ACL professional knowledge blog for staff

Claire Scott, community librarian of Grey Lynn Library also attended the LIANZA conference. Following are her posts:

From the opening keynote address by Sir Tipene and Hana O’Regan, it seemed that the conference would indeed be all about people. As chairman of the Ngai Tahu Trust Board, Sir Tipene led what became one of the most significant Treaty settlements in 1998. It was only natural that daughter Hana would inherit some of her father’s passion for Treaty issues and identity politics. She completed her MA with a thesis about Maori tribal identity, and this later became the subject of her first book. Together Sir Tipene and Hana discussed the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and the practicalities of accurate and comprehensive transference over time. What is lost is often immeasurable, but in the case of Ngai Tahu, and Maori people in general, clearly it is language.

ePortfolios

Another extremely interesting presentation which focused on people was the Australian ePortfolio Project by Associate Professor Gillian Hallam of the Queensland University of Technology. ePortfolios enable tertiary students to track their personal development while also keeping their body of learning in an employer-ready format. While all QUT students have access to t he ePortfolio platform from PebblePad in the UK (www.pebblepad.co.uk ), 26 library students trialled this tool, with support from ALIA. Managers and mentors were also involved. An ePortfolio can be as detailed and elaborate as the user chooses. Some that we saw included video clips and interactive tools created by the student and included in the ePortfolio. Such a toll would certainly assist New Zealand library students and practising professionals to maintain registration body of knowledge information.

Social media

Also about people was Brenda Chawner’s presentation on social media. Brenda is in the mid stages of undertaking research into the use of social media by information and communication professionals. She compared her 2007 survey results with those taken earlier this year which showed some predictable advances in the uptake. For example, in 2007, 57.5% of respondents read blogs at least once a week (5.4% - never, 12.9% - wrote their own blogs). In 2009, 70.4% of respondents read blogs (4.1% - never, and 20.2% - write their own). With regard to social networking, in 2007 only ¼ of respondents had any kind of profile and many faced institutional barriers. In 2009, this number has jumped to 84.4%, and a number of respondents now actually use their social networking profile for business purposes rather than facing barriers from their employers.

Most people saw the advantages of maintaining a social networking profile as enabling them to keep in touch and connected, as well as being able to present a human side to their commercial profile. Drawbacks included issues such as being time consuming, a loss of privacy, and a lack of face to face contact. Others cited a poor quality of information while some felt pressured to keep their profiles up to date. In addition, some organisations find themselves represented unofficially by unauthorised staff. However, not many places of employment have yet developed a policy regarding social media.

Customer education programme

Kim Clayton from Wellington City Libraries presented a very informative session about the revamp that WCL recently undertook of their customer education programmes, To ensure a clean slate, they started back at the very beginning and asked both themselves whether they were meeting the needs of their customers, and they asked their customers what they wanted to learn. As with public libraries everywhere, key barriers to finding this information involved gaining access to customers, budget constraints, and staffing issues. In the end they surveyed 100 customers and the result was universal – what the customers want are one-on-one sessions rather than group classes. They want the information when they need it, and not before.

Implications of providing a service such as this are, of course, numerous. Firstly, staff need to be fully trained and competent with all of the tools that they are required to demonstrate. Staff are the key point of difference. But how do you train over 200 staff to be experts? Wellington City Libraries did this by having their information team promote a “database of the fortnight” with three to four questions. Managers committed to ensuring that staff had the time and access to participate, and the project received very good feedback from staff. The questions have become a new tool, useful in training new staff.

In addition, simple business cards were created which included popular topics such as “My Gateway” (account access) and which were blank on the reverse in order for staff to add notes or key tips for the customer to remember. These are available at all sites for staff use, and are an inexpensive and effective tool for customers to take away with them.

The point of need was also pre-empted with the use of “mini-expos” – a staff member with a laptop out in the library at high peak times demonstrating various things in the body of the library and available for questions and assistance. The next step is to move this out to the branches where both the needs and the peak times are different. But a complete coverage of the network is seen as a vital part of getting this right for customers.

Children's bookshop

Finally I would like to comment on the present by John McIntyre of the Children’s Bookshop in Wellington. John is one of the best advocates for books and literacy in children that I have ever listened to. Although he is a businessman, he has an immense genuine love of books, and a desire to enrich the lives of children though them. John speaks publically at a number of events, and works tirelessly with young people who have had difficult lives to date. He spoke of one young woman he had met who had returned to school after a failed first attempt. In the meantime, she had produced two young babies, and although still a teenager, she had decided to try and turn her life around. John read some children’s books to the class, and he talked to them about literacy and words, and bringing them alive for children. Some time later he received a letter from this young woman that still moves him when he reads it aloud. She credited his visit to her class as one of the key areas that changed the way she parents her own young children, how they now have books in their lives, and the immense difference that this has made to them all.

To meet a man so passionate about books was very warming, and his passion for children’s and teen literature has made me want to read it again for the first time since I worked as a school librarian.