Technology skills: voluntary or mandatory?

This morning, I came across an interesting commentary about technology skills for library employees by David Lee King. The commentary was in response to a recent ALA article about the Library of Congress, where "200 employees had taken advantage of a voluntary retirement incentive for librarians who had become 'very comfortable' with traditional librarianship and chose not to gain new technological skills." David writes...

"I’ve been reading up on change management and thinking about how that affects technology change in libraries, and this example fits in well with what I’ve learned so far. Some people simply don’t want to change - they are comfortable with their jobs and their job duties, they might even think the way they do things is The Best Way to do them - so why in the world would they want to change?

I like the pro-active way the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County is dealing with technology change and training with their Learning 2.0 / 23 Things training program. But also - at some point - library managers might need to treat technology skills like any other skill - it’s part of your job, you need to do it or find another job. That seems harsh, but really… would you hire someone to do telephone reference if they had no phone skills, and refused to learn phone skills? Would you hire a cataloger if they couldn’t catalog and didn’t want to learn anything about AACR2? Probably not.

It should be the same with technology skills, which right now are changing pretty rapidly."

David mentions the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County’s (PLCMC) program of introducing Web 2.0 technology to their staff through a voluntary program called Learning 2.0.

I want to mention that PLCMC also insists on basic technology skills for their staff which they call “Core Competencies.” And, it’s imporant to note, those skills are required. You won’t see PLCMC’s core competency checklists out there on the web. This training program is housed snuggly on PLCMC’s Intranet, visible only to PLCMC staff. That being said, PLCMC’s Core Competencies training program is certainly relevant to other library systems.

The basic Core Competency training level (Level I) covers over a hundred everyone-must-know-this skills like, “Knows branch or department logins and passwords,” and “Can reply, forward, and delete an e-mail message,” plus troubleshooting skills like, “Can plug in and unplug a network cable and tell whether the terminator is firmly seated or broken.”

And the training levels progress. Level II covers technology skills specific to PLCMC’s cataloging software, plus application-specific skills like “Can create and edit tables in Word.” Short online tutorials for these skills are available if needed.

As of August 22, 2006, all PLCMC staff have completed Core Competencies levels I and II. There are five levels, each with required deadlines for completion, and training staff are available to help ensure that all employees are able — if they’re willing — to complete these checklists.

PLCMC staff are encouraged to explore new Web 2.0 technologies with the voluntary Learning 2.0 program. But all technology training isn’t voluntary. You must have the basics.
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