Mentoring is BLIS at Brampton Public Library: new training initiatives

[1328] Mentoring is BLIS at Brampton Public Library: new training initiatives

Adele Kostiak, CEO and Tanya Taylor, Human Resources Advisor talked about four staffing initiatives.

The Mentoring Connection – voluntary internal mentoring connection – for new hires or new in position, to aid advancement and succession planning, to increase staff morale and job satisfaction. Mentors and mentees apply to program, indicating expertise/needs and preferences; mentoring team matches up; M&M meet biweekly for 4 months (new hires) or 2 months (new position); complete program evaluation forms. HR reviews evaluation & adjusts program. Annual Mentor Recognition.
Positive impacts on Mentor, Mentee, Organization.

Challenges: small mentor pool, especially for “staff level” mentors, mentor identification.

BLIS = Brampton Library Information Services Training Initiative – in-house Library Technician training in partnership with Mohawk College.
Developed in anticipation of RFID (job displacement for circulation clerks) and new branch expansion (need for more Information Service workers). Picked 10 of 26 courses needed for LIT Diploma; offered in-house (at BPL) by Mohawk College instructor; 36 or 39 hours per course, 3 in-class hours a week. Will take 3 years to complete the 10 courses. Staff attend on own time, get 75% of tuition refunded if pass
Staff had to meet Mohawk entrance requirement à English proficiency exam.

Manager-in-Training Program – competency-based, fast-track (4 month) management training program.
Geared to new hires or internal promotions; biweekly meetings, peer mentors
Target Competencies = Leadership, Human Resources, Branch Operations, Perfomance Management, Facilities Management, Communications
Structured, consistent training plan & delivery ensures nothing is missed
Improves staff morale and retention.

Succession Planning
Between retirements and new branch building, BPL faces a shortage of managers, branch managers, coordinators and CEO.
Identified 3 core succession candidate competencies:
§ initiative
§ leadership
§ potential
Succession Planning Team (CEO, Manager Customer Service, Manager Corporate Service and HR Advisor) meets every six months; discuss organizational needs, create and update Key Position Profiles, identify potential candidates, review candidate Talent Inventory Profiles (readiness and competency ratings on the core competencies), develop training and development activities tailored to candidate needs, e.g. temporary assignments, technical training, mentoring, committee/team participation, etc.

For RWL: some good models here: mentoring is most applicable, right away. Note that BPL allocates 1% of its salary budget to staff training.

Grounding the Vision: future plans for Knowledge Ontario

[1204] Grounding the Vision: future plans for Knowledge Ontario
David Thornley, Executive Director and Peter Rogers, Board Chair, updated on Knowledge Ontario projects and future directions.

ResourceOntario: several new databases have been added:
Gale: Student Resource Centre – Canadian edition
More titles in the Virtual Reference Library
Ebsco: Auto Repair Reference Manual
Canadian Points of View
-- say goodbye to Canadian Reference Centre
Rosen: Teen Health and Wellness – will be adapated to add Canadian content
Career Cruising – bilingual career and post-secondary education database
CEDROM SNi – Actualite Francophone Plus: French language current affairs resources

LearnOntario – formerly Teach Ontario.
Diane Bedard, formerly with Essex County Catholic School Board, former OLITA chair, award winner, has joined as Project Lead. (Great news!)

Province-wide licensing for Atomic Learning movies has been arranged. These are very cool – they break software down into small lesson bits: files are small enough to be downloaded via dialup. A pilot group of 500 teachers started using these tutorials on January 29. Phase 2, involving 1500 more pilot users in college, university and public libraries, will run September to December. Volunteers are wanted!

OurOntario
Version 2.2 of the OurOntario portal was released at OLA Super Conference 2009. Highlights include:

• a “did you mean?” feature;
• the ability to view search results in other applications such as Google Earth;
• now users can browse collections held at other institutions.
  Over 200 contributors (collections) already, constantly adding more.

Plans for 2008-2009: Extend and enhance discovery options by adding the ability to access data via podcasts, RSS/Atom feeds, bookmarkable search results, and integrate use of KML data for mapping in alternate applications.

AskOntario
Expanded service: askON/ONdemande is

• accessible via 36 public and post-secondary library websites.
• available through public libraries 40 hours a week,
• 62 hours a weekthrough colleges and universities
• 25 hours a week in French, thanks to participation of Ottawa PL.
  

4ReSrch, delivered in partnership with TVOntario’s Ask-a-Teacher service,
offers live homework help by providing teacher-librarians to assist Ontario’s
secondary students with curriculum-based research projects and assignments.

ConnectOntario
Will move from the pilot phase of the BiblioCommons Online Public Access Catalogue, at Oakville PL, to implement system in at least 12 to 15 early adopter public libraries.
Will announce in early February which libraries will go first, April-June; all others will migrate June-December 2009.

Knowledge Ontario, the parent organization itself, developed a project management framework, with consistent decision-making processes, roles and responsibilities, reporting standards, across the organization. 2007-2008 Annual Report lists a lot of accomplishments!
Big challenge for 2008-2009 is securing stable ongoing funding.

For RWL: Use and promote the new databases. Volunteer to be a LearnOntario pilot tester (this could be an alternate way to deliver computer literacy classes). Wait for the Bibliocommons announcement!

Who are these people? And why aren't they using our library?

Friday January 30, 2009
[1025] Who are these people and Why aren’t they using my library?
Don Mills, CEO, Mississauga PL, Rupen Seoni, VP, Environics Analytics
Don.Mills@mississauga.ca, Rupen.Seoni@environics.ca
discussed ways to find out why people aren’t using their public library.

Goal = we want to be relevant to the greatest number of our service area residents.
Tool = Geodemography
-->add neighbourhood level demographic information to library’s client data

Library Client Data

• limited demographics (age, gender)
• transaction data
• postal code and city/town information

PLUS

Environics Neighbourhood Data

• much more demographic info (from census)
• growth trends
• lifestyle segmentation
• social values
• purchase behaviour
• media use

= GeoDemography

Benefits: Adding Environics’ demographic and social values data to library’s information about its existing clients, and the neighbourhoods where they live allows the library to see
- what it does well, i.e. where it already has lots of members
- what it does not do, i.e. where it has few or no members
- what it does not do well, neighbourhoods where its actual membership is much lower than potential membership, based on patterns in other areas

The Process: Environics used demographic, social value and urbanity (i.e. urban, suburban, rural etc) data to come up with 66 consumer segments – e.g. grey power, mini vans and vin rouge, newcomers rising, big sky families.
These segments are used – mostly by commercial enterprises – to understand and target lifestyles, purchase preferences, media use, mindsets/motivators. But can be used by non-profits and public sector organizations, too.
Each neighbourhood (i.e. census dissemination area) is described in terms of the consumer segments which are dominant.

MPL partnered with Recreation Services, to share costs – had similar goals.
MPL worked with 12 segments, dropped ones with very few members

MPL looked at which segments had the highest membership rate:
South Asian Society (suburban upscale ethnic) 54.2% have MPL cards
Blue-Collar Comfort (exurban midscale) 51.6% have MPL cards
Asian Influence (suburban upscale ethnic) 51.1% have MPL cards

Highest non-membership rates were in
Cluttered Nests (urban upscale ethnic) only 40.3% had cards
Grey Pride (suburban midscale) 37.5% had cards
New Italy (urban upscale ethnic) 30.8% had cards

For Non-Users

Summarized the demographic characteristics of non-user clusters:
• Empty-nesters and older families
• Below-average incomes
• Mixed houses and apartments
• Below-average presence of immigrants; Southern European where present

Summarized the social characteristics of non-user clusters:
• Emotion, Intuition & Connection
• Looking for emotional experiences; trust their intuition
• Seek to connect with others; connected to the world at large
• Conflicted about work
• Enjoy their careers, but want to spend time on other things
• Low need for control and creativity
• Paternalistic towards children

Looked at BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement) info about non-user segments, to get ideas about which channels they listened to, what events they patronized – in other words, where & how best to reach them.

All these give ideas about how to reach non-users.
Follow up with focus groups, based on postal code, to investigate these ideas.

For users: look at geodemographic info to get ideas about new services they might like.

Potential vs Actual
PRIZM profile of library members shows “expected” or average rate of membership for that cluster
Next, look at neighbourhoods with that cluster, and see if they are above, below or at expected rate of membership

For RWL : very exciting prospects, a way to discover if there are potential users of online services in our “neighbourhoods”. Could perhaps partner with other Regional departments, or Township recreation departments?

Project Conifer: Open Source ILS

Thursday January 29, 2009
[614] Project Conifer: Evergreen Library System for Ontario Universities
John Fink, McMaster and Dan Scott, Laurentian University

For me, this was a nice followup from the 2007 Digital Odyssey (http://odyssey2007.wordpress.com/ ) where I first heard about Open Source Integrated Library Systems, namely the [State of] Georgia Pines Consortium’s Evergreen Project. At that time, Art Ryhno from University of Windsor, and Dan Scott from Laurentian University were writing an Acquisitions module to go with the circulation and OPAC modules already available from Evergreen/ PINES.

Project Conifer has since added Northern Ontario School of Medicine, McMaster and Algoma Universities, and is projecting a May 2009 live date.
Lessons learned so far:
- it’s not cheap
- Return On Investment is the carrot: you get exactly what you want, you control the programming
- it’s hard to find contractors to write the code for you
- get cost-sharing processes and decision-making processes nailed down early
- pay someone to sample and set up a test database early in the process

Other Open Source ILS projects:
University of Prince Edward Island went live with Evergreen May 2008
Project Sitka: 15 BC Public Libraries. Prince Rupert PL went live November 2007, the 13th, Salmo PL, went live January 20 2009. http://sitka.bclibraries.ca/
Michigan Library Consortium (600 member libraries): 4 pilot project sites live November 2008. http://www.mlcnet.org/evergreen/?m=200811
Tsuga: Innifsil Public Library “quietly launched” its Evergreen ILS October 2008 http://www.innisfil.library.on.ca/tsuga/
Saugeen Library Consortium: six Grey, Dufferin and Perth libraries are developing an ILS using KOHA 3. http://www.koha.org/
Good background article on Open Source ILS in Art Ryhno’s blog: http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/691/657

For RWL: Open Source ILS bears watching – unless or until SirsiDynix becomes more responsive to the Ontario Library Consortium. OLC has already worked through a lot of the process issues facing Project Conifer, but would likely also have problems hiring programmers. Note that Innisfil has a couple of programmers on staff or close at hand ….

Research on Effective Advocacy

Thursday January 29, 2009

[407] Research on Effective Advocacy
Ken Haycock (Director, San Jose School of Library and Information Studies) described advocacy techniques that have been proven to bring positive results i.e. more funds.

He drew substantially on the July 2008 OCLC report: From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America http://www.oclc.org/reports/funding/

• library use has nothing to do with support. Non-users are often bigger supporters
• believing that libraries transform lives is related to support
• perceptions of librarians are highly relevant to support
  - are they seen as experts, contributing to community, focused, flexible, friendly, fun?
• Advocacy messages that reposition the library are effective in gaining support.

Instead of… Source of information (library is one source in very crowded field of providers)

Reposition as… Agent of transformation – something that changes lives

Instead of… A valuable institution

Reposition as… A vital part of community infrastructure

Instead of… Nice to have
Reposition as… A necessity… for access to technology, to bridge the digital divide

Instead of… Important part of people’s past
Reposition as… Provides services & infrastructure for the future

Instead of… Altruism for others – good for other people in the community
Reposition as… WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? ROI: Return on Investment – for me

Successful advocacy work needs

• connectors (former CEOs, board members who built up relationships with decision makers) to open doors,
• mavens (e.g. current CEOs, staff) trusted experts,
• salespersons (not staff and not librarians: “recognize the curse of knowledge”) to deliver message

Ken and Wendy Newman are compiling this research into a book, to be published by Greenwood Press in 2009.

For RWL: invite Wendy Newman (or another advocacy expert) to give advocacy training to supervisors & managers, to help clarify expectations about community contact role

C3: Replacing Dewey for better merchandising and customer service

THURSDAY January 29, 2009
[316] C3: Replacing Dewey for better merchandising and customer service
Markham Public Library’s newest branch, Markham Village, is totally customer centred – with merchandising displays (power walls like you see in Chapters, face front displays, media cascades in bins for easy browsing) and everything grouped in categories that make sense to customers, e.g. Food and Drink instead of Adult Non-fiction Collection, and four-letter call numbers vs. long Dewey numbers.

Compare the classification of the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook at Markham Village and the other MPL branches:
Markham Village Library Food & Drink FD 4197 VEG 2005
Angus Glen Library Adult Non-fiction Collection 641.5636 VEG 2005

C3 (Customer Centred Classification) was invented by Amy Caughlin (now CEO of Scugog Public Library) in the middle of moving into the new branch last summer. Categories were determined by talking to customers. The numbers (e.g. 4197 = vegetarian 4080= baking) are completely arbitrary.

Customers love the shorter numbers. Shelving time is cut by 75%. Cataloguers have to add the C3 code, but say it’s easy to do. MPL plans to extend C3 to Children’s materials at Markham Village, and then to adult Non-fiction at other branches.

All MPL branches merchandise their collections – i.e. group them into customer-pleasing displays. Dewey presents challenges: either you stick the gardening and landscaping books in different displays (not helpful for the customers) or you give up on Dewey-order shelving.

For RWL, I like the idea of merchandising into customer (or patron!) friendly groupings. I don’t think we need to invent C3, because our collections and branches are so much smaller.

OLA SuperConference 2009

I will post my notes about most of the the sessions I attended on my blog.