Thanks, everyone, for responding to my information request regarding how you are using volunteers in your library. Someone has asked that I post the compilation, so here goes! I didn't include attachments because I have a vague recollection of there being privacy issues associated with compilations..? If you're interested, I'll be happy to contact the sender. -Sharon Crotser-Toy Assistant Director Allegan District Library Allegan, MI 49010 269-673-4625 .................................................................................. We use court ordered and other volunteers to empty the drop boxes and to feed materials into our automated book return. They also pull MeL requests from our collection, weed our gardens, tend all the plants in the building, help put craft and story time materials together, book sales, staff the gift shop, paint, etc. We have every volunteer fill out our application (attached) which gives us sufficient information to determine whether we can match this person to a task or not. We do ask for birthdate which while not legal on an application for employment was okayed by attorney for this purpose. You might want to check with your own attorney for his/her interpretation of the questions on this form or any similar one you choose to use. Our volunteers (we have about 40 Friends, various Community Service, and only one MiWorks person right now) do all of our shelving taking materials from the sorting shelves out to the library shelving by the cart load. A long term volunteer supervises this work and teaches new volunteers how to shelve. Our Circ Supervisor is ultimately in charge of this task. Volunteers do flatbed scanning of historical materials for us, document copying, sorting of books for the Friends book sale, prep for crafts, read to Young Fives through a program in the schools coordinated by the library, and yes they do dust and clean fingerprints off windows. We also have summer only volunteers who weed and care for our outdoor spaces. Very dedicated volunteers run a D&D program one Saturday per month and a LEGO program is restarting this fall. Volunteers do much of the processing of our books putting on covers, setting RFID tags and general quality control before the books go on shelves. Our Processing Supervisor does the cataloging and is responsible for the work of this set of volunteers. One volunteer checks shelved for lost, missing, and claims returned books using our monthly lists. In general we avoid tasks involving the linking of patron name to materials so volunteers do not checkout or checkin or work with holds. They do the pick list for ILL for us as that has only book names on it. Clearly we would be in trouble if our volunteers deserted us Like you, our most frequent "volunteer" job is cleaning, be it indoors or out (our library has almost an entire block of public grounds including several flower beds). We also use them for prepping craft materials for programming (we don't purchase many kits, so there's always something needing copied, traced, cut, etc.), inventory, and collection weeding projects. Our volunteer policy is attached. We do have other volunteer tasks listed on the policy, but these occur less frequently than those I mentioned above. Our volunteers help with these things... Processing materials Shelf reading Watering plants in the building Gardening outside Book sales (in coordination with Friends of the Library) We have a great group of high functioning adults with mental disabilities who volunteer through the local mental health agency. They generally take care of the following. Washing plastic magazine covers Buffing and cleaning of CD / DVD discs We generally don't have volunteers with court ordered community service. At the Sterling Heights Public Library, our volunteers cut out our craft items for programs, shelf read, pull books from a weeding report, organize drawers of bookmarks, flannel boards, puppets, etc. I don' t think we have any written procedures, I'll ask to make sure and forward them if we do. It depends on their skill set and what they are doing the community service for. If its dishonesty, I don’t want them volunteering for me. We had a contractor that had a DUI that did a lot of painting and repairing this spring. It was really nice.