Purpose, Goals,
and Tips for Supervisors
Orientation for New Library Employees
NEW! Resources bibliography
NEW! Certificate and Recertification Contact Hours
Purpose of Orientation
Target Audience
Needs Analysis
Goals and Objectives
Tasks and Activities
Credits and Copyright
What's New? New resource links.
The Explore sections in the right-hand column of each Orientation page contain links to resources that supplement the module content and activities. The following list contains recently added links. Sites last visited June 2008.
The State Library of Ohio and the Ohio Library Council have created Ready To Read to help address the early literacy needs of Ohio's youngest citizens. Ready To Read is a major ongoing statewide initiative that will disseminate early literacy information to public library staff and trustees, early child care providers, educators, children's advocates, parents, and political decision makers.
Users online, but using libraries!
The 2008 Digital Future
Report found that the Internet is perceived by 80% of users age 17 and older to be a more
important source of information than television, radio, newspapers, and books.
More than half of Americans visit libraries! Results of a Pew Internet & American Life survey "challenge the assumption that libraries are losing relevance in the internet age. Libraries drew visits by more than half of Americans (53%) in the past year for all kinds of purposes, not just the problems mentioned in this survey."
"Young adults in tech-loving Generation Y (age 18-30) led the pack. Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and in general patronage for any purpose. Furthermore, it is young adults who are the most likely to say they will use libraries in the future when they encounter problems: 40% of Gen Y said they would do that, compared with 20% of those above age 30 who say they would go to a library." (Report of IMLS-funded project with University of Illinois -Urbana-Champaign and the Pew Internet & American Life.)
Library 2.0
Keep up with Library 2.0 - the latest in Web 2.0 applications for
libraries! Library 2.0 Reading List,
created by Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens for the Library 2.0 course for the
American library Association with the Otter Group.
How do libraries use Library 2.0? 100 Free Library 2.0 Webinars and Tutorials suggests "Webinars,
presentations, and tutorials designed to help you take your library to the next level."
Created by Jessica Merritt.
It’s All About the User
slideshow: how Library 2.0 can help you focus on library users.
Users in online communities
A basic part of any library mission is to serve the community - whoever
and, increasingly, wherever! The 2008
Digital Future Project found that membership in online communities has more than
doubled in only three years. More than half of online community members (54 percent)
log into their community at least once a day, and 71 percent of members said their
community is very important or extremely important to them. Fifty-six percent of
members reported meeting their online counterparts in person... And, a large and
growing percentage of members -- now 55 percent -- say they feel as strongly about
their online communities as they do about their real-world communities.
Know the issues about the rights of users who access social networks with library
computers. Visit ALA's Online
Social Networks site.
Teens, Privacy and
Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the
age of MySpace, a PEW Internet report.
Current awareness with blogs
What are others doing?
LibWorm is a blog search engine
and current awareness tool for people who work in libraries. LibWorm collects updates
from about 1400 RSS feeds and makes them available for searching.
LISZEN is a Library & Information Science search engine
powered by Google Co-op. It includes user submitted blogs that relate to library and
information science.
RFID issues
What are the issues for privacy with RFID?
Cataloging, WorldCat news, and RDA
"Next-Gen Catalogs" in Library Technology Reports, Jul/Aug 2007 (43:4), by Marshall Breeding, who describes "efforts to create new catalogs and interfaces more in tune with today's expectations." Covers terminology associated with the "next-generation" catalog situation as well as such areas as federated searching and other features expected in the "next-generation" interfaces: faceted navigation, relevancy, the "did you mean?" feature, and RSS.
Search catalogs around the world with OCLC WorldCat, "the world's
largest network of library content and services, with more than a billion items from OCLC libraries."
New features:
-Add a Worldcat search box to Web sites.
-Search from browser toolbars such as Google or Yahoo.
-Build Web links to WorldCat information.
-OCLC and Google agree to exchange data and link digitized books to WorldCat.
-Get more news about trends and technology with OCLC magazine NextSpace.
Catalogablog, good stuff for
library cataloging, classification, metadata, and subject access.
How do users classify? Ponder the tag cloud
which results from users' search terms of the NASA home page.
Cataloging in a digital world: Resource Description and
Access, designed for the digital world, guidelines and instructions on resource description
and access covering all types of content and media. Built on foundations established by the
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR).
A library
podcast that explains call numbers!
Fun
with Our Meebo Widget and the Library Catalog (David Lee King blog). "When a customer searches
our catalog and doesn’t find anything, they can contact us via IM and ask for help."
Information seekers can give INFOhio's Research
Project Calculator a try. Just enter some basic information, and the RPC will deliver a project
plan and lots of helpful suggestions!
Diversity
Engaging Youth on their Own
Terms: Instant Messaging and Gaming in Libraries webinar. Using technologies such as instant
messaging and gaming to increase young library users interest in learning.
Serving Non-English Speakers in U.S. Public
Libraries is a new (March 2008) ALA report about library services and programs for non-English
speakers, including effectiveness of services, barriers to library use, most frequently used services
and most successful programs by language served.
The Rainbow List is a bibliography of current
books for young readers (0-18) dealing with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or questioning
issues. Created by the Rainbow Project, a collaboration of the ALA Social Responsibilities and GLBTQ
round tables.
Responsibility of supervisors
Evaluation of employee's achievement of the goals and objectives of the Orientation is the supervisor's responsibility. Evaluation consists of reviewing the completeness and accuracy of the required Activities and Quiz answers.
To understand what the responsibilities are and to determine how active a role to play in the employee's online Orientation, the supervisor should complete the following steps:
- Read the information on this page to gain an understanding of the purpose and goals of the Orientation.
- Scan through the pages of the Orientation. If there are areas that you would like to discuss or emphasize with your employee, ask the employee to visit with you while doing the activities on that particular page.
- When employee is finished, review and discuss responses to Activities with employee.
- Review and discuss QUIZ.
- Print and sign a Certificate of Completion.
Recertification
Contact hours for Renewal of Ohio Public Librarian Certification are approved for this tutorial. OLC’s three online tutorials qualify for recertification under Category C: Self-directed Continuing Education Activities. The Orientation tutorial may be credited for 3 contact hours. ORE on the WEB and Marketing may be credited for 6 contact hours each. All three online programs include a Certificate of Completion. Librarians who wish to use the online classes for recertification credit should download the certificate, print it, have their supervisor sign it to verify the course has been completed, and include it with their recertification application.
Purpose
- Provide an orientation on the Web for new employees in Ohio public libraries, to introduce the purpose and organization of public libraries.
Target audience
- New public library employees, primarily non-professional staff who have no prior library experience
Needs analysis
- Initial training and activities on library purpose, organization, and services should begin with a basic overview.
- New employees need to know the purpose of public libraries and will benefit from an understanding of the operation and purpose of the library as a whole.
- New employees need to work with library staff while working through the Orientation to get first-hand information about the policies, procedures, and structure of the individual library.
- Presentation of theories and concepts should be reinforced with activities requiring the trainee to get hands-on experience in exploring the library.
- An understanding of how libraries are connected in the state is helpful and can be explored on various Ohio library web sites.
Goals, objectives and tasks
Each page introduces a topic, requires completion of a related hands-on activity, and provides optional exploration of supplementary sites on the Internet to reinforce concepts presented.
Goal 1: Understand the purpose of libraries.
- Comprehend and be able to describe how each employee contributes to a library's mission of serving users.
Task or activity
- Identify library's mission.
- Examine mission statements for other Ohio libraries.
Goal 2: Explore basic library technical and public services.
- Understand and be able to state the difference between technical and public services and be able to identify these services in the individual library.
Task or activity
- Through interaction with staff, identify the specific public and technical services in the library.
- Examine other library web sites for lists of public services.
Goal 3: Investigate the organization of the library.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the arrangement of the library, and be able to explain why all library materials are classified, uniquely identified by call number, and require a catalog record.
Task or activity
- Distinguish between fiction and non-fiction.
- Identify the main classes of the DDC and locate them in the non-fiction areas of the library.
- Map the areas of the library.
- Locate records in the catalog by subject.
- Identify the parts of a call number.
- Relate the call numbers on the record to the physical location of the item.
- Explore DDC web sites.
Goal 4: Understand library's responsibility to users.
- Be able to describe and apply the appropriate behavior that is part of the library's
responsibility to users.
Task or activity
- Examine the confidentiality law.
- Discuss ramifications with staff.
- Apply knowledge: answer questions that are examples of specific situations.
- Explore other policies related to user rights.
