• Discussion Group Notes
• Group #2886
• Group #2873
• Group #2887

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Notes from Discussion Groups: Objective 9. Identify the skills and resources needed for library innovation and develop new competencies by training and recruiting.

Group #2886
Facilitator: Barbara Morley
Note-taker: Casey Westerman
LMT: Karen Calhoun
Attending:Camille Andrews, Marcia Clark, Martha Crowe, Surinder Ghangas, Janet Gillespie, James LeBlanc, Boris Michev, Jean Pajerek, Lydia Pettis, Lois Purcell, Howard Raskin, Deborah Schmidle, , Cecilia Sercan, Jacalyn Spoon, Pam Stansbury

The objective and Implementation

• We need to identify the trends and directions of the profession before we can determine which skills and competencies will be needed.
• It's important to keep in mind that the talent pool is not limited to librarians.
• The managers and supervisors who are studying these trends need to communicate with the ones who are actually directing staff.
• Are we adequately training the staff who will soon be taking the places of departing/retiring staff?
• We may need to revise our concept of a librarian and a librarian's skills. Are there enough new librarians graduating from library schools?
• The expectations are rising for our competencies, skills, and achievements.
• There's a different culture for librarians and systems experts. Librarians may be moved from one specialty to another, resulting in a poor fit; this is especially likely to happen when librarians are trained in non-library fields. We can't retrain people to do something well if it's not what they want to be doing. The staff we have now should identify the areas they're interested in working in, and the skills they have that aren't currently being used. People will usually be willing to take on new responsibilities, if they think they're required to do so, but this can lead to poor performance and poor job satisfaction.
• Managerial staff should be involved before, during, and after any change in someone's responsibilities.
• New opportunities will arise in the library in the next few years, and many librarians would be excited to explore the new possibilities; how do we identify the librarians who'd be interested in these changes?
• Training is expensive and has to be budgeted for. Supervisors need to be aware of the skills their staff have, to know what training is and isn't necessary.
• Training should be periodic and repeated, instead of a one-time event. We need to assess our current training structures as well as the current skill levels of staff. There would have to be ongoing and repeated evaluation. The library has been static for a long time, and we're discussing large changes.

Possible partners

• CIT department of instruction and Library HR. Library tech already does a large amount of instruction. Cornell graduate programs are a resource: recent Ph.Ds have teaching and writing skills and are familiar with the workings of academic systems. Could we create postdoc positions for them? Students are another resource, especially in IT, as they frequently have very useful computing skills.
• Extensive education and training may not be immediately attractive to new librarians, who've recently completed library school and don't want to go back to class just yet.
• Our primary partner in training should be Cornell itself. We should create a culture of partnership with faculty, perhaps have crossover positions between faculty and librarian.
• We have a vested interest in the staff who are already working here.
• Our reliance on outside experts, especially speakers, was questioned: we have incredible resources here and we might be better off relying more on local talent.
• The Syracuse internship program was questioned. Students at the information science school are often looking for jobs outside of the library field and have little interest in interning at CUL.
• CUL pay has historically been low when compared to other universities and, especially, other university professions; this has a dampening effect on recruitment. Ithaca was considered as a factor in recruitment and retention - people are drawn here more by Cornell's status than by its location.
• If recruitment is difficult, staff development becomes more important; we should determine why the people who stay do so.

Measures of success.

• It's important to watch the people who stay at Cornell and advance in their field. Our place in the ARL rankings is a measure of success, as is the number of qualified applicants for open positions; also, the evident respect shown for CUL on the part of other professionals, which is apparent and conferences and other professional gatherings.