#69: Identify a seated reference space

in ,

Even with older desk setups where it’s more likely for the staff person to be seated at a sitting-height desk, in general, library service points are set up so that the patron has to stand the whole time they are being helped, which may be a problem. If you have a seated-height service point, know what chair you will bring over for a patron to join you. If you have a standing-height service point, identify somewhere else in the library you could go to assist a patron who needed to sit, ideally somewhere with a comparable level of privacy.

#68: Watch out for Christmas parties

in ,

If you work at a library in the United States, your library is likely to be planning some kind of “holiday” party for children this time of year. Think about what this will include and how you are marketing it. If you can do a “winter party” instead, that’s ideal. Consider crafts, decorations, and advertising featuring white and blue, snowmen, bears, penguins, snowflakes, ice skates, sledding, and cocoa. However, if what your library will actually be doing is a program featuring red and green, reindeer, Santa, ‘ornaments,’ and strings of multi-colored lights, call it a Christmas party. A “holiday” party that just uses the word as a euphemism for “Christmas” sets non-Christian families up for frustration and disappointment and essentially erases the fact that other holidays are indeed celebrated in December.

#66: Get a helpful critique

in ,

Ask a favorite colleague to listen to you work at the reference desk for a little while and give you feedback on anything you might be doing that accidentally intimidates patrons or makes them feel like they are not the library’s target audience. Do you respond to a question about a nonfiction book by giving someone a Dewey Decimal number, which assumes they know how to use the Dewey system? Do you tell someone not to worry because their fine is “only” ten dollars, when ten dollars might be a really significant sum to some of your patrons? Even when you’re really well-intentioned, it can be easy to fall into patterns of speech that can be off-putting or discouraging to patrons.

#65: Make space for assistants and assistive devices

in

In order to discourage noise, many workstations in public libraries are designed to accommodate only a single user in a standard office chair. However, it’s very common for someone who faces barriers to using the library to need more space than that workstation design allows. In fact, it’s a surprisingly consistent need across a pretty wide range of patrons. Someone who comes in using a wheelchair (or crutches or other device for a physical disability), someone who has an service animal, someone who doesn’t have the language skills/computer skills/cognitive processing capacity to use a library computer on their own and needs to bring a helper with them, even a patron who is homeless and has nowhere to leave his large bag with all his possessions—all of these patrons will have trouble using a standard-size workstation. Can you rearrange your space to accommodate that reality that many people who come into the library need more space, even if they are working alone?

#64: Replace "ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls"

in ,

While gender binaries probably aren’t very common in your everyday speech at the reference or circulation desk, you may still find yourself asking “ladies and gentlemen” to give a round of applause for a performer, or welcoming “boys and girls” to storytime. This is uncomfortable and unwelcoming for anyone who doesn’t identify as one of those two categories, or who does but who is often misread by other people as far as which one they belong to. If you have a script for welcoming people to a program, even if it’s only a mental habit rather than a written document, practice replacing those phrases with more inclusive ones like “Hello, everyone!” or “Okay, friends, now it’s time to sit down for storytime.” It may feel silly, but practicing aloud can help you stick with the new phrasing rather than reverting to something more familiar when you’re actually up in front of patrons.

#63: Open your doors (or replace them etc.)

in

Doors are a major barrier for lots of people with limited mobility or dexterity. Do you have any doors that are habitually kept closed that could really be left open? What about heavy doors that could be replaced with lighter, easier to push newer models? What are the handles like? Round doorknobs are much harder to manipulate than lever-style knobs. Try to visit all the doors on your public floor and note for each one if changes could be made that would make them easier to deal with.

#62: Check on how your software looks in other languages

in ,

Test out how your self-check machine, computer management software, or other third-party technology operates in languages other than English. It’s common for text translations to be incomplete, or for confusing default text to be left behind if a library hasn’t customized an area. You may not have the language skills or the technology privileges to fix these oversights yourself, but at least they will be on your radar as a potential stumbling block for patrons, and you’ll be more ready to step in to clarify and help.

#60: Try out the voice-based web

in ,

Obviously, a sighted person’s experience with tools for people who are visually impaired is going to be different from those people’s own experiences with those tools, but as long as you remember that, it can still be enlightening to test those tools out. One of the challenges is that it’s a steep learning curve to do that if you’re sighted and don’t have the same background or incentives to absorb a new skill. I thought Chris Ashton’s write-up of using screen readers for a day was a very good start for an untrained sighted person, and I learned a lot.

#59: Copy your neighbor's good ideas

in ,

Take a field trip to the nearest library, or a nearby one that resembles yours in some important way. Take notes about any cool accessible features they have so you can try something similar at home. Alternately, if the library you visit has a lot of barriers, take note of the ones you observe so you can check and make sure your own library doesn’t have the same problems.

#58: Name your English classes well

in ,

If your library offers any kind of English learning program, consider branding it as “English classes,” “English Language Learning (ELL),” or something similar. Try to avoid English as a Second Language (ESL), since it’s often a misnomer. Especially if the primary immigrants your library serves are from Central America, South America, India, or Africa, there’s a good chance English is their third language at the very least—many people who immigrate to the U.S. from those areas spoke an indigenous language at home growing up, and the Spanish, French, Hindi, etc. that American institutions are communicating with them in is already a second language.

#57: Ride your public elevator

in

Elevators can be one of the most neglected parts of a large library building, but they’re very important for accessibility. Take a ride in your library’s elevator and assess your experience and its condition. Is there an audible “ding” when the elevator arrives to give visually-impaired patrons an extra cue? Are the floor labels on the buttons still legible? Do the doors stay long enough that someone in a walker can comfortably get in or out without getting caught?

#56: Check the condition of your exisiting accessibility tools

in

Chances are that your library has made many one-time investments in accessibility tools, whether that includes a retrofitted elevator or ramp, a digital magnifier or SARA, or Braille signage on the doors. Walk around and evaluate the state of those tools now. Is the concrete of the wheelchair-accessible ramp pitted and broken? Is the monitor that accompanies the digital magnifier old and glitchy? Are the room signs no longer accurate? Make a list of the needed maintenance to keep your accessibility tools working, then see what you can do to make that maintenance happen.

#55: Learn to say "hello," "welcome," or "sorry"

in ,

If people who use a language you don’t know come into your library, see if you can learn just a handful of words or phrases in that language. Even if all you can say is “Bienvenido [welcome], welcome to the library. How can I help you?” or “Bonjour [hello]! Sorry, I don’t speak French,” greeting someone in their own first language, even if your accent is terrible, is a way to say “Your presence in the library is normal and expected. You are one of the people this library is for and I want to help you, even if the language barrier is going to be a challenge.”

#52: Get some training, do some reading

in ,

There are surely accessibility considerations that are relevant to your work and your library that it would be hard to touch on with generic accessibility ideas and suggestions like the ones on this site. Take some training or read some articles on Syracuse University’s Project ENABLE platform to pick up some tools and perspectives that will help you spot some possible accessibility improvements that are unique to your library.

#51: Find a way that everyone can help

in ,

You may have prospective volunteers who aren’t suited for traditional volunteer tasks like reshelving materials and doing physical processing of new books. Spend ten or fifteen minutes making a list of things that people with limited English literacy, limited dexterity, or other potential issues could do to help your library.

#49: Have a backup plan for large print

in

What will you do if someone who is visually impaired needs information about a topic for which you don’t have a large print book? You can go to an online source, but many people with low vision are older and not all that comfortable with computers. Can you buy a magnifier and keep it at the front desk to lend out to people who want to read something with print that is too small for them?

#48: Make good use of specialized review sources

in ,

In particular, check out these resources on books featuring Native American and First Nations characters: https://firstnations.org/books and https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/. Not only are there good purchase ideas for expanding your collection or putting together a display, there are also reviews of problematic titles that you might want to consider weeding. If you want a refresher or primer for yourself, I liked Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer.