Library Technical Competencies: What Do We Have? What Do We Teach? What Do I Hire?

I am posting this from the Reagan County Public Library in Big Lake, Texas, where I will be for the next week.

Zone One Reference Librarians met a couple of weeks ago to discuss computers in libraries and staff technical training. In all our libraries we have computers for staff and clients to use. Most of us also have web sites, and many offer wireless Internet. Our staffs have developed many technical skills in the past ten to fifteen years. No one has totally non-technical staff members anymore.

Technology continues to change quickly, and libraries want to use these developments to better serve clients. This requires us to have well-trained staffs both in public service and working behind the scenes. How to get everyone on a staff up to par on the latest skills is a great challenge. In many cases, some one lags behind, resulting in varying public service. You know your library has a problem when some fairly common client requests are regularly written up and referred to the more savvy staff.

Sarah Houghton-Jan's points out a process to improve staff competencies in her technology report. What she leaves for the reader to discover is the specific competencies needed in her library.

During our conversation, I thought of one way to start the specific list competencies for my library. All staff members in public service can log every technical skill used for several days. These logs can also record when a skill is missing. Before I ask anyone to do this, I thought I should try it out myself.

For two days I kept a running log of technical tasks, including time in public and behind the scenes in support of our library mission. Here is what I listed.

· Turn on public PCs
· Turn off PC security to load software
· Load Firefox browser update
· Troubleshoot printing on the microfilm reader printer
· Read and write email
· Edit online calendar
· Set up projector and laptop for a meeting
· Add to the staff wiki
· Load paper into the copier
· Open an email attachment and save it
· Set up an Excel spreadsheet
· Send document to remote printer
· Add book titles to an online shopping basket
· Post on the staff blog
· Teach client how to create a PIN for the online catalog
· Troubleshoot monitor
· Resize photocopies for a client
· Cut and paste into Word document for our newsletter
· Search remote databases to answer reference questions
· Troubleshoot email with client
· Use Dreamweaver to update library web pages
· Load web pages onto the remote server
· Place holds for clients
· Explain "reply to all" to a client
· Search library catalog
· Load an iPod for a client


As I look at this, there are many skills that I did not have fifteen years ago. It was not hard to learn them, but I can remember times when I was baffled by something that ended up being easy. Luckily for me, my library has always sent staff to classes, workshops, and conferences. The knowledge gained at outside training has laid the foundation of my technical skills. In our meeting, we talked about our libraries sending more staff out for training more often, but we recognized this still is not enough. Besides, we need our staffs in our buildings most of the time.

One of the librarian at our zone meeting told about how her library's technical trainer, a person hired part time to do classes for the public on mostly Internet topics, gives some classes for staff as well. These are helpful but do not meet the need for current awareness of late breaking technical developments. On her own the trainer started sending occasional tech briefs to staff, alerting them to news. We all agreed that she is the kind of person we all need in our libraries.

This reminds me that my library's needs a new reference librarian. I have learned much from and been encouraged to try new things by the last two librarians in this position. Much of this transfer of knowledge happened in our daily unplanned conversations. For this position, we have a brand new job description that more than ever lays out skill sets that are required and activities that will be performed. Teaching other staff members is in the mix. What it does not say is "Will teach the old guy some new tricks." Maybe it should. Teaching the supervisor is important, too.

As important as the formal training and the daily conversations are, I realize further that I am also somewhat self-taught. I think all the best technical minds are. They play with the new technology fearlessly, learning what it will and will not do. They do not wait for their libraries to arrange training. Self initiative needs to be written into all of our job descriptions, too.

For more information on library technical competencies, look at Cultivating Tech-Saavy Library Staff, one of Sarah's presentations as reported by Chad at Library Voice.

Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries by Sarah Houghton-Jan

It has been my intention to review Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries by Sarah Houghton-Jan when I finish reading the report for a couple of weeks. The problem is I have no idea if I will ever actually finish reading. Sarah's paragraphs are full of statements and questions that act like electrical charges on my brain, and I start thinking about my library and many possibilities to help the staff better serve our clients. I usually only get a couple of pages read at a sitting. Sometimes I only get through a couple of paragraphs. I am enjoying the process. Maybe I do not want to finish.

In logical fashion Sarah starts with the question of what technical competencies are. Instead of just offering a simple definition, she prompts and assists librarians to come up with definitions that suit their own needs. She follows with reasons why the librarians should even care. The crime, she asserts, is that libraries often do not expect enough from their employees, when if only they would ask for more and then help educate them, they would be happier. The goal is to equalize service for the public and foster a culture of learning in the staff.

This is one of the questions (paraphrased) that particularly sparked my thoughts: what should library clients know and does this influence what staff should know?

I remember that when my libraries first started offering public computers we expected much more from the public than from the staff. We had statements in user agreements saying that the clients were responsible for knowing computer programs and that little instruction was offered. Staff might help turn the computers on or put paper into the copiers. The attitude seemed to be that staff did not have time to help with computers. The underlying facts was that most staff members at the time had no idea how to help.

I think the staffs in my libraries quickly realized that the above unhelpful attitude was contrary to our mission, and we quickly found time for individual assistance/instruction. We started taking classes and attending workshops from which we learned to give our own classes to the public.

At Thomas Ford Memorial Library, we have now been teaching our Beginning Internet class for over ten years. There was a slight dip in attendance a few years ago, but registrations have increased again recently. I think the need to use computers has nearly reached everyone now. Not everyone is happy with that, but they have to turn somewhere, and the public library is where they turn. In the past two weeks in our "Book a Librarian" program, I have helped several people who had been resisting computers for years. A couple of them said to me that they did not really want to learn but felt they had to do it.

So getting back to Sarah's Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries. It is good for library professional and support staff to meet competencies. It may be especially helpful to get reluctant staff up to speed because they can empathize and be more patient with reluctant clients better some technical whizzes.

The latter part of Sarah's report details how through staff participation to create a technology competencies document and start meeting its objectives. It looks very helpful.

Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries looks like an item that ought to be in lots of libraries, but there are only 53 identified through Worldcat. Maybe many copies are still in the hands of the original purchasers, who are studying them - like me. I suspect a lot of cash strapped libraries are reluctant to part with $63 and postage. I would like to see ALA sell this report for half the price (while still paying Sarah for all her effort). They might sell many more copies.

I see a few additional copies hidden under the records of Library Technology Reports [1976 to] in our consortium catalog. You have to already know its there to look there. I think it would be found by more librarians if treated like a book.

73 pages printed as a serial, this work might be 120 to 150 pages if published as a book.

I do promise to finish soon and get our copy into the collection so others can borrow it. Soon. Really.

Houghton-Jan, Sarah. Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries. ALA Techsource, March/April 2007. ISSN 0024-2586. Phone orders, 1-800-545-2433, press 5.

Cultivating Tech-Savvy Library Staff by Sarah Houghton-Jan and David Lee King

Cultivating Tech-Savvy Library Staff was one of the most useful programs I have attended at Internet Librarian. Sarah Houghton-Jan of San Mateo County Library said one of the most important things that I have heard said. It expresses a goal that all libraries that I know have trouble achieving. It is that all public service staff in libraries should meet technical competencies so all library users get the same high level of service. It should not matter who is on duty.

What libraries live up to this goal? Few, I suspect. Sarah's message is somewhat tough, but it is not unreasonable. She is currently writing a book on the topic and has much advice for libraries trying to meet a high standard for user services.

Central to Sarah's message is conducting a competencies evaluation, which can be done for an entire library or by department. The idea is for the staff to determine what skills are needed by all the staff for everyday service, list the skills, and then address bringing all the members of the staff up to standard. This does not mean that every member of the staff has to have every technical skill known to librarianship. The challenge is to have every staff member competent in the skill necessary to serving the everyday needs of library users.

Sarah said much more. In her own post on the program, she links to all of her slides and to a post by Chad Boeninger that outlines most of what she said in the program.

David Lee King presented the second part of the program. He listed 10 ways to keep techies happy.

1. Techies are part of the team. Invite them to important planning discussions that involve technology. They might have important input.
2. Techies need toys and time to play to learn new skills and generate new ideas.
3. Everyone must learn basics. Do not call a techie to replug an electrical cord.
4. Give the techie a time line for your project.
5. If more than one library patron asks for something, it is important to have.
6. Have adequate technical staff.
7. Tell the techie when you do not understand. Don't pretend and then complain about how the techie can't explain the technology.
8. Pay the techie well.
9. Budget appropriately for technology.
10. We are all geeks at something, whether that is with computers, reference books, or cataloguing. Treat the geek respectfully.

Cultivating Tech-Savvy Library Staff was a content packed 45 minutes.

il2006