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 one of the library’s largest budget allocations–or most significant assets. As a result, leaders are missing critical data when negotiating for resources, planning strategic initiatives, reorganizing, or measuring the library’s impact and effectiveness. 

The service portfolios of libraries continue to grow as a result of emerging user needs. Few libraries can add new staff positions to meet every new expectation. As libraries primarily hire for critical new skill sets, existing staff must continuously develop and adapt their skills.

Developing a reskilling or hiring strategy to become a data-focused or AI-aware library is prone to error without understanding the current skills and interests among the staff and those being developed by peer libraries. 

The current method of analyzing skills or training needs is lengthy and cumbersome. Weeks might be spent identifying key skills, creating a survey, and then distributing it to staff. Once distributed, there’s the waiting period for staff responses, followed by an extensive analysis phase. This data then needs to be presented to leaders to aid decision-making. Throughout all these steps, ensuring the data is both accessible to the right personnel and securely stored is paramount. Moreover, conducting a one-time skill survey can be costly, sometimes reaching tens of thousands of dollars. The resulting data, often stored as a spreadsheet or presentation, may only be relevant for six months before it becomes outdated.

The solution

Standardized skills data is always at hand for strategic planning or daily management decisions, stored securely. With Skilltype’s Talent Audit, this data is automatically updated as new skills enter or leave your organization.

Skilltype’s access controls provide a global view of expertise for leaders, team-based views for managers, as well as directories and profiles that make skills data available to staff so they can find and benefit from internal expertise. 

Skilltype’s controlled vocabulary of library-specific skills, products, and job roles delivers relevant and actionable library insights. Libraries can now pinpoint the skills they possess, the skills staff wish to develop, and any existing skill gaps. Through Skilltype’s central index and recommendations, over 11,000 training materials are indexed to essential skills. These are then recommended to the appropriate individual based on their interests and the library’s requirements, ensuring skill gaps are addressed timely.

Skilltype customers can create group views of the Talent Audit for any service unit, department, or division to further model skills at the local level, drawing on the same set of organizational skills data. 

Identified gaps can be filled through training, internal recruitment, external hiring, cross-training, or collaborations with consortial partners.