Having watched Helene Blowers' webinar Learning 2.0 : Make "play" your New Year's resolution on the SirsiDynixInstitute as a sort-of "assignment" for a committee I am on, I was very excited to realize that she would be presenting at NJLA!

That webinar introduced me to the Learning 2.0 program she created for the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, which was a great success and has been duplicated (freely, as kindly made available for the taking by Ms. Blowers) in many places. In two seperate sessions at the conference, Ms. Blowers presented Core Competencies and Core Values in the Era of Library 2.0 and also Discovering Library 2.0.

It sounds to me like Helene Blowers has a fantastic job: Technology Director! And I am sure that working for or with her must be a lot of fun - afterall this is the woman who says,

"...librarians really do need to adopt a “continuous play strategy” in order to keep their skills and knowledge fresh."

CORE COMPETENCIES, CORE VALUES IN THE ERA OF LIBRARY 2.0

I think the important "take-aways" here are:

- A big change, or "technology wave," has already occurred - it's happened and now we need to provide staff with some development programs to give them the ability to cope
- This staff development must be a continuous process since new employees come in
- Start with the basics and build from there, i.e., using e-mail, the intranet, printing, saving, etc.
- Make the training system-wide so everyone knows this is a really important initiative with support from the "higher-ups;" it is a priority
- If you put technology in, you should "build-in" a component for getting staff comfortable with it
- Enable and empower employees by educating them in these ways!

Take a look at the slides to see the staff development system that was implemented (and very successful!) at PLCMC. Libraries have core competencies for many things, but we need one for technology too. Maybe you can adopt this model for your library.

DISCOVERING LIBRARY 2.0

Helene Blowers created a Learning 2.0 program for the staff at PLCMC with the goal of giving staff exposure to (not neccesarily mastery over) these new Web 2.0 tools.

The focus was EXPOSING staff to new tools; ENCOURAGING play; EMPOWERING individuals; EXPANDING their knowledge toolbox; and ELIMINATING fear.

She created a list of "23 Things" for the staff to do to give them exposure to tools such as blogging, photo-sharing, rss feeds, tagging, and maybe most importantly, how to become life-long learners so that they develop methods for keeping themselves "in the loop" as more new things come down the road at them.

The driving force behind this approach is to develop an effective way of motivating and guiding self-paced actitivies so you get the most bang for your training buck!

Take a look at the slides from this presentation and yes, you can "steal this program" and try it in your own library!