"Training for 600? No Problem!"
Mary Ross, Seattle Public Library's Staff Training and Development Guru

by Lorena O'English

A few years ago I became an instructor for the Washington State Library’s Anytime, Anywhere Answers virtual reference training program. An extensive curriculum had been created by Mary Ross and Daria Cal of the Seattle Public Library (SPL), and Mary was to lead us through it. After our two-day “train the trainer” session was finished, I came back to Pullman with an idea for a future sabbatical project: I would ask for one year to spend following Mary around, watching her and finding out how she does what she does. Well, I don’t think my idea will fly, but I’ve learned a lot from Mary since I’ve known her and I thought it would be fun and informative to write about how one public library system deals with the challenges and issues that beset all of us in our library world of constantly changing resources, databases, staff, technology, patrons, policies, and virtually everything else under the sun.

Training at Seattle Public Library

Seattle Public Library has committed substantial resources to its staff training and development program. Mary is in charge of creating professional development opportunities for over 600 library employees who are spread across a large urban area. Many classes are taken by every staff member, from the custodians to the top administrators. SPL has an official “Training and Career Development Philosophy, Goals and Objectives” statement that lists key values and is the philosophical basis for its extensive training investment. A yearly training calendar provides all employees with the ability to carefully schedule the classes they want or are required to take. Training opportunities cover all sorts of issues and resources, but SPL is especially recognized for its staff workshops on intellectual freedom and on dealing with difficult patron behavior. Training opportunities offered by other libraries, library professional associations, governmental agencies, professional trainers, and firms specializing in professional development are also resources that are used as appropriate.

What is Professional Training?

Mary notes that our LIS education prepares us for our profession, but competency-based training (CBT) prepares us for successful job performance and successful participation in our library’s organizational life and culture. CBT implies linkages: to core competencies for a job, to the library’s missions and core values, to service or other public initiatives, and to performance management. Work on SPL’s competencies is in progress; once completed, they will provide a roadmap for expectations of staff performance.

In academic libraries, much of the training we provide is single-session and is for discipline-based classes. At SPL, internal training events can be scheduled for multiple hours and even days (e.g.: its mandatory, two-day intellectual freedom class) and better opportunities for follow-up exist.

Training Philosophy

Mary’s philosophy is based on designing sustainable training programs that use adult learning principles and emphasize active learning techniques. At SPL she has created a training program that is based on identified competencies and is managed through a distributed network of library trainers from SPL branches all across the city. Supervisor training is a big part of the program, and she is currently working on a mentoring program.

 The Challenges of Adult Learners

Mary’s definition of a training challenge is a situation that creates an opportunity for good training design. One training challenge faced by SPL is having people of varying levels of knowledge and awareness in the same class. Mary tries to turn this into a positive by taking advantage of opportunities to share and learn from each other. Another tactic is to provide context and information related to upcoming training sessions well in advance of the actual class, including sending “context memos” written by the City Librarian to emphasize the importance of the training sessions and how they fit into people’s jobs and the wider mission and goals of the library system.

Training the Trainers

Mary relies on a network of librarians and other library staff to do distributed training. Recruiting and selecting potential trainers is crucial—communication skills are important, but being able to facilitate learning and focus on the learners is paramount. Mary spends a lot of time with new trainers, modeling, observing, and providing feedback. Once they have mastered the content, she works on enhancing their individual training styles. Like academic instruction librarians, she looks for opportunities to highlight teachable moments—listening for situations or learners’ comments or questions that advance learning for everyone. She emphasizes a constructivist style, working with trainers to help participants connect class content to broader concepts, and always reminding them that what learners discover is more powerful than what trainers present. 

Favorite Training Techniques

• Use open questions – “What do you think about…?”
• Use a closed question followed by an open question, to get more involvement from learners.
• Look for pithy sound bites –  “We ensure access, not defend content.”
• Model what you preach – your new trainers are observing you carefully and what you do has a bigger impact than what you say.

 Best Part of Her Job

Making a positive impact on individual employees, as well as on the library and its patrons, is what makes Mary feel most satisfied about her job. When SPL recently switched from Dynix to Horizon, Mary had to coordinate training for everyone and individual branches were shut down so all staff members could be trained together—a rare occurrence. This was a logistic and technical challenge, but it was something that made a huge difference in people’s understanding of the new system and their ability to confidently and correctly provide services internally and to library patrons.

Thoughts for Academic Librarians

Most of us don’t work in library systems with over 25 branches and 600 employees, but we, like SPL, face the challenge of making sure that our library employees’ knowledge is current and consistent, a challenge that is exacerbated by our tendency to focus primarily on the instruction we provide to our library patrons. We may not have large internal training budgets or specialized internal training coordinators, but we do have people with expertise, and we can take advantage of development opportunities through professional reading and activity. Opportunities for learning go beyond the kind of informal sharing that goes on at the reference desk or during a coffee conversation. For example, Mary and Daria recently presented a session on online training at the 2005 Washington Library Association conference, and collaborative webcasts such as those produced by the College of DuPage are increasingly becoming available. Just as technology can be one of our biggest training headaches, it can also provide mechanisms for professional development that minimize issues of geography and provide ways for libraries to share training with other libraries within and outside of their own library systems.

Links and Further Reading

Academic libraries often focus on theories of bibliographic instruction, but there is much to be gained from also considering a training perspective, especially in terms of internal development of library employees. Following are some sources that Mary recommends for anyone interested in learning more about the theory and practice of training and professional development.

ASTD (The American Society for Training and Development) http://www.astd.org/astd

David Meier, The Accelerated Learning Handbook: A Creative Guide to Designing and Delivering Faster, More Effective Training Programs (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000)

Robert W. Lucas, The Creative Training Idea Book: Inspired Tips and Techniques for Engaging and Effective Learning (New York: American Management Association, 2003)

CLENERT (Continuing Library Education and Exchange Network Round Table, ALA) http://www.ala.org/ala/clenert/clenert.htm

WALT (Washington Library Trainers): http://www.wla.org/walt/

Guila Muir’s workshops: http://www.guilamuir.com/

Mary Ross, “Equalizing Access: Staff Training in the Internet Era” ALKI 16.3 (December, 2000): 11-12. http://www.wla.org/alki/dec00.pdf

More about Mary Ross: http://home.earthlink.net/~rosskenw/ross_bio.html

Lorena O’English is the Social Sciences Reference & Instruction Librarian at Washington State University Pullman

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