Ready, Set, On The Go: How Bay Area Libraries Use On Call Librarians

Interesting findings from a Survey of Bay Area Hiring Librarians

1. Have your on-call librarians had adequate training?

53.7% reported less than 6 hours of training/orientation

“Although we don't usually have funds to pay for their time to

do so, our on-call librarians can often attend trainings

offered to our permanent staff.”

2. Are they “in the loop”?

67.8% report that this is followed by no ongoing training

“subs often work when few regular employees are around

(e.g. Sundays) making it more difficult for them to pick up

knowledge from co-workers”

3. How are you scheduling?

38.1% First come, first served ~ 26.2% Evenly ~ 35.7% No

Distribution Strategy

“the union objects to giving on-call regular ongoing shifts as

does the city management team. On-calls are classified as

temporary seasonal employees.”

4. Are you doing regular performance evaluations?

60.4% said on-call librarians are evaluated less frequently

than full time workers (or not at all)

“Only recently has Human Resources wanted evaluations

for on-call employees. Previously we did them when we

wanted the employee to have a raise.”

5. What do you expect from on-call librarians?

“On-calls are often more attentive to the patrons because

they're not multi-tasking on the reference desk. So their full

attention is better for the patron.”

“a FT librarian may be better at collection weeding because

they are more familiar with the collection, but generally the

Pool librarians are eager to learn and contribute in

meaningful ways.”

This poster and project updates are available at https://librariansworkingoncall.wordpress.com/

Emily Weak, on-call librarian, San Jose, Mountain View, and

Oakland: emilyweak@gmail.com

Sarah Naumann, reference librarian, Mills College, part-time faculty, CSU East Bay: sarahjnaumann@gmail.com

6. How do YOU use on-call librarians?