Archives: Use Cases
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Connect with Other Professionals
The Problem Working in the average organization can be an isolating experience, especially as it relates to people who understand your job and your work. While the camaraderie of the office was something organizations could rely on in years past, hybrid and remote work makes it difficult to rely on in-person interactions throughout our workweek.…
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Assess Skill Interests Across Communities
The Problem Gauging the skill interests of a large group is invaluable for crafting content strategies. Yet, traditional interview techniques, surveys, and questionnaires often suffer from low engagement due to their demand on participants’ time. Even with high response rates, the collected data quickly becomes outdated, necessitating frequent, repetitive data-gathering cycles. For many organizations, maintaining…
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Keeping Track of Training Activity
The problem Professional development is ever-evolving, with a steady stream of conferences, workshops, and webinars continually emerging across various platforms. Keeping track of these educational opportunities is as crucial as it is cumbersome. Compounded by the varied formats of certification issuance by training providers. As a result, this makes tracking of training activity a daunting…
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Organizing Training into Topics and Themes
The problem In the realm of library staff development, the abundance of resources has never been greater. Yet, these valuable assets are often dispersed across various platforms, from organizational websites to training providers, making the comprehensive organization into coherent topics and themes a rare occurrence. This dispersion has led to a substantial challenge: the assembly…
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Prepare for Performance Reviews
The problem Performance reviews are an important opportunity within the talent development lifecycle to acknowledge individual performance and teamwork and set the stage for effectiveness in the next year. When properly executed, reviews build a foundation for staff retention and shaping the library leaders of tomorrow. Yet, when the narrative of an employee’s year—achievements, growth,…
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Share Expertise Across a Consortia or Network
The problem In today’s era, libraries are navigating a sea of novel challenges in their quest to serve their communities effectively. The shifting demands of patrons, coupled with the critical need to optimize staff deployment amidst shortages, have made it increasingly complex for libraries to maintain their service standards, let alone advance strategic projects, engage…
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Develop a Mentorship Program
The problem For those at the start of their library careers, success encompasses more than mastering the technical nuances of librarianship taught in academic programs. It includes learning to navigate the intricate dynamics of the workplace—a skill set not always covered in formal education. Moreover, with many in the field lacking a specialized degree in…
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Evaluate a Product Before Purchasing
The problem Scouring the internet for impartial reviews of library products or services can be daunting. The web is saturated with marketing material, often skewed and lacking an objective lens. Protective of their customer base, vendors tend to hold back their lists. Inadvertently this fosters a circuit of backchannels at listservs and conferences for information…
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Train People on a New Product
The problem Adopting new software products and adapting library workflows to new systems can be time-consuming for leaders, managers, and staff. Ensuring all employees have developed the new knowledge to complete their tasks with the new product efficiently is essential to sustaining impactful library services and operations. Vendors, training providers, and the library community have…
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Assess Current Needs to Prioritize Training Opportunities
The problem Many organizations have a budget set aside for training opportunities. Yet, few libraries can accurately assess training needs to ensure that funds are allocated toward the areas of greatest potential impact for short or long-term skill development. Given the comprehensive service portfolios of many library organizations, numerous competencies and tools are essential for…
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Establish Career Ladders and Pathways
The problem Great resignation data suggests that the top reason for employees resigning was not pay but lack of ability to climb career ladders and growth pathways within their organization. As the priorities of today’s library continue to evolve, it is easy for employees across the ranks to feel out of touch with how their…
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Deliver a Comprehensive Training Program
The problem Developing a comprehensive library training and development program that can advance the organization’s mission, vision, and local community context can be a complex endeavor for library and human resources leaders to meet organizational, staff, and community needs. Library service portfolios are both broad and deep. Consequently, many staff must provide high-quality information service…
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Align Staff Responsibilities With Evolving Stakeholder Needs
the PROBLEM The service portfolios of libraries continue to grow as a result of emerging user and stakeholder needs. Few libraries can add new staff positions to meet new expectations. Current staff will need to develop new skills, and libraries will need to hire for new skill sets they don’t already have. Without understanding current…
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Develop Committees or Communities of Practice
The problem When clearly scoped and staffed with the right people, committees and project teams provide organizations with efficient methods to distribute work while creating opportunities for staff to deepen collaboration skills. However, finding the experts with the right blend of relevant skills (technical, interpersonal, collections, or subject knowledge) to staff a new effort can…
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Align Employees to Organizational Priorities
The problem In today’s landscape, companies constantly introduce new digital tools, products, webinars, and training opportunities to the library community. Given this influx, it can be challenging. Libraries and staff often struggle to align their organizational strategies and hone key skills. When library departments reorganize to meet new user needs and make optimal use of…
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Increase Capacity in Key Areas
The problem While libraries have developed many metrics to measure the size, coverage, or usage of library collections that can be benchmarked within the industry, libraries have minimal data available to understand the skills and capabilities of the organization. When a new priority or initiative is needed to fulfill key stakeholder needs, such as engaging…
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Create a Learning Organization
The problem As a learning organization pivots to fully digitized service offerings, the journey toward sustainable change management presents new complexities. Onboarding employees now involves navigating their varying competencies amidst a tech landscape that never stands still. It’s an environment where roles evolve in real time, task execution shifts, and skill development must keep pace…
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Increase Access to Professional Development Opportunities
The problem Ongoing skill development is vital for library organizations. However, access to professional development opportunities can vary across branches, departments, or staff categories. This inconsistency may result from budgetary limitations, time constraints, or availability issues. Access to training is often linked to travel and workshops available a few times per year on the conference…
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Develop Skill Gaps Analysis
The problem Library leaders and managers need transparent and immediate access to staff expertise and skill gaps to make informed decisions. This information is fragmented across multiple systems, documents, meeting notes, and spreadsheets, making it inaccessible. Information is not standardized or ready for use when you can’t find it. Organization leaders have no visibility into…
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Create a Skills Map of Employee Capabilities
The problem Libraries are rapidly changing as people retire, services require new skills, and locations become hybrid. During periods of reorganization and strategic planning, prioritizing Identifying who is capable of doing what and who is interested in learning what is high. Most libraries lack the capacity to map skills across their organization, especially against a…
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Improve Morale
The problem Today’s workforce is evolving at a more rapid pace than the workplace, creating tension between employee expectations and the environment in which they work. Supervisors cannot change factors outside their control while struggling to support employees due to a lack of management training. Lack of management training is more acutely felt within libraries…
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Offboarding Current Employees
The problem Offboarding in libraries is often overlooked in the employee lifecycle, yet it plays a crucial role in maintaining an organization’s legacy. Each departing employee carries the potential to be a lifelong ambassador for the library. However, the current offboarding process is typically fragmented, spread across various emails, forms, and documents from supervisors, HR,…
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Onboarding New Employees
The problem Onboarding is more than just a formality – it’s the cornerstone of new staff’s effectiveness, engagement, and retention. Orienting new staff to the many documents, websites, procedures, and forms is a critical task. Yet, this crucial process often lacks consistency and structure, handled in an ad-hoc manner across various teams and departments. Few…
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Build Talent Pipeline
The problem Finding the right talent for libraries is like searching for a rare book. The moment a job is posted, the clock starts ticking to fill the role quickly and efficiently. Often, library managers find themselves in a queue, waiting to fill multiple positions without a ready talent pipeline. The challenge intensifies when HR…
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Identify Internal Expertise
The problem An organization’s information about the current skills, interests, and prior experience of the staff is fragmented across documents, HR systems, and spreadsheets. This makes it difficult for libraries to make system-wide plans about priorities. Nor can they identify staff with the expertise or best suited to respond to new needs from the user…