This exciting new opportunity is for someone who is passionate about community engagement, enjoys public speaking and is able to effectively collaborate with a variety of library and school district staff to ensure the success of students. The person selected will represent Sno-Isle in the Oak Harbor and Coupeville communities with a focus on outreach to support student success and developing community partnerships to support strategic priorities.
Job Summary
This position will primarily focus on providing offsite outreach services connecting with community members including high school and middle school classroom support. Other focus areas are system initiatives, committee work, information services, collection maintenance, program and service creation, system level support for smaller community libraries and other community engagement. Community engagement includes developing relationships and providing services to support community organizations, promoting the library, and working with people from diverse backgrounds, building and maintaining stakeholder relationships, and identifying ways to best meet diverse customer needs.
Essential Functions
- Provide equitable delivery of library services through the development of programs, policies, and practices to make the library available to all customers.
- Provides professional research assistance to customers, either in-person, over the phone, or electronically.
- Assist with collection maintenance duties for materials and resources in various formats.
- Develop and presents various library programs (educational, early literacy, community interest, or civic engagement and individual customer research or instructional sessions).
- Create and curate online content to meet community needs and interests.
- Assist in development and evaluation of library services in line with the strategic focus.
- Represent the library to a wide variety of community groups.
Additional Duties and Responsibilities
- May be in charge of the building in the absence of other supervisory staff.
- Serve on various library committees as assigned.
- Coordinate library volunteers as needed.
- Prepare correspondences and reports.
- Train new staff as needed.
- Participate in ongoing professional development.
- Assist with special projects as required.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Supervision
The position typically reports to a community library manager, assistant manager, or the manager of a major functional area such as Information Services. Supervision of the work of others is not a normal part of the work of these positions, but incumbents may from time to time assist in the training of other staff in library-related work.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Knowledge of library resources, programs, and services in a public library.
- Knowledge of the principles of intellectual freedom in public libraries.
- Strong customer service and communication skills.
- Strong organization and attention to detail.
- Ability to communicate effectively with diverse audiences.
- Ability to effectively present information to diverse audiences, such as a community members, school aged students and teachers.
- Ability to provide outreach services to communities.
- Ability to work independently and to set priorities.
- Ability to work cooperatively and maintain effective interpersonal skills with the public and co-workers.
- Ability to handle and resolve disruptive behavior effectively.
- Ability to travel to other community libraries, community events, and various other sites.
- Ability to operate relevant computer systems including hardware and software, such as Microsoft Office, electronic databases and electronic content platforms, e-mail, chat, social media platforms, and internet navigation in addition to other office equipment and security systems.
Education and Experience
- Master's degree in library science from an American Library Association (ALA) accredited university required, or completion of the degree within six months of hire.
- Ability to obtain a Washington State Librarian certificate.
Physical and Environmental Conditions
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a staff member to perform the essential functions of this job successfully. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
While performing the duties of this job, the incumbent must identify and organize library materials such as books, audiobooks, and DVDs based on small-print numbers and alphabetical characters on spine labels; remain stationary at times and move about the building or outdoors at others; and operate computers for extended periods of time. An incumbent may occasionally move objects or materials weighing up to 35 pounds.
Most of the work of incumbents is carried out within a generally accessible, safe, indoor environment and will be expected to travel to other locations to provide offsite outreach within the surrounding communities.
There is constant interpersonal contact with staff members and with customers of various ages and social groups. These contacts and situations are deemed to be generally safe, but require incumbents to be cordial, helpful, and skilled in effective interpersonal skills with others both in the public and within the Library District, which may involve hostile, disruptive, or disgruntled members of the public. These conditions are not deemed to be inherently dangerous but may be disagreeable on occasion.
The following questions will be asked during the application process:
- Provide two examples of how you have managed competing work priorities and describe your organization methods for planning, tracking and meeting project deadlines.
- Describe your experience providing community outreach, making connections, and developing relationships related to library services. Provide one detailed example of a time you built a new community connection with a group or organization that had not previously partnered or participated in library services.
- Describe your experience providing services to support community partnerships with stakeholders, such as school districts. Provide an example of how you promoted knowledge of library services and resources to support this relationship.
- Describe in detail two experiences of working with Teens or Young Adults, including some of the key challenges and key rewards of these interactions.
Sno-Isle Libraries is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. This and all Sno-Isle Libraries positions are subject to transfer.
Sno-Isle Libraries is a large, two-county library district in the beautiful north Puget Sound region of Washington State. District boundaries stretch from rugged timberlands to suburban centers, from rolling farmlands to the ocean vistas. Set in the fastest-growing corner of the state, Sno-Isle Libraries serves more than 770,000 residents through 23 community libraries, online services, Library on Wheels, and our website at www.sno-isle.org.
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