Journey to Library 2.0

One library trains staff on the social tools users employ

By Robin Hastings -- Library Journal, 4/15/2007

In December 2006, the Missouri River Regional Library (MRRL) in Jefferson City, embarked on a journey. We had been watching the Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County (PLCMC), NC, on its adventure through the wilds of Web 2.0, and we decided to follow the trail it had blazed. What PLCMC had done was pretty revolutionary. The library used Web 2.0 tools to create a self-paced learning program open to all staff to teach new technologies and tools their patrons were busily using to create content on the web. (For more on Library 2.0, see the article by Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk, LJ 9/1/06, p. 40.)

Helene Blowers of PLCMC took the article “Things You (or I) Might Want To Do This Year” (see “Link List”) by SirsiDynix's Stephen Abram and distilled it down to 23 things that she wanted her staff to understand through hands-on experience. Librarian Bobbi Newman and I adopted her idea and ran with it. We expanded the program to include 29 things, tweaking the order of Blowers's original items and adding some new ones to serve our staff better. We then launched our Library Learning 2.0 program.

Some additions were inspired by what we had seen our patrons using in our library's Public Computer Center (PCC). Our program included MySpace and social networking as well as new search engines, some of which employ tagging and other Web 2.0 concepts to improve the results they return (see Product Pipeline, netConnect, LJ 4/15/07, p. 14–16). We also included a tour of the Google Labs site as well as a separate post at the end of the program that asked the staff what else they would like to learn now that they were conversant with the Web 2.0 technologies.

Since Blowers had done most of the dirty work by creating the PLCMC program, all we had to do was “borrow” her groundwork and expand it to fit our staff's needs. We created our own blog to host the program (mrrllearning.blogspot.com) using the software that we were going to be asking our staff to work with and copied and customized much of what Blowers had done. We spent a good deal of time brainstorming to come up with the best, and most urgently needed, technologies for all staff to tackle. Creating those new lessons (e.g., on Second Life) took us two to three hours each—we had to go through the exercises ourselves, jotting down step-by-step directions and grabbing screen shots so that the staff would know what they were supposed to be seeing as they completed the exercises.

Our program was organized to allow a generous start-up time. We announced that staff could begin the exercises any time between December 2006 and June 2007. They would have 16 weeks to complete the 29 tasks, which were broken down into 11 weekly sessions. We also offered as an incentive an MP3 player to each staff member who completed the program within the 16 weeks and wrote 150 words per week. Blowers said she wished she had required a minimum word count to make the conversation among staff members easier to maintain.

When our new director, Bill Rodgers, came on board in January, however, we modified the program to help staff members find the time to work on the program. We gave each staff member two weeks, if necessary, to complete each weekly session and offered an hour each week when they were not scheduled to answer phones, be on a desk, or do any work besides this program. Our network administrator set up two computers in an out-of-the-way office to give part-timers without their own desks a place to work on the project without interruption.

The staff response to the program has been overwhelmingly positive. Our interim director, Betty Hagenhoff, had been very supportive when we pitched it to her. Our new director continued to support the program and authorized the dedicated hour each week for staff, guaranteeing many staff members the extra time they needed to focus on the program. We had quite a few “early adopters” sign up, even with the holiday season approaching. By mid-January, we had a nearly 25 percent adoption rate among our 60-plus staff. By March, the adoption rate had risen to over 50 percent, with more intending to begin shortly.

As soon as several staffers had their own blogs up and running, they posted enthusiastic messages about the program. Our teen librarian, Letitia DenHartog, wrote, “I think that there will be a lot to learn. Even more than getting the MP3 player, this is information that I need, just to keep up with the teens whom I work with. This is exciting!” Another staff member at the Osage County Branch in Linn, MO, was excited about the possibilities of Flickr.

Some staff members had questions and problems with some of the new concepts, but by working together and, if necessary, getting us involved, they were able to find the solutions and continue, feeling empowered by all of the new things they were learning. Eric Lyon, a librarian in our children's department, finished up the lessons and—in response to our request to summarize the program—said, “Introducing Library 2.0 ways of thinking through hands-on, self-paced experiences is an effective method and one that works especially well in a busy work environment. Considering all I learned, it obviously worked for me.”

Staff are now blogging regularly and becoming comfortable with the technology. This means that we are ready to handle questions from patrons about blogging, finding information on blogs, and social computing in general.

We “ate our own dog food” and used the same technical platform to create the program we were asking our staff members to use to learn about Web 2.0 technologies. We started by requiring a Gmail address for each participating staffer. Bobbi and I both had accounts with plenty of invitations (now free to all), so we were able to give anyone who needed one an invitation to the service. This automatically gave each participant a “beta” Blogger account as well.

We had set up the program so that all of the information for the program was contained in two Blogger blogs. Now, as each staff member comes on board, they are added to the sidebars of MRRL's blogs as “participants.” This blogging requirement is really important: it gives each staff member a personal platform to use to create a record of what they learn and what they think about each tool, as well as offering a way for coworkers to comment. In the future, this will serve as a tool to remind them what they learned during this program.

We also asked each participant to create a Bloglines account. This allows them to add their fellow staff members' blogs to their RSS reader and follow and easily add to the conversation. Bobbi and I each created a folder in our Bloglines accounts so that we could track participants' progress through the project, answer questions, and send encouragement to each of the staff members as they completed their lessons. We also used the social bookmarking service del.icio.us to hold all of the links to which we pointed from our blogger posts for each session. Each participant could create a del.icio.us account for the sites they wanted to remember in their own account. We also used the podcasting studio software provided by Odeo to create extra content for some of the early lessons and to give staff the experience of podcasts and listening to audio online.

Looking around our PCC at 3:30 p.m., at least half of the computers have MySpace up on their screens. Because of the Library Learning 2.0 program, our staff can answer questions about this site and help people manage their friends' lists, control who can see their profiles, and understand the benefits and dangers of using the site. Our staff have also been exposed to readers' advisory wikis (e.g., iread.pbwiki.com) and other Web 2.0 services that will help them do their jobs better, faster, and more easily in the future. Now, when patrons come to any of our service desks with questions about how to work with the new tools that comprise the Web 2.0 world, our staff will be able to offer up solutions and discuss options.

What did we get out of this process? We learned our staff are willing and able to understand the new technologies that our patrons are using. We also learned some specific lessons about presenting this sort of training experience. Next time, we will include the Life Long Learners portion of the PLCMC program—a tutorial that explains the “7 & 1/2 habits” of lifelong learners to help our staff get into the spirit of being self-taught and self-motivated. We will also offer live question-and-answer sessions at least monthly, if not weekly, to help staff understand difficult concepts in person.

We received requests to do traditional classroom training on some of the new tools. For example, staff would like to get to know Flickr better now that they are familiar with what the photo-sharing application does. We are planning to schedule instruction on this when people branch off to learn more about their favorite tools.

This is not the end of our Library Learning 2.0 program. We have plans to continue it into “Library University,” with blogs and teaching resources on different topics, from customer service solutions to Microsoft Office software. This will enable the entire library staff to acquire all kinds of new concepts, skills, and abilities in order to use technologies that are difficult to schedule and teach in a more traditional “classroom” setting. By continuing this program, we'll help our staff learn at their own pace and in their own way while keeping up with the swiftly changing times.