Paralleling the many ingredients Michael Shell is working with, he himself is a myriad of talents, education, and characteristics. He knows how to laugh at himself, serious when needed, anyalytic, not one to tolerate boredom, inquisitive, smart--you get the picture. Just knowing him can expand your horizons and we are fortunate to have him as the new leader in JPL Training.
Q: Working under the direction of Mark Merritt, JPL’s Deputy Director of Administration & Finance, you will be our Training Department’s Librarian Senior. You bring a lot to the table. What initial plans do you have for Training that you can share at this time?
A: First of all, I want to thank Sara Radovic, Kate Holmes and Diane Alexander for doing such a great job of pointing the way into the new fiscal year. In addition to their planning efforts, they greatly enhanced the Training Resources pages on JPL Neighborhood. Learning Resources is the most important of those pages. In 2011-12, 85% of JPL training was online, and most of it is still available here.
Going forward, reorganization training is the obvious first priority. Ron Block and colleagues have been bringing cash handling and circulation refresher training to the branches. Susan Mankowski has done the same with Storytime Boot Camp for new Children’s staff, and she has hosted a three-hour workshop for all Children’s staff, led by Keri Corey of the Jacksonville Children’s Commission. There will be follow-ups for all these trainings.
New Person in Charge (PIC) Orientation for Main and PIC Refresher training for all the branches are also priorities. I’m looking at the PIC training outline Richard Mott used several years ago and gathering collaborative help from Michael Soto in Facilities and from various current PICs.
Later this calendar year, Lynn Jacobson’s staff in ILS will prepare and present training on an upgrade to WorkFlows and a migration to a more user-friendly online public catalog called Enterprise.
Finally, the Balanced Scorecard training goal for fiscal 2012-13 is that at least 8 training hours of each person’s minimum 16 be focused on library technologies. We are updating the Technology Competencies and beginning needs assessment at the Region level, so that we can identify and/or create the necessary training opportunities.
Q: How long have you been with JPL and what experience have you gained that will benefit you and us as JPL’s Training Manager?
A: I came to JPL in 2000 from the University of South Carolina’s MLIS program.
Librarianship is my third career. Starting in the mid-1970s, as e-technology went from electric typewriters to desktop computers, I learned how to learn, in a changing information management world, through a series of administrative assistant jobs. From 1985 on, with a Masters in Rehabilitation Counseling from USC, I spent almost 15 years as a clinical social worker/counselor, mostly in the South Carolina prison system. As you can imagine, I learned to give professional customer service in the most challenging of situations. I also learned to facilitate teamwork across professional disciplines, and how to teach my colleagues as well as my clients.
On my first assignment at Webb Wesconnett Branch, I developed and taught a basic PC/JAXCAT customer class for seniors. That led, after a term at Southeast Branch, to an invitation to join ILS as they prepared to train staff for the migration from DRA Library Systems to Sirsi. The ILS job, in turn, required me to learn and teach other new technologies. In 2005, I joined Julie McNeil’s Main Reference staff to supervise the Call Center and to develop, implement and manage JPL’s Ask a Librarian service. As both of these services evolved, I kept learning and kept teaching staff.
The core of my growth as a trainer, though, lies in my daily work with customers and staff. To me, effective training, like effective reference work or counseling, depends upon hours of vulnerable, face to face interaction with people who want to learn. These people lead me, as I struggle to hear and understand their needs, so that training is a discovery interaction, rather than merely a doling out of organized information.
Q: You have worked successfully with other organizations and other public libraries. How do those strong relationships benefit JPL?
A: The most significant partnership has been with the state’s Ask a Librarian (AaL) network, housed at Tampa Bay Library Consortium (TBLC). Since 2004, when AaL was a pilot project of Florida Electronic Library, I’ve grown and learned along with the project. JPL joined in 2006 and now draws one of the largest public library customer bases in the state. As part of AaL Advisory Committee, I helped as the chat service expanded and texting service was added. This is very much a two-way relationship. AaL staff teach JPL staff a lot about providing quality virtual reference and about managing a system-wide team of remote customer service agents.
Northeast Florida Library Information Network (NEFLIN) is another primary partner. As members of this network, JPL staff have access to free online and in-person training on a wide array of topics (check out the Events List). I encourage supervisors and staff to pay close attention to every NEFLIN announcement, to take advantage of the opportunities
and to convert completed NEFLIN training experiences into formal or informal peer training efforts whenever possible.
Finally, American Library Association, Public Library Association and Florida Library Association all offer trainings and conferences. For example, in 2010, I took part in PLA’s Turning the Page 2.0, a six-week series of live webinars and practice, designed to help local library advocacy. Though I didn’t use the TtP 2.0 model directly here in Jacksonville, that training has informed all my advocacy efforts, and it also put me into partnership with the PLA staff who run the program.
Q: Why is training important to JPL staff right now?
A: Our extended JPL family has experienced several years of escalating challenge and uncertainty because of City budget cuts, staff losses, and reorganizations. I’ve always been impressed by the readiness of JPL staff to support and back each other up, and by the resilience with which we adjust to difficult changes. Even so, I imagine that we all feel like “displaced persons” at present, survivors of a crisis which has lost us friends and broken up strong, supportive team relationships.
When most of us went through the Destination: LEADERSHIP program a few years ago, we discovered how powerful it could be to step up as individuals, to teach and coach each other, and to offer our insights and guidance to JPL. I want JPL Training to be a vehicle for recovering the enthusiasm and sense of competency which many of us grew into at that time.
There are obviously many practical, hands-on skills which we need to learn or relearn in our new assignments. However, the heart of what we need to do is to train each other as we go forward, to call up that sense of community and of commitment which has always enabled us to share what we know with each other—just as we do with our public customers. Lifting each other up is what public library is about.
Q: Where--in all the world--would you most like to visit?
A: In my early 30s, I had the good fortune to spend almost two months traveling in India and Nepal, from Mumbai (Bombay) to Delhi, Agra, Varanasi (Benares) and Kathmandu. My traveling partner and I lived for several weeks with a Hindu family in Delhi, and we used local trains, hotels and restaurants in order to stay close to the people. The Indian subcontinent is one of the most populous, fastest growing regions of the world, and one of the most culturally diverse. I’m still drawn to return to that beautiful and complex land.
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