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Brenda: Hello, everyone, and welcome. I'm Brenda Hough, and I'll be facilitating today's session,
Tech Savvy Staff: Better Service for Library Users. We're glad you're here with us.
Before we get started with the content, I'll tell you about the technology we're using today.
All audio lines are muted except for the presenters, but please use that chat at any time,
and use that to ask questions. Use it to share resources, share ideas. Use the chat at any time.
A little bit of troubleshooting advice, if something happens and your screen locks u
or something fluky happens with your screen, usually the quickest way to fix that
is just to close out and then go back to that email you received with registration information
and come back into the room. Usually that will fix any issues that you're having.
Most of you are hearing your audio through your computer, but if you did phone in, same thing.
If you lose that phone connection, most of the time if you just dial in to the number again,
that will take care of things.
This session is being recorded. A link to the recording will be available
on the TechSoup website, and there are other past presentations there, too.
Later today we'll send out an email, and in that email we'll include the slides
that are part of this presentation. We'll include a link to the recording.
Also any websites or resources that are mentioned today, we'll include links to those, too.
So don't worry about scrambling to write down website addresses.
We'll send those out in a follow-up message. If you're on Twitter tweeting about this,
the hash tag is #techsoup.
With that, let's dive into our content.
Again, today we're talking about Tech Savvy Staff: Better Service for Library Users.
We're going to have a couple of special guest presenters today. We have Penny Talbert here.
Penny is the director of the Ephrata Public Library in Pennsylvania,
and she is passionate about transliteracy. That's a term we will be discussing during today's session.
Presenting with her is Stephanie Zimmerman who is Training and Development Coordinator
for the Library System of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania,
and she is passionate about emerging technologies. So this is a great match,
with Penny's interest in transliteracy and Stephanie's interest in emerging technologies,
and that will be the basis of their presentation today.
A couple of things on our agenda, I'm going to quickly talk about TechSoup,
TechSoup for Libraries, and the Edge Benchmarks.
This webinar we're doing today is part of a series of webinars
that we're doing around the Edge Benchmarks, and we'll talk more about what those are.
We have time set aside for questions and answers but, again, feel free to use the chat
to ask those questions at any time. We'll be tracking them, and we'll ask questions throughout.
Let's go ahead and get started with talking about TechSoup.
TechSoup is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. As you can see on the second bullet in the slide,
one of the big things that TechSoup does is distribute technology donations.
Those include donations from partners like Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Symantec, and more,
and libraries qualify for many of them. In today's follow-up message,
we'll include a link so that you can check out that, too, if that's something you're not familiar with.
TechSoup for Libraries is a special section of TechSoup that is focused on the needs of libraries.
It includes info on the tech donation program, some spotlight articles
that feature tech success stories from libraries around the country,
blog posts related to libraries and technology, and more.
So we'll include a link to that in the follow-up message, too.
I mentioned that today's session is one in a series of webinars focused on the Edge Benchmarks.
These benchmarks are being developed by the Edge Initiative, which is a coalition of organizations
working together to develop public access technology benchmarks for public libraries.
This includes the Public Library Association, Web Junction, TechSoup, several state libraries,
and more organizations. The benchmark we're focusing on today is this one.
"Libraries have sufficient staff with technology expertise to help patrons achieve their goals."
That's what today's session on Tech Savvy Staff is all about, achieving that benchmark.
Again, we have two special guests with us today, Penny Talbert and Stephanie Zimmerman.
Penny and Stephanie, I'll let you take over from this point and welcome everyone.
Penny: Well, hello, and welcome. I see some very familiar names in the participants,
so hi, everybody. This is Penny speaking, and I want to just tell you a little bit
about what we're doing at my library as far as technology competencies go.
We are in our second, we just finished our second round of testing, so let's get started.
First of all, the rationale for this is that really in order to provide excellent service to your patrons,
all of your library staff must have the skill set to assist patrons.
That's just not the folks working the desk. It's everybody. I'm sure that all of you understand this.
If you're walking to the bathroom, somebody may stop you and ask you a question,
and you have to be able to answer those questions. In order for libraries to remain relevant,
they must be the technological hub of your community. I think that is very important
because if you are recognized for that, the funding will follow.
As we talk about transliteracy, transliteracy from public libraries means you are relevant.
You're relevant to your business community. You're relevant to your government.
You're relevant to your regular patrons. And those things are very important,
and as we moved along with these competencies, that's what we've really found.
I will tell you, I can't tell you for sure, but we've seen a doubling of our donations in the past year,
oddly enough the same amount of time that we've been doing competency training.
So whether or not there's a relation, I can't tell you for sure but I think that there probably is.
Okay, the poll.
Brenda, are you doing this?
Brenda: Sure. Yes, so people should be seeing it now, just asking you are you familiar
with this term "transliteracy." So if you weigh in there, we'll give people a few minutes to do that,
to see how familiar people are with that term.
Stephanie: And this is Stephanie Zimmerman from Library System, Lancaster County,
and I just wanted to interject here, if I could, that if you're not familiar with that term,
Bobbi Newman has a wonderful website. The link will be in the follow-up after this webinar
to their website that she did with Bucky Hamilton and some other people.
That has great information on it and a great little slide-share presentation that's really quick
that can really help you understand what transliteracy is.
Penny: Also when we go back to the Lib Guides, you'll see there's a video on transliteracy
that you can share with your staff to try to help them understand what it is and why it's important.
Brenda: Okay, it looks like most everyone has weighed in. A lot of people are not familiar with
that term; some are somewhat; and a few are very familiar.
So it's a good one for you to be introducing to us. Thank you.
Penny: Well, the fact of the matter is that you all know what transliteracy is.
You've just never heard the word.
Transliteracy, defining it today is great but in two weeks it'll probably have a different definition,
or at least a more in-depth definition, as it's constantly changing.
When I started the transliteracy training with our staff, it was one thing
and now we're more than a year though it and so many more things have been added.
That's why doing staff competencies, you can't just do it one time and be done with it
and say that everybody knows what they're doing because it changes as you add new services.
What it is not: it is not Web 2.0 which I think is almost an antiquated term at this point.
But really the concept is mapping meaning across different media.
So you're offering an opportunity to, and it's not just, it's learning styles
so not only are you creating this environment of learning, but you're also presenting it
in different ways to increase understanding for, in this case, your patrons.
We're going to be talking a lot about LibGuides, so let's go to this poll
and see if anyone's going to know what I'm talking about. Are you familiar with LibGuides?
Stephanie: I don't know if Penny's going to share this, but she got trained by our State,
if I remember correctly, and brought that to our area and other areas across Pennsylvania,
and it is a phenomenal tool. If you don't know about it, you probably will want to check it out
after she shows the beauty of it today. She'll be discussing other tools also,
but we thank you, Penny, for bringing it here.
Penny: And just as a kind of selling point here for Commonwealth libraries in Pennsylvania,
if you are located in Pennsylvania, I am still doing the training for that. I do it for free,
so if your library system or your library is interested in offering LibGuides,
you can always contact me. With the training, you get a free year's subscription for your library,
so there's a thought. If you think this is really cool, it's an opportunity for you to get to try it out.
It is really not that expensive of an option when you see what it does.
So it looks like we have a lot of folks who haven't heard of it, and that' s okay.
I'm going to go here. This is the URL for our particular LibGuide on competencies.
This is the launch pad for all of our staff and what they do, and we'll go back and look at this
in a little bit, but I want to talk to you about if you want to start a competency program,
how you're going to do this because it's just not "Oh, here's a website. let's go."
There's a lot of prep work involved, and you have to follow it through.
The first thing, and as librarians I'm sure we love creating plans, you have to really create a plan
and you have to have buy-in. Most importantly you have to have buy-in from your board
because it is a time-intensive program if you really want to do it right,
and you have to come up with: what is going to be the result if my staff cannot successfully complete
the competency training? It's a hard question to ask.
Are you going to say — like in our case, we do competency testing once a year
and if they don't achieve a certain level, an 80% or an 85% or whatever, they are no longer employed
with the library. While that seems pretty harsh, do you really want to have somebody serving
your patrons that doesn't know how to use technology? So it's a conversation
you have to have with your board because you may have to make tough decisions.
Competency is part of our strategic plan. If you really want to do it,
it has to be part of your strategic plan because it is something that you develo
and you keep going with it. It's not something that you say "For the next six months
we're going to be doing competencies, and then we're done,"
because as we know there's constantly new technologies being introduced,
and libraries are the place where people are coming to learn how to use them.
It should also be a part of every job description in your library.
Even if it's someone who doesn't work the circulation desk,
they should know how to complete the competencies and how to do these things.
We are not asking them to figure out to have a network of building.
It is things that you need to use. I'm not going to say every day, but probably every other week,
these things will come up at your library, and people have to know how to use them.
Now I do want to throw in here right now that if you have questions, feel free to ask them.
Somebody out there is recording them and will let me know, and I will answer them as we go through
if you do have questions that are relevant now.
After you decide how you're going to do this plan, you really have to look at how
you're going to deliver your content. This is content-intensive and you really have to, again,
make sure that you're accommodating all different kinds of learning styles. If you have somebody
who cannot just sit and read full text, you have to have some alternatives for them
if you really want them to learn. Your job as putting together these competencies
is really to teach people. You have to make it as easy as possible
because you're probably going to have a little problem initially with staff buy-in.
If it's difficult for them to do, it's going to be real difficult for you to put it through.
Make sure that whatever you choose is adaptable because you're going to have changes.
Some of them are going to be technological and some of them are going to be ones
that are just a product of these services you might be offering.
Make sure that you have the correct delivery vehicle. In our case, we really loved LibGuides.
But there are other ones out there. There are wikis. There's LiveBinders.
There are all kinds of delivery methods out there that don't require you to be perfect at HTML
or anything like that. Because you are doing technical competencies, please, please,
please do not hand out a paper manual. It makes absolutely no sense.
Stephanie: Sorry I had to say please.
Penny: Absolutely, and Stephanie, please just jump in whenever you have anything
that you want to add to this. Stephanie has kind of been my cheerleader as I developed this program,
and I run everything by her. She gets the exam before anybody else
to make sure that I'm being completely fair. I would recommend that you have somebody like that
that is really technologically savvy because we all make mistakes. What you don't want
is to make a mistake that would affect the employment of any of your staff.
So creating the competencies, this is one of the things that I literally sat in the front of the desk
and just listened to what patrons needed and more importantly what the staff couldn't answer.
That's the first step. One of the things I discovered initially, which absolutely horrified me,
was that there were some folks on staff that did not know how to send an email attachment.
Patrons were coming up from the public computers asking for help, and the people behind the desk
couldn't help them. So you have to start basic and look at what are people asking,
and then talk to your stakeholders. Find out from the folks in your community
what they need beyond the basics. If your business community is saying
that they really want to have the use of business databases, and you don't have people on staff
that know how to use it, how are you going to promote that service? You can't very well say,
"Well, we have this great database but you're going to have to figure it out on your own."
That's not service, and it's certainly not exceptional service.
And really what you're going for is exceptional service.
Stephanie: Can I just interject? Penny has the advantage of being in a library and seeing it live.
I'm in our system office where I help the 14 member libraries in our area,
so I have time to take in all these websites, and I bookmarking things over the year.
If you need any help developing competencies, I'm putting a link in the chat right now
of different competency sites. I can't say enough about the Web Junction site
of competency index for the library field. If you're starting from scratch,
it's a great place to start and you can home in on the technological competencies to start with,
if you need to, and then you could branch out into leadership. You could go crazy with these things.
There is so much that has already been done. Don't start it from scratch.
Penny: No, absolutely not.
Stephanie: And Penny's right there at the live environment so I've learned so much from her
LibGuide and all that they deal with there to help me in the training that I provide.
Penny: And please know, if you decide you want to do this with your staff
and you decide you want to do it through LibGuides, I will give you permission
to literally copy my entire LibGuide onto your account, and then you can make changes to it.
That will save you a lot of time.
Stephanie: That's what is just beautiful here in our library system,
that Penny is sharing them with anyone, at this point, but she started just internally here
with the other libraries in our system, and it was just so seamless.
They took it and made it their own, and I was available also to help them if they needed hel
using the LibGuides, so it's just been great to not reinvent the wheels. We don't have time for that.
Penny: It's very true. Why would you bother when I've already done it?
So in Year One, and you really need a timeline for this if you're going to cover all your bases,
the first thing I did was introduce the idea of competencies and make an argument
for why it's important. I went first to the board. We then included it in the strategic plan, staff manuals,
job descriptions, and then introduced it to the staff. I am telling you up front,
when you introduce this to the staff, they will panic because it's new and it's a change,
and when you use the word "requirement" it scares everyone. Expect that. Just expect it.
When they hear — and everybody can do whatever they want from this,
but we were taking such a stance on it, when they hear of it, "If you do not pass this exam,
you no longer have a job," it's scary. But after they were done with the exams,
and the first year everyone passed, they were like, "Oh, that wasn't so bad. I learned so much."
But the initial introduction was very scary.
The next thing we did was a competency skills pre - survey. I didn't want to offer training
on things they already knew, but I didn't want to make any assumptions that they knew things
they thought they did. I needed to really find out where they were.
If this is something that you're interested in doing, you are welcome to use mine.
I can turn it over to you.
I just saw a questions about how large my library is. I serve 30,000 people.
I would say that's a pretty small library actually. We have about 27 people on staff,
but that also includes passport agents. We have three passport agents
that don't actually work in the library, so medium - sized library.
The next step was 23 things, and I created my own version of 23 things that were specific
to the resources that our library provided. They are also on the LibGuide.
Then we planned an in-service day, and before the in-service we did a pre-in-service survey
so that we would again cover the things they needed but not go over things they already knew,
and that was pretty extensive. After the survey was done, the trainers all got together
and looked at what we needed to teach. For instance, Stephanie did Windows 7.
Did you want to make a comment about that, Stephanie, and what the experience was like
as you went through that in-service day?
Stephanie: Sure. I think the whole thing that was so great about this is they were panicked.
You know, I go out and do trainings too, and I would hear things like,
"I can't believe we have to do this," and "I'm nervous," but Penny and her management staff
made everything available to them that they needed to get to the skill level they needed
to get to. It wasn't just, "Here's what you need to know. Now go figure it all out."
I'm sure she's going to show all this, so I won't talk too much about that.
But then they had a day, a full day where they got hands-on and personal experience
also with different breakout sessions, so if they weren't real good self-learners,
then they had a day they could take it all in that way, too, if doing the online modules
wasn't quite cutting it. It was great to be there and have an entire staff that knew what was on the line.
It was a wonderful experience. It's one of my favorite experiences I've had here on the job.
It's just having all these people very intensive. Their jobs are on the line.
It's not "do or die" here, but they knew the seriousness of it and they were all on board,
and I think that's what this whole process did. It wasn't a scare tactic.
It was, "Hey, I have resources. I can learn this. I have people here that are going to help me."
If they were willing to do what needed to be done, it wasn't a hard deal to get there.
To be a part of that was great. The day was wonderful, and I showed them the latest
and greatest in Windows 7, and some things about searching, advanced sub-searching in our OPAC,
and then Penny and her crew had all these other breakout sessions
and other things particular just to their library. I'll tell you what.
Those people can answer the questions when people come in the door, like I've never seen.
It's very well done, and I am the cheerleader. Sorry, I'm going to keep doing it.
Brenda: Penny, Would this be a good point for a couple of questions we've received?
Penny: Absolutely.
Brenda: Okay, some questions about if this applies to all staff levels.
Are pages or shelvers, are they tested, too? And then also a question about volunteers.
If you use volunteers in the library, do they need to pass the test?
Penny: Okay, we do not use volunteers behind the desk so they would not have to
pass the competencies. However, I have worked with some libraries now
that do different competencies for different departments. I am now in the process
of developing competencies for our public program team. They take the competency exam
for the desk, but they will also have additional competencies for their jobs.
So it can really be broken out. Stephanie and I are working with a library right now
that is very departmentalized. They are doing competencies for each department. It's up to you.
This is just what worked for us, but you can do what you feel is necessary.
I just had a library contact me about a training program in LibGuides for shelvers,
and that's something that you can do. It's your library. It's your program.
You do what you want to do. Is there another question that you have, Brenda?
Brenda: Let's see. There was a question about a union environment.
Stephanie Zimmerman weighed in and said, "You're not in a union environment."
Someone was wondering if you know of any libraries who have done this
having the minimum score, that kind of thing, do you know of anyone who's done this
in a union environment.
Penny: I do not. And probably the reason I don't is that we don't have very many union libraries
around here.
Brenda: Some states have more of that, so maybe if anyone has experience with that,
if you could share with us in the chat if you have a resource or if you have experience with that,
go ahead and share in the chat. Okay, well, I'll turn it back over to you
and we'll just keep tracking questions as they come in.
Thanks, everyone, for asking such great questions.
Penny: After the in-service, we did a post-survey to make sure that the training was effective.
In our case, it was very effective. When I looked at the pre-surveys, I was like,
"Oh, my word, half these people think Amazon is a search engine."
The post-survey proved that we had done what we needed to do with that in-service.
It was a lot of planning but, again, I have all that stuff done. I have all the PowerPoints.
I have everything. If this is something you're considering for your library, again,
don't reinvent the wheel. Feel free to contact me and I can share a folder with you
in Dropbox all of that stuff.
The next thing that we did as a group was an online book discussion about working with patrons
and customer service. Each week we read a chapter and then there was an online question
that everybody answered. Just so you know, all of this was tracked,
and employees were required to do these things. However, they were also paid for their time.
So it was part of their job to go through this.
After all of these things, then came the competency exam. We did a demonstrative exam
and a written exam. The demonstrative exam, we sat down with them one on one
and connected the computer to the wireless network, tasks in Word and Excel and PowerPoint,
things that patrons using the public computers would come and ask.
Nothing terribly difficult, but things that they would need to know. How to download e-audio books,
how to download e-books, all of those things were included in the first competency exam.
Because it was new and because I understood that there was a lot of nervousness
and anxiety involved with it, anything over 80% was appropriate and would be passing for the first year.
And like I said, everyone passed. So that was like "Phew!" finally! With the success at the end,
we realized that we really had given them the training that they needed.
So Year 2 is where we are now. We developed an Employee Learning & Growth Program.
I don't know how it is in other states, but in Pennsylvania there is a minimum number
of continuing education credits that some library staff have to take. For us, if they're under 20 hours
they don't have to take any. But what we did was increased CE requirements,
and in some cases we doubled or tripled them. We added additional competencies
where new services were being added, and we also went to a more advanced level
on some of the programs that we were offering. Just last week, we did the second round
of competency exams and we upped the score to 85%. That's where it will stay.
I'm not expecting anyone to be perfect, but this is where we just finished,
and I do have the Employee Learning & Growth Program on the LibGuide, so steal it.
I don't care. Okay, questions?
Brenda: How many questions are on the exam, or how long on average
does it take someone to complete the exam?
Penny: Okay, the demonstrative part of the exam was 30 questions, and some of those
were like 2 or 3 parters. You know, go to the place where you would download e-audio books.
Is this book available? If so, download it. Those kinds of things.
We also included in those demonstrative exams our other delivery devices, so the Kindle Fire,
the Kindle, and iPod, because people are coming in and saying, "How do I download the a
for your audio books?" Staff has to be able to do that, so those kinds of things were involved
in the demonstrative one. The written exam was just a combination of everything.
Stephanie, you saw the written exam. Do you have any comments on those?
Stephanie: It did cover everything someone at a front desk would need.
Again, she's willing to share those with everybody. That's what so great.
I found that the skill levels, what you were observing is exactly right-on
from what I've seen over the years out in the libraries. I didn't think it was over the to
with anything that shouldn't be known, but I knew when I read through it,
knowing from the skill levels, I was like wow! If they didn't do their work,
if they didn't learn these things, it's going to be tough but, again, she gave them all the resources
they needed. I think one of the other questions that I've seen come through
was how did you handle those different skills levels. The day of in-service Penny spoke with me.
She said, "Here's some people who could use a little more hand-holding,
that could use a little more help," and I assume you probably did that internally, too,
besides that one day that I was there.
Penny: Correct.
Brenda: Penny, another question was about new employees. This is such an ongoing thing,
how do you bring someone up to speed when you have a new employee?
Penny: We have a policy and a timeline in place. When a new employee is hired,
they have — and again I'm happy to share this with anyone. They get a schedule,
so they actually go through exactly what our staff went through. We went through it together
but new people that are coming in go through the same steps. They are at a benefit
because they have everybody else that they can ask who's already gone through it.
But they follow the same steps to get them up to where they need to be.
Stephanie: I saw a question from Sheila on here about how technology
doesn't always work smoothly. She has a difficult time coming up with written instructions
that will work in every environment. My advice is stop trying to make written instructions.
Give them the toys to play with. Have it available like a tech-petting zoo. If you don't have funding
to be able to do something like that, someone on your staff has a toy that they can
come in during lunch some day, and if they're willing, at least demo it in their own hands
if they don't want anyone to touch it. Just some way to get them exposed to the technology.
They've got to be able to play, I mean, that's where I'm moving now. I don't want to give people
these step-by-step point-and-click instructions on how to do things anymore,
because I can't. Technology is going too fast. You can't do that anymore.
Instead I'm trying to find ways to teach people how to play, and that's what Penny's LibGuide
is all about. Here's the info. Here are some sites to go check out. Here are some videos to watch.
We've got this device here. Check it out. Take it home. Play with it. That kind of thing.
There's no way to provide them every little detail that they're going to need anymore.
It's got to be, "I'm ready to play. I know I can't break it. Let's just try and learn this."
I don't know if that helps at all, but it's the only way I can see the future going
with all this mobile technology. I can barely breathe. I know everyone on this call,
everyone listening on this webinar agrees. It's hard to catch your breath right now,
but it's so exciting at the same time.
Penny: One of the other things we always do when we introduce a new service or a new technology,
for instance, when we introduced the regular Kindles, we purchased them
and kept them for three months, and staff was encouraged to take them home and play with them
and become familiar with them. When we introduced the Kindle Fires,
we did the same thing. We bought them. We loaded them, and we didn't even tell anyone
we had them until every staff member had an opportunity to check them out
for an extended period of time. We just started offering Rokus for circulation,
and we had Rokus in the building for six months and people took them home.
If they didn't know how to use them and couldn't get them to work,
a manger would go to their house and help them figure it out.
You can't expect them to just know everything. You have to give them the opportunity to learn
and play. Even though we don't circulate iPods, although we will be next year,
we have one so that they have the experience to get a handle on it so when someone comes u
and says, "How do I download the One Click app?" the staff can go, "Okay, here's how you do it,"
and actually show them how to do it. But I agree. Written instructions are a horrible,
horrible, horrible idea when it comes to this new technology because everybody has a different way
of doing it. As long as they get to the end result, does it really matter how they get the a
downloaded? They just need to get it downloaded.
Okay, and by the way, if you are interested in doing this, I am more than happy
to share the exams with you, but I do not post them anywhere because if you use them,
your staff will know the answers. But I'm happy to share them.
Taking competencies on the road, after you've put them together, share them.
If you're in a library system, offer them up. If you have a LibGuide subscription, again,
you're welcome to use mine. I have set them up for a couple of libraries now,
and it's literally less than an hour for you to just grab mine and change them.
Please don't be intimidated. You are offering this service not only for employees
but also for management because we still need to keep up as well.
I take the competency exam, even though I wrote it.
Stephanie: She's not exaggerating on the one hour, and really it's that easy.
I've used parts of her LibGuide in a couple of public presentations I've done now
where I just pull their pages. I'm like, why would I recreate this page?
I just pull it right in there, and it's just wonderful.
Penny: Okay, let's move on. These are my observed outcomes.
I get way fewer customer complaints. The staff is definitely more confident about their abilities
and when we offer new services, they're actually excited about it
because they know they're going to get the training. The library really has
become a technological hub within our community. We work with the Chamber of Commerce.
We offer technological programs for business owners. Just recently, our local municipality
sent all of their managers to the library, and we did a 22-week training program on Windows,
the new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and if you don't think that that makes a difference
when you go ask for money, think again. That municipality increased my appropriation
for next year by 25%, so that does make a difference. Again, donations have increased,
have doubled during our fund drive this year. Again, can't say what it's actually attributed to,
but it seems a little bit too much of a coincidence.
Stephanie: I would say that's definitely why.
Penny: I believe a lot of it has to do with the fact that people come in now
and they can get their questions answered, and they talk. They tell people,
and eventually it gets to somebody who's in charge of our funding.
That's my outcomes. Yours may be different.
I have our email addresses here. I just want to quickly take you to the LibGuide.
Can everybody see that?
Brenda: It's loading. It's kind of still coming. There's a delay on our end but it should be appearing
for everyone. This is the LibGuide that Penny has been talking about throughout.
It may be still appearing on your end. It has appeared on mine now.
Penny: Okay. Basically a LibGuide is kind of a wiki on steroids, if that means anything.
You need to have no HTML training. It is really a wysiwyg kind of thing, and when staff logs on,
this is what they see. The video that you see on the right is really a great explanation,
a minute and a half. Staff understands it. Thank you for putting that link up, Stephanie.
If you go to the link, this actually takes you to our competencies. This is an amazing resource,
and I would love to say that I created this all on myself, but I didn't.
I have a really great technology manager at the library that has worked very hard
on getting all of this information together. As you can see, there are different ways
of presenting the same information so that no matter what your learning style is,
you can find what you need. This goes with the competencies.
Our competencies involve all of these things, and this is kind of the
"meat and potatoes" training part. If I go back to this competency page, here are my 23 things
that they went through. If you look at it, you'll see that there are comments on some of them.
Now halfway through this, I actually switched from the State LibGuide to my own account,
so you won't' see all of the comments in the first couple of weeks that the staff made,
but this is a great way to put together all of those wonderful promotional materials
that your vendors give you and you never really know what to do with them.
There's a video on how to use tumble books. This year, or in 2013, one of the things
that we'll be adding for all these services are the apps so that the staff is very familiar
with how the apps work as more and more people are moving to mobile applications
instead of doing these things on the computer. Each week, staff had assignments
that you can see here on the right-hand side, and they answered these things.
Now, this is required, again. We kept very careful track of making sure that everybody did
what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it.
If they didn't, they heard from me, and I would just follow them around and nag them until they did it.
That's really important because you want the staff to be in the same week
so that it becomes part of the lunchroom discussion, and they learn together.
Now I will tell you that several years ago I did a 23 Things with the staff and the community,
and I have I believe it was like 80-some community members and all the staff doing it
week by week together, and that was also a great way of creating dialogue in the community
about technology. As an incentive, we gave away a Kindle for the staff in a drawing.
Anybody who completed it got their name in, and the same for the public.
That was a really great way to introduce these technology things that we were doing to the public,
and it really started that dialogue. Patrons would come in, they knew the people at the desk
were doing them as well, and there would be discussions about this week's thing.
Brenda: That's such a great idea, to involve the community.
Penny: Well, you know, that way they know that they can come to us. It doesn't always have to be
library things. Google Docs. If you're going to use these things internally,
it's great to have the staff learn them together. Some of these things that I just assumed
that people knew about, online book clubs. Nobody in my library even knew
we offered them, so that was a good way.
Stephanie: Sorry to interrupt, Penny, but I just want to interject. I mean when you were talking
about the comments, I think that is the heart and soul of the approach that Ephrata
took on this competencies. It wasn't, "Here's a nice little website with a lot of nice little information
for all of you, and you're going to have a test in five months, whatever, three or four months,
and we'll just see how you do." It was, "Here are the questions for this week. I need the answers."
And when she didn't get the answers, she followed up. That was nice of her to do.
It's that accountability feature, not a hard-lined approach but I just think that commenting
and keeping track, yes, she has a medium-size library. A very large library is going to take a team
of people to do this, but I think that's why it was so successful because no one was dropped
off the charts and at the end was like "Oh, I didn't have time, and I didn't realize."
There were no surprises. I think that is key in the fact that there were no surprises in her building,
as far as I could tell, as an outsider.
Penny: Yes, everybody knew what was expected of them. I did see a question earlier
about whether or not the staff was paid for this. And the answer is yes.
Salaried people and fulltime staff were told that they could use their time at work to learn,
do whatever they needed to do. Part-time people were paid for the time that they spent
either in the building or outside of the building, working on these things.
I think that was really important because we were making an investment
in making sure that we offered exceptional service.
Here's the book discussion, and it's called "Diffusing the Angry Patron."
Each chapter lists the questions, the question of the week, and they're actually
kind of interesting because we all work in different places
but we all pretty much have the same patrons. So it was a good way for them to learn
that everybody has the same problems and how you deal with them.
if you offer great technology competencies but you're crappy at customer service,
the competencies aren't really helping you very much, so we did tie in a customer service
component to this as well. We have website for references that we used for resources,
and here is our Employee Learning & Growth Program. It shows you the CEUs
that we're requiring of everyone. Again, they get paid for this. If they get their three CEUs,
they'll get paid for three hours. Fulltime and salaried staff are supposed to do it on library time.
We also subscribe to Universal Class and staff was encouraged to take those classes.
Some of them actually took the classes together so they could do the homework together
and things like that.
Brenda: Well, just to remind everyone, this is Brenda, this LibGuide that Penny is demonstrating
now, that's just available on the web. That has all of this information
and someone said that they would like to learn from this on their own,
and I think that's a great idea.
If you also have a LibGuide account, Penny has said you can take this
and just put it in your LibGuide account, too. But if you don't subscribe to LibGuide,
you'll still have access to it and there are other ways that you can share this type of information,
too. Then Penny has also offered to share some of the stuff that's not included, like the quizzes.
She mentioned that those aren't included because that doesn't make it much of a quiz if it's out there,
so those things she is willing to share. And we'll keep sharing her email address, too.
I just wanted to clarify that.
Penny: I saw "What is the cost of LibGuide?" I saw that question. It depends on your population.
My cost is about $600 a year, completely worth it. And let me just quickly show you why.
I'm going to go to my library's website. We actually use these for the public,
and basically they're digital pathfinders. For instance, we have a LibGuide
on local history where anybody who's interested, it's almost like a reference librarian
is just sitting there and giving you all this information. You can link it to your catalogue
so that you can highlight certain books. I do LibGuides on summer reading,
any grants that we get. We had the Building Common Ground grants
that we just recently finished, and that's right here, with all the events
and everything that people needed to know about this grant.
SO LibGuides is not just an internal program. You can use it.
I'm seeing Penny here says a subscription charge for a small library, you know,
it's a couple of hundred dollars. It's really not that much for what you're getting.
Brenda: Okay, we'll include a link to the LibGuides site so you can check it.
Penny: Right, the company that has it is Springshare.
I'm going to open for questions now quickly.
Brenda: Okay. Let's see. Questions about buy-ins, even after all of this do you still have employees
that pass the buck or do they try more often, so do they try to pass, as often happens in libraries,
they pass the questions on to the person they consider more tech savvy.
Do you still see that happening a lot?
Penny: No. We don't do it. If they pass a question on, they must stay and learn the answer.
Brenda: What is the makeup of your training staff?
Penny: We have five managers. Our technology manager is 19 years old.
That's been helpful. She really is amazing.
Stephanie: I've never met another 19-year-old like her.
Penny: Yes, she started out as a volunteer when she was 14,
and she's the one who really helps me create the sites. My assistant director,
my technology manager, my operations manager, and my reference librarian
make up the people who do the training and the exams.
Brenda: Other questions, you talked a little bit about the 23 things and that the public,
your community, did that at the same time. Do you have other public tech training
on your LibGuides, too?
Penny: We are starting to use them as a supplement. So if we have a computer class,
it will have a complimentary LibGuide for people to refer back to. If it's a multi-week class,
we'll put homework on there as well. LibGuides allows you to do much more
than what you're seeing here. You can do polls and discussion forums and all kinds of things.
So, yes, we are really integrating it into our entire training program for the public as well,
and let me tell you, it's so advanced that some libraries are actually using this
as their website. It's very flexible.
Brenda: Another question is about getting buy-in, so you and your library administration
are obviously on board with this, but what about a library where, for example,
someone mentioned they did 23 things in 2009 and they didn't get buy-in from administration.
How can they re-introduce it and get more buy-in from administration?
Penny: You need to be able to tell them exactly what realistic outcomes you're going to see
from this. That would be my big suggestion. You can also do secret shoppers,
which was something that we did. The feedback that you will get from secret shoppers
will probably be enough to convince them.
Brenda: Well, this time has flown by. Again, we're going to send out a message later today
that has the recording from today's session. It will have links to all these different things.
It will have all of that, and I think that will help people a lot, too. I think that librarians
are great at sharing with each other this kind of information and, Penny, your LibGuides
is just an awesome resource for so many of us, so thank you so much to both of you
for taking the time to be here and talk with us about this. It's really useful. It was great.
Both Penny and Stephanie have provided their address here,
and have welcomed follow-up questions, too. There are a couple of TechSoup resources
that I'll mention that people might find interesting and relevant to this topic.
There's Atomic Training and Easy Learning. They include online courses
on technology-related topics. Our next webinar might actually be interesting to this group, too.
I'll be one of the facilitator, and Stephanie Gerding who's been helping us out,
and many of you know her for all the work she's done on tech training.
Our next webinar is next week, and it's Better Together. It's all about this type of sharing
that's happening. Today Penny shared with us a lot of what she has done, but next week
we're going to talk about lots of places that are sharing. There's just so much out there.
As Penny said, there's no need to reinvent the wheel when there's already so much good stuff
out there. So next week will be all about sharing resources.
With that, I think we're about ready to wrap up for today.
Again, thank you so much to Stephanie and thank you so much to Penny, too, for being here
and for sharing with us about this great, great work that you're doing there in Pennsylvania.
Thank you, everyone, for your participation and questions, too, and we'll connect with you again
after the webinar with that follow-up email. Thanks, everyone.
Have a great day.