Tag Archives: Workplace

Register now for Supervisor Nuts & Bolts Workshop

photo-1422854068916-cf163783f7caDo you lead, supervise or give work direction to others? Could you use a few tips?

CMLE invites you to attend two “after school” sessions from 4 – 6 pm; the first one being Thursday, April 14th, the second being May 12). It is important that you plan on attending both days as the second event builds on the first.

Consultant Chris Kudrna will guide us through strategies, tips and tricks you can use tomorrow to better supervise, lead, and/or give work direction. Enjoy time for sharing and/or Q & A with Chris, and get the coaching you need to be a positive force in your workplace.

Event Details

Who: Academic, K-12, public, and special library staff from Central Minnesota
Cost: Free to you. CMLE will underwrite the consultant costs and refreshments.
Where: In CMLE’s new space in the Central MN Educational Research & Development Council (cmERDC). Located right next to Target East. 570 1st St. SE., St. Cloud, MN 56304

Register Now

Image credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/0Sy4gfZ2RXU (Ross Tinney), licensed under CC0 1.0

What is a librarian?

I have a plan. (187/365)Warning: this post is more than two sentences long…

Librarians are at the most critical time in history to define themselves. Yet there appears to be an ongoing  struggle to find clarity/passion  around  core functions or even a desire to get real about “owning” the fantastic set of skills that librarians possess!

Library users just want help, on their terms. They are not necessarily interested in all of the cool ways that librarians manipulate the world of information, even though we very much want them to care! They just want great service for all of their needs; and one stop works best in their busy lives! But, how well does this work when librarians hold on to traditional models of what an academic, public, and school librarian do for the user? Is it possible that librarians are willing to serve the user as long as the user need fits nicely within the realm they reside in?

In our search for staying relevant and moving towards the library of the future, the library workplace  is becoming much more demanding, requiring broader skill sets. This change in expectations often causes discomfort and some even question whether an MLS is what is needed in the field!

I recently read a great blog post called What is a Librarian? on the LITA blog which examines this topic, and it is worth a read. My favorite quote from the piece is this…. “If you care about information and want to do good with it, that’s enough for me. Others are free to put more rigorous constraints on the profession if they want, but in order for libraries to survive I think we should be more focused on letting people in than on keeping people out.” Amen!  Oh wait, there is more…

In a related  post titled MLS Required, Barbara Fister writes….”… when undergraduates ask about library school I try to be realistic – jobs aren’t plentiful, the pay isn’t great, some organizations are pretty toxic. Getting a foot in the door is really hard. You will have relatives who will repeatedly use the phrase “buggy whips” and laugh. But if you do apply to library school, don’t do it because libraries feel like safe places. Get good advising, try things that you feel ill-prepared to do, challenge yourself. Because those challenges will keep coming and you might as well get the hang of it.”

Patricia-

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/qc788l4, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

College Grads and Problem Solving on the Job

workplaceA report from Project Information Literacy – Learning Curve: How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace is online  and worthy of a thoughtful read (only 38 pages, well organized). Twenty three in-depth interviews were conducted with employers about their expectations and evaluations of newly graduated hires and their ability to solve information problems in the workplace. Five focus group sessions with 33 recent graduates were also conducted focusing on the challenges they encounter and the informaton-seeking preactices they use as they make the transition from college to workplace. For a complete understanding read the full report; if you only want the major findings, I include them here:

“All in all, our findings reveal two sides of the same coin. The basic online search skills new college graduates bring with them are attractive enough to help them get hired. Yet, employers found that
once on the job, these educated young workers seemed tethered to their computers. They failed to incorporate more fundamental, low-tech research methods that are as essential as ever in the
contemporary workplace.The major findings from our interviews and focus groups are as follows:

 
1. When it was hiring time, the employers in our sample said they sought similar information proficiencies from the college graduates they recruited. They placed a high premium on graduates’ abilities for searching online, finding information with tools other than search engines, and identifying the best solution from all the information they had gathered.

2. Once they joined the workplace, many college hires demonstrated computer know-how that exceeded both the expectations and abilities of many of their employers. Yet we found these proficiencies also obscured the research techniques needed for solving information problems, according to our employer interviews.

3. Most college hires were prone to deliver the quickest answer they could find using a search engine, entering a few keywords, and scanning the first couple of pages of results, employers said, even though they needed newcomers to apply patience and persistence when solving information problems in the workplace.

4. A majority of employers said they were surprised that new hires rarely used any of the more traditional forms of research, such as picking up the phone or thumbing through an annual report for informational nuggets. Instead, they found many college hires—though not all—relied heavily on what  they found online and many rarely looked beyond their screens.

5. At the same time, graduates in our focus groups said they leveraged essential information competencies from college to help them gain an edge and save time at work when solving workplace information problems. Many of them applied techniques for evaluating the quality of content, close reading of texts, and synthesizing large quantities of content, usually found online.

6. To compensate for the gaps in their skills sets, graduates said they developed adaptive strategies for solving information problems in the workplace, often on a trial-and-error basis. Most of these strategies involved cultivating relationships with a trusted co-worker who could help them find quick answers, save time, and learn work processes.”

As information professionals, what does this mean in our information literacy work? Do we still stress the value of picking up a phone or paging through a print resource? The full report is available at http://tinyurl.com/8jpcqvs