by Sarah Statz Cords
Someone raised a GREAT issue at Fiction-L the other day: before advertising her library’s RA services, this person wanted to know how to assess her staff’s RA comfort levels and competency before addressing training needs.
Huh, I thought. There’s a new take on the issue. Because I received no training in RA in library school, and even less in the library*, I’m always interested in articles and theories on how to train advisors (and library staff in general, including the pages who shelve the books). But all this time I’d been missing a vital step: how to assess the skills your staff people already have.
Unfortunately it seems that once again this is a question that is rather drawing a blank at Fiction-L. After entirely fruitless searches for books or online materials about training and skills assessment that could be adapted to the library/RA world (this doesn’t mean they’re not out there–it’s means I’m a lazy internet searcher) I started wondering if:
1. We could work backwards from work already done on RA “competencies,” and formulate assessment questions from there; and
2. If that would be something we could do here, collaboratively, at the RAO blog. Who’s with me?
I thought what we might do is examine some competencies lists (a few are listed and linked to below) and then, on separate days, tackle one competency at a time and formulate some questions or scales that might assess how library staff feel about their own skills in those areas. Maybe it won’t work. But I think it’s time we tried something.
First? A few competencies suggestions. If you know of more or use different criteria in your libraries, please let us know in the comments!
- Minnesota Career Renewal for Library Employees RA Competencies
- Ontario Public Library Association RA Core Competencies
- What Does It Take? RA article by Sharron Smith
- ALA RA Competencies for Support Staff
- And last but not least, a word about “Core Competencies” in general
Do you know of other competency lists? If so, please let us know so we can include them before we go on to the next step.
Stay tuned for future articles and discussion on this subject!
*No harm, no foul here. I realize that a lot of times the librarians in charge of training new staff on the desk are given very little time or support to do so, and have never been “trained to be trainers” themselves. But it’s a reality we need to face up to.
For more on lack of education and training in RA service, see Connie Van Fleet’s “Education in Readers’ Advisory Service in Library and Information Science Programs” and “Dynamics of Readers’ Advisory Education: How Far Can We Go” by Cindy Orr.
Watch for Part 2 in this series next week.
Andi,
We’re so glad to address workplace concerns–and good for you for talking about competencies in your own training! Have you found any particularly good sources for competency outlines or training?
Jessica,
Thank you so much for the links. Plenty of competency documents show up in a web search but it’s so nice to have good ones pointed out by people with expertise in the subject.
Theresa,
Great tips for using NoveList, as well as citing Joyce Saricks’s class. I agree that using all sorts of tools/databases as training tools–and to point out areas of strength and “needs improvement”–is a great idea. I use the Reader’s Advisor Online myself all the time to get a feel for which titles are in which genres, as my reading deficiency tends to be in genre books.
Deborah,
We are very aware that everyone is doing more with fewer staff members and fewer resources–meaning that there is even less time for training (and planning to train) than ever before. We’re hoping to foster collaboration here, maybe even just as a starting point, for people to use in their own workplaces. Thank you for participating!
I would love to collaborate with other folk on training ideas. We have combined circ/ref/RA desks and it’s been difficult to train staff for basic circ as well as reference and RA competencies.
I found the best way to evaluate my self when I just took Joyce Saricks RA 101 through RUSA was by using Novelist. In Novelist they have RA training and tools. I was totally lost when the class chats started talking about books and authors I knew nothing about. In the test your Genre IQ link it goes to a page for ARRT. Click the link to Popular Fiction list. In this I found that a person can see what they know on books in the listed genres. I found I knew very little for the last 10 years of authors. I knew the most on authors published over 20 years ago. I have spent the last 20+ years raising children and the last 10 taking care of aging parents so I have decreased my reading considerably. The list let me see the deficiency quite well. On the plus side I know that I have not formed any bias towards authors or genre styles.
Every thing Neal Wyatt has on the Novelist site is great. He also has a nonfiction RA book that is excellent.
Some of the competencies from Reference may be quite useful. Such as the one from King County
http://faculty.washington.edu/jernel/521/kccomp.htm
Or this one on specialized business reference
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/sections/brass/brassprotools/corecompetencies/corecompetenciesbusiness.cfm
I have been talking up using competencies and providing RA training to staff for the past few months and this shows up! Love it. Thank you for addressing real workplace concerns with some practical information.