Staff directories

[Jennifer Sarber]

Greetings Christopher:

I felt that as a whole the State Library of Indiana should have a staff
listing by division.  I was out voted.

However one of our divisions, Library Development Office, wanted to do it
for their own division, so they have:
http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/WWW/LDO/LDOPRO.HTML
It list name, job title, description of job, and phone number.  Their names
are linked to e-mail.  This division felt because of their duties and they
mail out fliers every quarter with this same information it would not pose
problems.

Other divisions felt they did not want any information published about
themselves.

Another reason of concern is will it lead to an overload of incoming (e-mail
and phone) request of both serious and bogus matters.  In Library
Development Office this is not the case.  Would it be if our Reference
Division or other public service area listed their staff members?

The issue of continually updating the list as staff or job description
changes was also an important factor.  Not that we have a high turn over
rate, or our job descriptions continues to change!

I think how it really went at our library is: we discussed it, nobody except
Library Development Office wanted to commit. The matter was dropped

I hope that we bring it up again in the future.

One more comment I would like to make:  I once had my name and number listed
on a web page I created, I did get a lot of calls about information on that
particular page. I do not know if people were more apt to call because my
name and number were there or if they would have tried to follow up with the
library for more information anyway.

I hope this helps.
Jennifer

> I'm looking for feedback/opinions on the issue of staff directories on a
> public library website.  We intend to create one, probably giving the job
> title, department, and email address of all staff members.
>
> How many of you in public libraries have something similar?  Were staff
> concerned about their privacy?  What sort of information do you provide?
> If you have such a directory, we'd love to take a look.

--
Jennifer Sarber
Indiana State Library
Management Information Services
jsarber at statelib.lib.in.us
http://www.statelib.lib.in.us