 Hello everyone, and welcome. I'm Brenda Haug, and I'll be facilitating today's session, TechSavvy Staff, Better Service for Library Users. We're glad you're here with us. Before we get started with the content, I'll tell you about the technology we're using today. All audio lines are muted except for the presenters, but please use that chat at any time and use that to ask questions, use it to share resources, share ideas. Use the chat at any time. A little bit of troubleshooting advice, if something happens and your screen locks up or something fluky happens with your screen, usually the quickest way to fix that is just to close out and then go back to that email you received with registration information and come back into the room. And usually that will fix any issues that you're having. Most of you are hearing your audio through your computer, but if you did phone in, same thing, if you lose that phone connection most of the time if you just dial into the number again that will take care of things. This session today is being recorded and a link to the recording will be available on the TechSoup website. And there are other past presentations there too. Later today we'll send out an email and in that email we'll include the slides that are part of this presentation. We'll include a link to the recording. And then also any websites or resources that are mentioned today will include a link to those too. So don't worry about scrambling to write down website addresses. We'll send those out in a follow-up message. And if you're on Twitter tweeting about this, the hashtag is just TechSoup. So with that let's dive into our content. Again today we're talking about TechSavvy staff, Better Service for Library Users. We're going to have a couple of special guest presenters today. We have Penny Talbert here. And Penny is Director of the Effort of Public Library in Pennsylvania. And she is passionate about transliteracy. And that's a term that we'll be discussing during today's session. And presenting with her is Stephanie Zimmerman who is Training and Development Coordinator for the Library System of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. And she is passionate about emerging technologies. So this is a great match with Penny's interest in transliteracy and Stephanie's interest in emerging technologies. And that will be the basis of their presentation today. A couple of things on our agenda. I'm going to quickly talk about TechSoup, TechSuper Libraries, and the Edge benchmarks. This webinar that we're doing today is part of a series of webinars that we're doing around the Edge benchmarks. And I'll talk more about what those are. We have time set aside at the end for questions and answers, but again feel free to use the chat to ask those questions at any time. And we'll be tracking them and then we'll ask questions throughout. So let's go ahead and get started with talking about TechSoup. TechSoup is a 501C3 nonprofit organization. And as you can see on the second bullet in that slide, one of the big things TechSoup does is distribute technology donations. And those include donations from partners like Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Symantec, and more. And libraries qualify for many of them. So in today's follow-up message we'll include a link so you can check that out too if that's something that you're not familiar with. And then TechSoup for Libraries is a special section of TechSoup that is focused on the needs of libraries. And it includes info on the Tech Donation Program, some spotlight articles that feature Tech success stories from libraries around the country, blog posts related to libraries and technology, and more. So we'll include a link to that in the follow-up message too. I mentioned that today's session is one of a series of webinars focused on the EDGE benchmarks. And these benchmarks are being developed by the EDGE Initiative which is a coalition of organizations working together to develop public access technology benchmarks for public libraries. It includes the Public Library Association, Web Junction, TechSoup, several state libraries, and more organizations. And the benchmarks we're focusing on today is this one. Libraries have sufficient staff with technology expertise to help patrons achieve their goals. And that's what today's session on TechSabby staff is all about, is achieving that benchmark. So again, we have two special guests with us today, Penny Talbert and Stephanie Zimmerman. And Penny and Stephanie, I'll let you take over from this point and welcome everyone. Well hello, and welcome. I see some very familiar names in the participants. So hi everybody. This is Penny speaking. And I wanted to just tell you a little bit about what we're doing at my library as far as technology competencies go. And we are in our second, we just finished our second round of testing. So let's get started if I can get there we go. First of all, the rationale for this is really in order to provide excellent service to your patrons. All of your library staff must have a skill set to assist patrons. And that's just not the folks working the desk. It's everybody because if, I mean I'm sure that all of you understand this, if you're walking to the bathroom somebody may stop you and ask you a question and you have to be able to answer those questions. In order for libraries to remain relevant they must be the technological hub of your community. And I think that is very important because if you are recognized for that the funding will follow. And as we talked about transliteracy, transliteracy for public libraries means you are relevant. And you are relevant to your business community, you're relevant to your government, you're relevant to your regular patrons. And those things are very important and as we've moved along with these competencies that's what we've really found. And I will tell you, I can't tell you for sure, but we have seen a doubling of our donations in the past year. Oddly enough the same amount of time that we've been doing competency training. So whether or not there's a relation I can't tell you for sure, but I think that there probably is. Okay, the poll, Brenda, are you doing this? Sure, yes. So people should be seeing it now just asking about are you familiar with this term transliteracy? So if you weigh in there and we'll give people a few minutes to do that and see how familiar people are with that term. And this is Stephanie Zimmerman from Library System Lancaster County. And I just wanted to interject here if I could that if you're not familiar with that term, Bobby Newman has a wonderful website. The link will be in the follow-up after this webinar to their website that she did with Bustie Hamilton and some other people that has great information on it and a great little slide share presentation that's really quick that can really help you understand what transliteracy is. And also when we go back to the LibGuides you'll see there's a video on transliteracy that you can share with your staff to try to help them understand what it is and why it's important. Okay, well it looks like most everyone has weighed in and a lot of people who are not familiar with that term, some who are somewhat and then a few who are very familiar. So good ones for you to be introducing to us. Thank you. Well the fact of the matter is that you all know what transliteracy is. You just don't know what the word, you've never heard the word. Yikes. There we go. So transliteracy defining it today is great, but in two weeks it'll probably have a different definition or at least a more in-depth definition because it's constantly changing. When I started the transliteracy training with our staff it was one thing and now we're more than a year through it and so many more things have been added. And that's why doing staff competencies, you just can't do it one time and be done with it and say, oh everybody knows what they're doing now because it changes as you add new services. What it is not, it is not Web 2.0 which I think is almost an antiquated term at this point, but really the concept is mapping meaning across different media. So you're offering an opportunity to give different, and it's not just, it's learning styles. So not only are you creating this environment of learning, but you're also presenting it in different ways to increase understanding for, in this case, your patrons. So we're going to be talking a lot about lib guides. So let's go to this poll and see if anyone's going to know what I'm talking about. So are you familiar with lib guides? I don't know if Penny's going to share this, but she got trained by our state if I remember correctly and brought that to our area and other areas across Pennsylvania and it is a phenomenal tool. So if you don't know about it, you probably will want to check it out after she shows you the beauty of it today. What along with, she'll be discussing other tools also, but we thank you Penny for bringing it here. And just as kind of a selling point here for Commonwealth Libraries in Pennsylvania, if you are located in Pennsylvania, I am still doing the training for that. I do it for free. So if your library system or your library is interested in offering lib guides, you can always contact me and with the training you get a free year subscription for your library. So there's a thought if you think this is really cool, it's an opportunity for you to get to try it out. And it is really not that expensive of an option when you see what it does. So it looks like we have a lot of folks who haven't heard of it. And that's okay. I'm going to go here. This is the URL for our particular lib guide on competencies. And this is the launch pad for all of our staff and what they do. And we'll go back and look at this in a little bit, but I want to talk to you about if you want to start a competency program how you're going to do this, because it's just not, oh here's a website, let's go. There's a lot of prep work involved and you have to follow it through. So the first thing, and as librarians I'm sure we love creating plans, you have to really create a plan and you have to have buy-in. Most importantly, you have to have buy-in from your board because it is a time-intensive program if you really want to do it right. And you have to come up with what is going to be the result if my staff cannot successfully complete the competency training. And it's a hard question to ask because are you going to say like in our case we give competency testing once a year and if they don't achieve a certain level, an 80% or an 85% or whatever, they are no longer employed with the library. And while that seems pretty harsh, do you really want to have somebody serving your patrons that doesn't know how to use technology? And so it's a conversation you have to have with your board because you may have to make tough decisions. Competencies are a part of our strategic plan. If you really want to do it, it has to be part of your strategic plan because it is something that you develop and you keep going with it. It's not something that you say for the next six months we're going to be doing competencies and then we're done. Because as we know there's constantly new technologies being introduced and libraries are the place where people are coming to learn how to use them. It should also be a part of every job description in your library. So even if it's someone who doesn't work the circulation desk, they should know how to complete the competencies and how to do these things. We are not asking them to figure out how to network a building. It is things that you need to use. I'm not going to say every day, but probably every other week these things will come up at your library and people have to know how to use them. Now I do want to throw in here right now that if you have questions, feel free to ask them. And somebody out there is recording them and will let me know. And I will answer them as we go through if you do have questions that are relevant now. After you decide how you're going to do this plan you really have to look at how you're going to deliver your content. Because this is content intensive and you really have to again make sure that you're accommodating all different kinds of learning styles. Because if you have somebody who just cannot just sit and read full text, you have to have some alternatives for them if you really want them to learn. Your job as putting together these competencies is really to teach people. And you have to make it as easy as possible because you're probably going to have a little problem initially with staff buy-in. And if it's difficult for them to do, it's going to be real difficult for you to put it through. So make sure that whatever you choose is adaptable because you're going to have changes. And some of them are going to be technological and some of them are going to be ones that are just a product of these services you might be offering. So make sure that you have the correct delivery vehicle. In our case, we really loved LiveGuides. But there are other ones out there. There are Wikis. There's LiveBlinders. There's all kinds of delivery methods out there that don't require you to be perfect at HTML or anything like that. And because you are doing technical competencies, please, please, please do not hand out a paper manual. It makes absolutely no sense. Sorry, I had to say please. Yeah, I mean absolutely. And Stephanie, please just jump in whenever you have anything that you want to add to this. Stephanie has kind of been my cheerleader as I developed this program. And I run everything by her. And she gets the exam before anybody else to make sure that I'm being completely fair. And I would recommend that you have somebody like that that is really technologically savvy because we all make mistakes. What you don't want to do is make a mistake that would affect the employment of any of your staff. So creating the competencies. This is one of the things that I literally sat in the front of the desk and just listened to what patrons needed. More importantly, what the staff couldn't answer. And that's the first step. One of the things that I discovered initially which absolutely horrified me was that there were some folks on staff that did not know how to send an email attachment. And patrons were coming up from the public computers asking for help. And the people behind the desk couldn't help them. So you have to start basic and look at what are people asking. And then talk to your stakeholders. Find out from the folks in your community what do they need beyond the basics. So if your business community is saying that they really want to have the use of business databases and you don't have people and staff that know how to use it, how are you going to promote that service? I mean you can't very well say, well we have this great database but you're going to have to figure it out on your own. That's not service. And it's certainly not exceptional service. And that's really what you're going for is exceptional service. Can I just introduce one thing there on the last slide too, as Penny has the advantage of being in a library and seeing it live. I'm in our system office where I help the 14 member libraries in our area. So I have time to take in all these websites and I'm bookmarking things over the years. So if you need any help developing competencies, I'm putting a link in the chat right now of different competency sites. I can't say enough about the Web Junction site of competency index for the library field. It's great if you're starting from scratch place to start. And you can hone in on the technological competencies to start with if you need to. And then you can branch out into leadership if you can go crazy with these things. So there's so much that's already been done. Don't start it from scratch. No, absolutely not. And Penny is right there in the live environment. So I've learned so much from her LibGuide and all that they deal with there to help me in the training that I provide. So there you go. And please know if you decide you want to do this with your staff and you decide you want to do it through LibGuides, I will give you permission to literally copy my entire LibGuide onto your account and then you can make changes to it. So it'll save you a lot of time. And that's what's been beautiful here in our library system is that Penny is sharing this with anyone at this point. But she started just internally here with the other libraries in our system and it was just so seamless. They took it and made it their own. And I was available also to help them if they needed help using the LibGuides too. So it's just been great to not reinvent the wheels. We don't have time for that. It's very true. Why would you bother when I've already done it? So in year one, and you really need a timeline for this if you're going to cover all your bases. The first thing I did was introduce the ideas, the idea of competencies and make the argument for why it's important. And so I went first to the board. We then included it in the strategic plan, staff manuals, job descriptions and then introduced it to the staff. I am telling you upfront, when you introduce this to the staff, they will panic because it's new and it's a change. And when you use the word requirement, it scares everyone. Expect that. Just expect it. And when they hear and everybody can do whatever they want from this, but we were taking such a stance on it. When they hear that if you do not pass this exam, you no longer have a job. It's scary. But after they were done with the exams and the first year everyone passed, they were like, oh, that wasn't so bad and I learned so much. But the initial introduction was very scary. The next thing we did was a competency skills pre-survey because I didn't want to offer training and things they already knew, but I didn't want to make any assumptions that they knew things I thought they did. I needed to really find out where they were. And if this is something that you are interested in doing, you are welcome to use mine. I can turn it over to you. I just saw a question about how large my library is. I serve 30,000 people. I would say that's a pretty small library actually. We have about 27 people and staff, but that also includes passport agents. So we have three passport agents that don't actually work in the library. So medium-sized library. The next step was 23 things. And I created my own version of 23 things that were specific to the resources that our library provided. They are also on the LibGuide, Steal them, it's fine. Then we plan an in-service day. And before the in-service we did a pre-in-service survey so that we would again cover the things they needed but not go over things that they already knew. And that was pretty extensive. After the survey was done, the trainers all got together and looked at what we needed to teach. So for instance, Stephanie did Windows 8. And did you want to make a comment about that Stephanie and what the experience was like as you went through that in-service day? I think the whole thing that was so great about this is they were panicked. I go out and do trainings too. And I would hear things like, I can't believe we have to do this and I'm nervous. But Penny and her management staff made everything available to them that they needed to get to the skill level they needed to get to. So it wasn't just, here's what you need to know. Now go figure it all out. And I'm sure she's going to show all this so I won't talk too much about that. But then they had a day, a full day where they got hands-on and person-to-person experience also with different breakout sessions. So if they weren't real good self-learners then they had a day they could take it all in that way too if doing the online modules weren't quite cutting it. So it was great to be there and have an entire staff that knew what was on the line. But it was a wonderful experience. It's one of my favorite experiences I've had here on the job is just having all these people, they're very attentive. Their jobs are on the line and it's not do or die here. But they knew the seriousness of it and they were all on board. And I think that's what this whole process did is it wasn't a scare tactic. It was, hey, I have resources. I can learn this. I have people here that are going to help me. So if they were willing to do what needed to be done, it wasn't a hard deal to get there. So to be a part of that was great. The day was wonderful. And I showed them the latest and greatest in Windows 7 and some things about searching in our O-Pack. And then Penny and her crew had all these other breakout sessions and then they had things particular just to their library. I'll tell you what, those people can answer the questions when people come in the door like I've never seen. It's just very, very well done. I am the cheerleader. Sorry, I'm going to keep doing it. So then, Brenda, would this be a good point for a couple of questions we've received? Absolutely. Okay. Some questions about if this applies to all staff levels, our pages, or the shelvers are they tested to? And then also a question about volunteers. And if you use volunteers in the library, do they need to pass the test? Okay. We do not use volunteers behind the desk. So they would not have to pass the competencies. However, I have worked with some libraries now that do different competencies for different departments. And I am now in the process of developing competencies for our program, our public program team. They do, they take the competency exam for the desk, but they will also have additional competencies for their jobs. So it can really be broken out. Stephanie and I are working with a library right now that is very departmentalized. And they are doing competencies for kind of each department. So it's up to you. I mean this isn't, this is just what worked for us, but you can do what you feel is necessary. I just had a library contact me about kind of a training program and live guides for shelvers. And that's something that you can do. So it's your library, it's your program, you do what you want to do. Is there another question that you had, Barbara? Let's see. There was a question about a union environment. And Stephanie Zimmerman weighed in and said, you are not in a union environment. So someone wondering if, if you know of any libraries who have done this, having the minimum score, that kind of thing, if you know of anyone who has done this in a union environment. I do not. And probably the reason I don't is because we don't have a lot of, we don't have very many union libraries around here. So maybe if anyone has experience with that, if you could share with us in the chat, then that will, maybe if you have a resource or if you have any experience with that, go ahead and share in the chat. Okay, well I'll turn it back over to you and we'll just keep tracking questions as they come in. Thanks everyone for asking such a great question. After the in-service, we did a post-survey to make sure that the training was effective. In our case, it was very effective. When I looked at the pre-surveys, I was just like, oh my word, half these people think Amazon is a search engine. And the post-survey proved that we had done what we needed to do with that in-service. And it was a lot of planning, but again, I have all that stuff done. I have all the PowerPoints. I have everything. So if this is something you're considering for your library, again, don't reinvent the wheel. Feel free to contact me and I can share a folder with you in Dropbox with all of that stuff. The next thing that we did as a group was an online book discussion about working with patrons and customer service. And each week we read a chapter and then there was an online question that everybody answered. And just so you know, all of this was tracked and employees were required to do these things. However, they were also paid for their time. So it was part of their job to go through this. After all of these things, then came the competency exam. And we did a demonstrative exam and a written exam. So the demonstrative exam, like we sat down with them one-on-one and you know, connect the wireless to, or connect the computer to the wireless network. You know, tasks in Word and Excel and PowerPoint. Things that patrons using the public computers would come up and ask. Nothing terribly difficult, but things that they would need to know. How to download e-audiobooks, how to download e-books. All of those things were included in the first competency exam. And because it was new and because I understood that there was a lot of nervousness and anxiety involved with it, anything over an 80% was appropriate for me and would be passing for the first year. And like I said, everyone passed. So that was like, whew, finally, kind of the success at the end. We've realized that we had really given them the training that they needed. Okay, so year two, that's where we are now. We developed an employee learning and growth program. So I don't know how it is in other states, but in Pennsylvania there's a minimum number of continuing education credits that some library staff have to take. For us, if they're under 20 hours, they don't have to take any. But what we did was we increased the CEA requirements. And in some cases we doubled or tripled them. We added additional competencies where new services were being added and we also went to a more advanced level on some of the programs that we were offering. And then we just, last week, we did the second round of competency exams and we upped the score to 85%. Now that's where it will stay because I'm not expecting anyone to be perfect. But that's kind of where, this is where we just finished. And I do have the employee learning and growth program on the LibGuide, so you know, steal it, I don't care. Okay, questions? Let's see, how many questions are on the exam or how long on average does it take someone to complete the exam? Okay, the demonstrative part of the exam was 30 questions. And some of those were like two or three parters, so you know, go to the place where you would download e-audio books. Is this book available? If so, download it, those kinds of things. And we also included in those demonstrative exams our other delivery devices, so the Kindle Fire, the Kindle, and iPod, because people are coming in and saying, how do I download the app for your audio books? Staff has to be able to do that. So those kinds of things were involved in the demonstrative one. And then the written exam was just a combination of everything. Stephanie, you saw the written exams. Do you have any comments on those? I did cover everything someone at a front desk would need. And again, she's willing to share this with everybody. That's what's so great. I found that the skill levels, what you were observing is exactly right on from what I've seen over the years out in the libraries. And I didn't think it was over the top, anything that shouldn't be known, but I knew when I read through it, knowing some of the skill levels, I was like, wow, if they didn't do their work, if they didn't learn these things, it's going to be tough. But again, she gave them all the resources they needed. And I think one of the other questions that I had seen come through there was, how did you handle those different skill levels? And the day of the in-service, Penny spoke with me. She said, here's some people who could use a little more hand-holding, but could use a little more help. And I just assume you probably did that internally too besides that one day that I was there. That's the attention they needed. Penny, another question was about new employees. This is such an ongoing thing. How do you bring someone up to speed when you have a new employee? We have a policy and a timeline in place. When a new employee is hired, they have, and again, happy to share this with anyone, they get a schedule. So they actually go through exactly what our staff went through. We went through it together, but new people that are coming in go through the same steps. They are at a benefit because they have everybody else that they can ask who's already gone through it. But they follow the same steps to get them up to where they need to be. I saw a question from Sheila on here about, you know, technology doesn't always work smoothly. She has a difficult time coming up with written instructions that will work in every environment. My advice is stop trying to make written instructions. Give them the voice to play with. Have it available like a tech petting zoo. If you don't have funding to be able to do something like that, someone on your staff has a toy that they can come in during lunch someday. And if they are willing, at least demo it in their own hands if they don't want anyone else to touch it, just some way to get them exposed to the technology, they got to be able to play. I mean that's where I'm moving now is I don't want to give people these step-by-step point-and-click instructions on how to do things anymore because I can't. Technology is going too fast. You can't do that anymore. But instead I'm trying to find ways to teach people how to play and that's what Penny's Lib Guide is all about. Here's the info. Here's some sites to go check out. Here's some videos to watch. We've got this device here. Check it out. Take it home. Play with it, that kind of thing. There's no way to provide them every little detail they are going to need anymore. It's got to be I'm ready to play. I know I can't break it. Let's just try and learn this. So I don't know if that helps at all, but it's the only way I can see the future going with all this mobile technology. I can barely breathe. I know everyone on this call, everyone listening on this webinar agrees. It's hard to catch your breath right now, but it's so exciting at the same time. One of the other things that we always do is when we introduce a new service or a new technology, for instance, when we introduce the regular Kindles, we purchase them and kept them for three months, and staff was encouraged to take them home and play with them and become familiar with them. When we introduced the Kindle Fires, same thing. We bought them, we loaded them, and we didn't even tell anyone we had them until every staff member had an opportunity to check them out for an extended period of time. We just started offering Roku's for circulation, and we have Roku's in the building for six months, and people took them home. If they didn't know how to use them and they couldn't get them to work, a manager would go to their house and help them figure it out. So they really have to, you can't expect them to just know everything. You have to give them the opportunity to learn and play. Same thing with, even though we don't circulate iPods, although we will be next year, we have one so that they have the experience to get hands-on so that when someone comes up and says, how do I download the one-click app, the staff can go, oh, okay, here's how you do it, and actually show them how to do it. But I agree, written instructions are horrible, horrible, horrible idea when it comes to this new technology because everybody has a different way of doing it, and as long as they get to the end result, doesn't really matter how they get the app downloaded. They just need to get it downloaded. Okay, and by the way, if you are interested in doing this, I am more than happy to share the exams with you, but I do not post them anywhere because if you use them, your staff will know the answers, but I am happy to share them. Okay, taking competencies on the road, after you put them together, share them. If you are in a library system, offer them up. If you have a LibGuide subscription again, you are welcome to use mine. I have set them up for a couple of libraries now, and it is literally less than an hour for you to just grab mine and change them. And please don't be intimidated you are offering this service not only for employees, but also for management because we still need to keep up as well. So I take the confidence even though I wrote it. Go ahead Stephanie. Stephanie, she is not exaggerating on the one hour, and really it is that easy to just, I used parts of her LibGuide in a couple of public presentations I have done now where I just pull their pages. I am like, why would I recreate this page? I just pull it right in there, and it is just wonderful. Okay, we will move on here. These are my observed outcomes. I get way fewer customer complaints. The staff is definitely more confident about their abilities, and when we offer new staff or new service, they are actually excited about it because they know they are going to get the training. The library really has become the technological hub within our community. We work with the Chamber of Commerce. We offer technological programs for business owners. Just recently our local municipality sent all of their managers to the library, and we did like a 22-week training program on Windows, the new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint. And if you don't think that that makes a difference, when you go ask for money, think again. That municipality increased my appropriation for next year by 25%. So that does make a difference. And again, donations have increased, have doubled during our funds drive this year. Again, can't say what is actually attributed to, but it seems a little bit too much of a coincidence. I will firmly say it's definitely why, just because. I believe a lot of it has to do with the fact that people come in now and they can get their questions answered, and they talk. They tell people, and eventually it gets to somebody who is in charge of our funding. So that's my outcomes. Yours may be different. I have our email addresses here. Now I just want to quickly take you to the LibGuide. And I'm going to share this. Here we go. Everybody see that? It's loading. Yep, it's kind of still coming. So there's a leg on our end, but it should be appearing for everyone. This is the LibGuide that Penny has been talking about throughout. So it may be still appearing on your end. It has appeared on mine now. Okay, basically what a LibGuide is, it's kind of a wiki on steroids, if that means anything. You need to have no HTML training. It is really a WYSIWYG kind of thing. And when staff logs on, this is what they see. The video that you see on the right is a really great explanation. Minute and a half, the staff understands it. Thank you for putting that link up, Stephanie. If you go to the link, this actually takes you to our competencies. And this is an amazing resource. And I would love to say that I created this all by myself, but it didn't. I have a really great technology manager at the library that has worked very hard on getting all of this information together. And as you can see, there are different ways of presenting the same information so that no matter what your learning style is, you can find what you need. And this goes with the competencies. So our competencies involve all of these things. And this is kind of the meat and potatoes training part. If I go back to this competency page, here are my 23 things that they went through. And if you look at it, you'll see that there are comments on some of them. Now, halfway through this, I actually switched from the state lib guide to my own account. So you won't see all of the comments in the first couple of weeks that the staff made. But this is a great way to put together all of those wonderful promotional materials that your vendors give you and you never really know what to do with them. So there's a video on how to use TumbleBooks. This year or in 2013, one of the things that we'll be adding for all of these services are the apps so that the staff is very familiar with how the apps work as more and more people are moving to mobile applications instead of doing these things on their computer. And each week, staff had assignments that you can see here on the right-hand side. And they answered these things. Now, this is required again. We kept very careful track of making sure that everybody did what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it. And if they didn't, they heard from me. And I would just follow them around and nag them until they did it. That's really important because you want the staff to be in the same week so that it becomes part of the lunchroom discussion. And they learn together. Now, I will tell you that several years ago, I did a 23 things with the staff and the community. And I believe it was like 80-some community members and all the staff were doing it week by week together. And that was also a great way of creating dialogue in the community about technology. And as an incentive, we gave away a Kindle for the staff in a drawing, anybody who completed it got their name in, and the same for the public. So that was a really great way to kind of introduce these technology things that we were doing to the public. And it really started that dialogue. Patrons would come in. They knew the people at the desk were doing them as well. And there would be discussions about this week's thing. That's a great idea to involve the community. That's a neat spin. Well, that way they know that they can come to us. So it doesn't always have to be library things. You know, Google Docs, if you're going to use these things internally, it's great to have the staff learn them together. And some of these things that I just assumed that people knew about, online book clubs, nobody in my library even knew we offered them. So it was a good way. Go ahead. I just want to interject. I mean, when you were talking about the comments, I think that is the heart and soul of the approach that Ephrata took on this competency. It wasn't, here's a nice little website with a lot of nice little information for all of you, and you're going to have a test in five months, whatever, three or four months, and we'll just see how you do. It was, here are the questions for this week. I need the answers. And when she didn't get the answers, she followed up, which I mean, that was nice of her to do. I mean, if you want your job, it's that accountability feature, not a hard lined approach, but just, I just think that commenting and keeping track, and yes, she has a medium-sized library, a very large library. It's going to take a team of people to do this, but I think that's why it was so successful, because no one was dropped off the charts and at the end was just like, wow, I didn't have time, and I didn't realize that there was no surprises. I think that is key in the fact that there were no surprises in her building as far as I could tell as an outsider. Yeah, everybody knew what was expected of them, and I did see a question earlier about whether or not the staff was paid for this, and the answer is yes. Salary people and full-time staff were told that they could use their time at work to learn to whatever they needed to do. Part-time people were paid for the time that they spent either in the building or outside of the building working on these things, and I think that that was really important because we were making an investment in making sure that we offered exceptional service. Here's the book discussion, and it's called Diffusing the Angry Patron, and each chapter with the questions that the question of the week, and they're actually kind of interesting because we all work in different places, but we all pretty much have the same patrons. So it was a good way for them to kind of learn that everybody has the same problems and how you deal with them because if you offer great technology competencies but you're crappy at customer service, the competencies aren't really helping you very much. So we did tie in a customer service component to this as well. We have websites for references that we use, resources, and then here is our Employee Learning and Growth Program, and it shows you that the CEUs that we're requiring of everyone, again, they get paid for this. So if they get their free CEUs, they'll get paid for three hours. Full-time and salaried staff, again, are supposed to do it on library time. And we also subscribed to Universal Class, and staff was encouraged to take those classes. And some of them actually took the classes together so they could do the homework together and things like that. So again, just to remind everyone, this is Brenda. This LibGuide that Penny is demonstrating now, that's just available on the web. So that has all of this information. Someone said that they'd like to learn from this on their own, and I think that's a great idea. If you also have a LibGuide account, Penny has said you can take this and just put it in your LibGuide account too. But if you don't subscribe to LibGuide, you'll still have access to it, and there are other ways that you could share this type of information too. And then Penny has also offered to share some of the stuff that's not included. So like the quizzes, she mentioned that those aren't included because you don't want, that doesn't make it much of a quiz if it's out there. So those things she is willing to share, and we'll keep sharing her email address too. So I just wanted to clarify for that. I saw what is the cost of LibGuide. I saw that question. It depends on your population. My cost is about $600 a year, completely worth it. And let me just quickly show you why. I'm going to go to my library's website. We actually use these for the public. And basically they are digital pathfinders. So for instance, we have a LibGuide on local history where anybody who is interested, it's almost like a reference librarian is just sitting there and giving you all this information. And you can link it to your catalog so that you can highlight certain books. I do LibGuides on summer reading, any grants that we get. We had the Building Common Ground grants that we just recently finished. And that's right here with all the events and everything that people needed to know about this grant. So LibGuide is not just an internal program. You can use it. I'm seeing Penny here says for subscription charge for a small library, it's a couple of hundred dollars. It's really not that much for what you're getting. Okay, we'll include a link to the LibGuide site too so people can check in with them. I think they are pretty relevant. Right, the company that has it is SpringShare. So I'm going to open for questions now quickly. Let's see, questions about buy-in. So even after all of this, do you still have employees that pass the buck or do they try more often? So do they try to pass the, as often happens in libraries, they pass the questions on to the person they consider more tech savvy? Do you still see that happening a lot? No. We don't do it. If they pass the question on, they must stay and learn the answer. Okay. Let's see, what is the makeup of your training staff? We have five managers. Our technology manager is 19 years old. That's been helpful. She really is amazing. I've never met another 19-year-old like her. Yes, she started out as a volunteer when she was 14. She's the one who really helps me create the sites. My assistant director, my technology manager, my operations manager, and my reference librarian make up the people who do the training and the exams. Okay. Let's see, other questions. You talked a little bit about the 23 things and that the public, your community did that at the same time. Do you have other public tech training on your lip guides too? We are starting to use them as a supplement. So if we have a computer class, it will have a complimentary lip guide for people to refer back to. And if it's a multi-week class, we'll put homework on there as well. Lip guides allows you to do much more than what you're seeing here. You can do polls and discussion forums and all kinds of things. So yeah, we are really integrating it into our entire training program for the public as well. And let me tell you, it's so advanced that some libraries are actually using this as their website. So it's very flexible. Another question is about getting buy-in. So you and your library are the administration and you're obviously on board with this. But what about a library where, for example, someone mentioned they did 23 things in 2009 and they didn't get buy-in from administration. How can they reintroduce it and get more buy-in from an administration? You need to be able to tell them exactly what realistic outcomes you're going to see from this. That would be my big suggestion. You can also do secret shoppers, which is something that we did. And the feedback that you will get from secret shoppers will probably be enough to convince them. Good. Well, this time has flown by. Again, we're going to send out a message later today that has the recording from today's session. It will have links to all of these different things. It will have all of that. And I think that will help people a lot too. I think that librarians are great at sharing with each other this kind of information. And Penny, your LibGuide is just an awesome resource for so many of us. So thank you so much to both of you for taking the time to be here and talk to us about this. It's been really useful, really great. And again, both Penny and Stephanie have provided their address here and have welcomed follow-up questions too. There are a couple of TechSoup resources that I'll mention that people might find interesting relevant for this topic too. There's Atomic Training and Easy Learning. It might be useful things. They include online courses on technology-related topics. And our next webinar might actually be interesting to this group too. I'll be one of the facilitators, and then Stephanie Girding who's been helping us out. And many of you know her for all the work she's done on Tech Training. Our next webinar is next week, and it's better together. And it's all about this type of sharing that's happening. So today Penny shared with us a lot of what she's done. But next week we're going to talk about lots of places that are sharing. There's just so much out there. And as Penny said, there's no need to reinvent the wheel when there's already so much good stuff out there. So next week we'll be all about that, about sharing resources. And with that I think we're about ready to wrap up for today. Again, thank you so much to Stephanie, and thank you so much to Penny too for being here, and for sharing with us about this great work that you're doing there in Pennsylvania. So thank you everyone for your participation and questions too. And we'll connect with you again after the webinar with that follow-up email. So thanks everyone. Have a great day. Thanks. Thank you.