Welcome to Season Nine of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you join us again! Welcome to the first episode! We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.

Check out our full show notes here, for all the information, links, and other ideas.

This season we are going to focus on topics that are important to library support staff. We will be discussing each of the ten competency sets in the American Library Association’s Library Support Certification program. Some of these may overlap with our Library Basics series from Season Seven, but we will be looking specifically at the material the ALA has identified as important this season. We will link to the ALA’s program, if you want more information or want to sign up for one of their classes.

This week we will start with one of the required topics in the series of ten offered by ALA: Foundations of Library Services. “These competencies are fundamental to understanding the mission and roles of libraries. These competencies cover the ethics, values, and governance of libraries, and the basic knowledge needed for all positions in a library.”

It doesn’t matter what you do in a library – it all contributes to the overall mission of service. Understanding a few fundamentals will help you to be clear on not only what you are doing, but why it is important and how it fits into the work all the libraries do to serve their communities.

Let’s take a look at each of the twelve different components the ALA has identified as important here, and talk about a little information on each one.