Training Others

Much of library work can be solitary, such as cataloguing materials and conducting solo research. Nonetheless, my librarian career has been marked by important instances of needing to train and educate others on how to use the libraries’ systems, both to enable user access and to ensure that best practices are carried out by my successors. 

While friendly communication is useful for imparting information, it is also critical to building a good rapport with the libraries’ user-base, ensuring that patrons are confident coming to you with questions and concerns. This is essential to user services in particular, but also in all aspects of librarianship.

At the Jean-Léon Allie Library at Saint Paul’s University, a large part of my work at the front desk consisted of teaching patrons how to navigate the catalogue. Some of this was fairly straightforward – here’s how to open the catalogue, here’s how to sort by location, etc. – while other requests required me to walk patrons (students and staff) through the entire process, from using the classification system to reserving materials for themselves or for their class.

Part of this process, I learned, was the need to balance providing detailed instructions with building patron capacity to help themselves. This included walking them through the steps on a mirrored monitor, giving them troubleshooting tips, and (especially for basic things like using the printers) gently suggesting they try themselves first, with my support as needed. While it was always a concern that patrons might not feel adequately supported, most felt confident when they could perform tasks themselves, and reassured that I would be there if problems arose. That balance of support and self-sufficiency is, I believe, core to the librarian profession, especially where it intersects with research and education.

During my design and implementation of a new classification system at the Inuit Circumpolar Council Archives Library, an essential step was presenting the system to staff in an all-hands meeting, both to educate co-workers, and to gather feedback – especially from Inuk staff, given the nature of the system as an Indigenous-centric model.

This presentation, taking approximately 70 minutes, gave clear examples of books which might be found in each class, with lively discussion ensuing over where the boundaries between one class and another lie, and how to delineate them (e.g. Health vs. Environment for environmental pollutants). This discussion was key to building excitement for the upcoming implementation, and also a sense of collective responsibility for the system, so it would be seen as an ICC project rather than an imposition by a summer intern.

Following this, I drafted PDFs containing a step-by-step process for classifying and labeling books under my system, as well as policies for access to the library and for interlibrary loans. One tragic thing I found when researching prior implementations of Brian Deer-based systems, is that in multiple cases the project was the brainchild of one passionate librarian, and with their retirement came a full-scale reversion to Library of Congress, Dewey, or in one case to no classification at all. Just as at the front desk, providing the means for others to answer questions when you’re gone is what makes a library and its users resilient.