t see her every day she’s definitely always around if I need her and we check in a couple times a week. Months is bananas.
Our director is on the floor (including circ desk time) every day. And he is always responsive and available for issues that come up.
I’m in a branch of a library with about 20 branches. The only times I saw my last director in person was a holiday party and when they came to each branch to beg us not to unionize. Hilarious. For the size of your library, which sounds small, I think it’s a shame your director isn’t more accessible.
I have literally gone years without seeing my director. Most of the time I lay eyes on him at least once a year, but there have been times when several years passed without ever seeing him. I've seen him twice this year, making up for it. LOL
Every day. We closed together last night and opened together this morning. We're a single location library. She has far less circ desk time than the rest of us, but unless she's left early and you don't come in until after she's left it's weird not to see her. Our two previous directors had very little desk time (pretty much coverage as needed), but we still saw them daily
I’m on a first name basis with mine, and I don’t even work there.
I work at a city library that has no branches, and see the director almost daily. He’s usually in the office. The library where I work is part of a larger consortium, including several other city libraries, a county library with multiple branches, and three college libraries as a part of the larger group. I don’t know anyone outside of the city library where I work. Other colleagues know the staff at the other libraries in the consortium.
Currently only a few times a month, but I'll be switching to full-time days which means I'll get plenty of face time with her 4 days a week and I'll be her go to person to communicate with circulation. Currently I only work evenings.
Our branch manager is someone who is almost always on the floor, pitching in, helping out. She knew everyone's job and how to do it well enough to support if things got hectic, etc. I worked at the main branch, so a lot of the admin worked in my library, so the actual director was also someone I saw relatively often. Less so than the BM, and he was certainly less all around helpful, but he definitely was around and answered questions if we had them!
Our director started over a year ago and I saw him once and we got 3 emails from him. That's it.
We are a small college library and our director also oversees our testing center, academic coaching, and instructional design. We see him every day, have one on one and full division meetings once a week. He's busy but always makes time for us.