Purpose, Goals,
and Tips for Supervisors
Orientation for New Library Employees
Supervisor's Role
Purpose
of Orientation
Target Audience
Needs Analysis
Goals and Objectives
Tasks and Activities
Credits and Copyright
Certificate
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.
- Examine these training opportunities to recommend as the next step for the employee:
ORE on the WEB (reference training) Ohio Library Council Educational Opportunities and Professional Development.
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.
