Training

If you are getting the sense that there is a whole lot of variation in the format, content and provenance surrounding essential library staff-specific information about the Affordable Care Act, then you have read the scene accurately!  Before you throw up your metaphoric hands, reach for your mine pick and/or shovel, or take to your bed with an affordable headache, let's break this down into approachable chunks. Today we'll look at webinars:

Is there really a slow time around Infopeople training roll outs?  Nah! And so far, this August is proving to be busy for those of us creating lots of new content areas and formats for library staff training and development!

Here's an overview of what's happening, and a glimpse ahead, too:

Birds do it, bees do it, and I do it every morning. It's what brought me to the brand new Hippie Gypsy coffee shop (because I did it online last night). Richard Feynman did it on the beach (and Leland Myrick depicts that perfectly in his and Jim Ottaviani's new biography).

I know, I'm usually plugging an Infopeople podcast, but today I'm plugging this great interview on T Is for Training with our own (well, she's her own person, but we love her) Sarah Houghton-Jan aka the Librarian in Black.

Overcoming challenges in the library workplace involves a mixture of creativity and fun, Suzanne Merritt suggests in her new full-day Infopeople “Building Leadership Skills: Stimulating Creativity” workshop sessions being offered in libraries throughout California from April 10-24, 2009.

The challenge, when you love everything you promote, is to draw attention to something which stands out above all the other great offerings. One of those “special children” for those of us working with Infopeople is Cheryl Gould’s latest offering, “Fully Engaged Customer Service,” so Infopeople is offering it at a 50 percent discount to any library willing to book a contract offering at $1,000 per day.

Let’s acknowledge that our educational system generally does a poor job introducing us to the theory, process, and language of budgets and budgeting. Let’s further agree that this leaves many of us unprepared for our first (and second and third) experience preparing and managing budgets when we begin writing grant proposals, managing projects, or assuming our initial supervisorial-managerial position. We stare at endless rows of numbers, line items, index codes, sub-object codes, and income and expense statements.

If we step away from concerns about not seeing forests for trees and look, instead, for the hidden roots to projects like the new San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) Leadership Academy, we discover encouraging stories about leadership, patience, and how long projects can take to reach fruition.

Developing leadership skills, as San Diego County Library Training and Web Services Manager Polly Cipparrone is discovering, is a continual process with plenty of surprises and opportunities.