August Meeting Recap
Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great summer. Here are my notes from the last Lire meeting. This month, we discussed staff development and training.
First of all, Stephanie and I have decided to reformat the group to accommodate those who can’t travel. We are going to scale back to an every-other-month in-person learn-then-lunch (so many hyphens!) at Rockford University Library and also start a monthly “Lire Happy Hour” on Zoom. This will be an informal meeting where we can discuss issues happening in and around our libraries in a safe space with our best library friends. Invites will be somewhat private so that we can maintain a safe “Director’s Anonymous” vibe. That being said, if you don’t receive an email invite and would like one, don’t hesitate to reach out to ask for one or recommend a friend.
Our next Lire Learning meeting will be at Rockford University on October 2, at 10:30. This month's meeting will focus on artificial intelligence in libraries, from tools to help workflows to navigating conversations with your patrons. Please bring your ideas, concerns, favorite training resources, and relevant staff procedures/policies to the meeting.
As for the upcoming Lire Happy Hours, you can find the direct Zoom links for each meeting below:
Now, on to my notes from or meeting (finally).
Staff Development
How much and how often are you offering/requiring staff training?
All-staff, all day? Department by department while open? An hour before opening? Quarterly 9-12?
Consider creating a calendar to schedule required staff trainings for the year to make sure that everyone gets the meeting on their personal calendar well in advance.
Sending staff to conferences? PUG Day, Reaching Forward, ILA, ALA? Put these on the calendar ASAP.
Board buy-in: Get approval from the board to open late or stay closed all day for a staff development day. I used to include MLK Day on the list of holiday closures. Since patrons thought we might be closed anyway for the holiday, we didn’t have much pushback for being closed for staff training.
Are there things that need to be refreshed every year? CPR? BBP? AED? Narcan?
Short vs. Long format: Do you need more than an hour? Can you record a video (Clipchamp on Office 365 is nice) and send it out to staff instead of making everyone come in person? This method might work well for a procedural change that affects night/weekend staff.
If you already have board approval for a staff in-service, but you don’t have great ideas, consider conducting a staff survey to determine what they feel they need to learn.
Do you have an expectation for everyone to have some continuing education or participate in local networking groups? Or maybe just certain staff roles? Is it part of your annual evaluation process? Does staff know how to collect and report the staff development to you for their annual evaluation?
*Barb shared that she offers a merit raise for a continuing education goal at her staffs’ annual evaluations. If they want to learn new things and network, then they get an extra percentage raise. If not, they don’t have to.
Orientations
Office365 Planner: Search for Planner in the Office365 apps. It allows you to create To Do lists, and assign projects to your team. It also has a template for staff orientation that I could see working really well in a library. You can add tasks, and assign staff members to individual tasks, check up on the status of the new person’s onboarding. Once you create a template, then you can duplicate it as much as you need to.
Prairiecat members: Don’t sleep on TalentLMS! There are tons of trainings for Sierra. I think it might be a good “week 2” assignment so they might retain 50% of what they learn. Those first weeks are so overwhelming!
Follow up after a week or two – schedule a meeting so they can go over things with their trainer that didn’t stick.
Continuing Education for You and Staff
RAILS Continuing Education | Reaching Across Illinois Library System
Sep 24, 2025: Up or Out: Getting Employees Back on Track - 1:00pm
DU on Demand:
Succession Planning Details/Watch
Strategic Planning for Any Library Details/Watch
Illinois Library Systems Details/Watch
ATLAS Libraries - Continuing Education
Admittedly, these last two organizations typically cater to large suburban public libraries. Still, you could scope out their events to see if there might be a speaker who could come to your staff training event. If the presenter you want is out of your price range, ask a neighboring library to split the cost. Or maybe the presenter would split their time and present at your library in the morning and the neighbor library in the afternoon.
Do you know someone who might be a dynamic speaker on a given topic? ASK YOUR FRIENDS. Make sure to pay them a few hundred dollars + mileage for the work.
I am not a great note-taker, so there are tons of ideas that we shared that I forgot to write down. Thank you to everyone who came to the meeting and shared their ideas. I’m looking forward to our next meeting! Happy Fall y’all!