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NOTE: I have a new My Word's Worth column about negative pleasures, i.e., those we take for granted unless we know what it's like to be without them. It's at http://marylaine.com/myword/negative.html
PRESERVING INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY
by Marylaine Block
The median age of librarians is 47, and a lot of us are going to be retiring in the next few years. And between budget cuts and hiring freezes, many of us won't have the chance to train and mentor our replacements. Unless library directors start thinking now about this issue, those librarians may take their unique knowledge with them when they leave.
And that's assuming losing people through the normal processes of retirement and job-changing. When firms lost several hundred employees in the World Trade Center, they discovered that all the knowledge about entire branches of their business -- what to do, what was legal to do, how to do it, the names of key outside contacts and business partners -- had been locked inside the heads and hard drives of the people who died.
The good thing about the absence of mentors is that the dead hand of the past and the dreaded chorus of "we've tried that and it didn't work" won't stand in the way of bright new ideas. The bad thing is that the dead hand of the past and the dreaded chorus of "we've tried that and it didn't work" won't stand in the way of bright new ideas that weren't quite as bright as you thought.
New hires will be utterly free to spend their time reinventing the wheel, figuring out for themselves how to perform basic functions, revisiting previous decisions without knowledge of how they were made, building from scratch relationships with vendors, technical support, and power players who can influence the library's funding.
It would be a lot easier with a little guidance, wouldn't it?
Since mentors won't always be available, I believe it's important for library directors to build and maintain documentation for all library functions and decisions. What might that include?
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A list itemizing each staff member's particular knowledge base, important contacts, and areas of expertise: Mary has the best understanding of faculty politics, Janet has a knack for getting techies to do exactly what she wants, Scott is the best internet trainer we've got, Pat is a great database searcher, Ellen knows more about local history than anyone in the county, our circ supervisor is a genius at soothing angry customers, Carrie is the resident expert on XML, Jean worked with the grants office and compliance officer to get our accessible workstations, etc.
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Once the skills list is available, staff can be asked to create documentation, training materials, or workshops, to pass on those skills, knowledge, and contacts to other staff -- ideally, as part of ongoing staff training, but at least before the person departs. Capture that training in print, on a web site, on a video, etc.
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Decision histories -- why did you choose your architects, movers, vendors, equipment? What were the considerations involved? What worked and what didn't? What were the tradeoffs? Which of them do you trust and why? Which of them would you never do business with again?
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A file itemizing what unfinished business was left by the departing staff member -- what decisions were yet to be made, in collaboration with whom, what information they'd agreed to supply or work they'd agreed to perform.
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A procedures manual created by staff members. How do you interlibrary loan an article, or do virtual reference, or create an online tutorial, or negotiate a database license? What forms do you have to fill out? What statistics do you need to report, to whom, how often? Whose approval do you have to get for which kinds of decisions? What consortiums and committees are you involved in, what work are they doing, and why your library should continue to send representatives to those organizations? What duties are you responsible for daily? Weekly? Monthly?
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Historical materials -- someday you're going to want to display the history of your library, in an exhibit or a website. Go through all your existing photographs and make sure you can identify the dates, occasions, and who those people are.
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A list of important donors, friends, and former staff members of your organization who should be included in celebrations and ceremonies. Don't let changes in directors and staff cause you to be as unintentionally tacky as the Detroit Tigers who, when they went to the World Series in 1984, forgot to invite the MVP from their 1968 World Series win to attend as an honored guest.
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Oral histories -- before the exit interview, you might get staff members, especially long-time staff members, to sit down with an interviewer and tape recorder to talk about how things changed at the library over time.
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A file of reference letters by the departing staff members for the people they supervised, and suggestions to the director about ways to improve those staff members' skills and take adventage of their talents
I'm sure there are other things you could think of that haven't occurred to me. The point is, by having these kinds of information on hand, the director will know exactly what job functions and skills are being lost, and can write the job ad, or reassign tasks, accordingly, and make the transition as smooth as possible. If you can't give the new hires a mentor, you can at least give them some guidelines, written procedures and contacts to help them learn the job.
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REMINDER: I invite you to write articles for ExLibris. I don't pay for content, but I will give you a forum for whatever issues you'd like to discuss or ideas you'd like to propose in regard to libraries and librarianship, information, the internet, or search technique. If you have an idea for an article, please e-mail it to me.
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COOL QUOTE:
What are they up to? It was the same question Arne had asked me about the midges. Little wonder, I suppose, that those close to me echoed the question I've spent years asking others. It isn't a very dignified question, not one an adult should ask in these times when most questions are quantity questions, ones that can be tabulated and processed by a computer. To me the astounding thing is that for the past twenty years, I've been able to talk editors into letting me go around asking that question -- What are they (he, you, she) up to? -- and make a living out of it. It seems presumptuous, and it has been so much fun that I am afraid one day a grown-up will come along and put an end to it.
Sue Hubbell. Broadsides from the Other Orders. Random House, 1993.
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Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2003.
[Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.]
Please do NOT copy and post my articles to your own web sites, however. Instead, please copy a brief excerpt and link to my site for the remainder of the article.
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