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Help Us Fill Our Bucket: Encouraging Community-Minded Behaviour in the Library As population density increases on the North Shore, our library has become our community’s living room. It’s a place where families can meet, read, study, and play together. In 2015, we were finding that our customers needed guidance around making the space safe and welcoming for all. Children’s staff wanted a positive way to open up conversations with our customers about desired library behaviour. We didn’t want to be focussed on negative behaviours (“No running!”) but rather able to reward good behaviour that we saw.
YAACING | Winter 2018
Most importantly, we wanted to be consistent throughout the department in handling these kinds of (sometimes sensitive) conversations. In one of our staff meetings, we worked together to brainstorm ways to achieve our goals and found inspiration from the Carol McCloud book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? We repurposed one of our bulletin boards into our bucket board. The components of the board are simple: You need an image of an empty vessel or space, a clearly-worded description of the behaviours you’d like to see, and a whole lot of stickers. 14