Hi,
Something we did at my library, since staff all share one budget and they have a bunch of restrictions on what they can apply for funding, we leveraged internal knowledge.
We do monthly Learn 'N Grow sessions. These relate to people's area of expertise, like our Cataloging librarian might talk about how to use Cutters, I shared the new fund structure to TS staff and why we made the change. Wwe also have shared some general knowledge like Trello or Classweb or Miro. We've gotten colleagues from other library departments to share about their work. Like our Student Success librarian talked about her role and this new tool the library uses called EAB Navigate. We have a Makerspace and staff expressed interest in knowing what it does and how it helps the students and library so we toured the space and met the staff. plus we found that the Makerspace librarian has worked with entrepreneurial students to make logos and set mission statements. We asked her to take our department through that process and it was great.
These are free since we are working with resources we already have or highlighting free tools. We opted to do this virtually since we have some people who do remote work.
Since I'm on a university campus, I also leverage what is going on here. Like we have an art gallery/museum. We worked with the curator to give our department a tour of a senior project. We have a taxidermy museum that already does outreach and similarly asked if we could stop by together. There is a historic house on campus and the library has previously worked to catalog items in their collection and preserve them.
It can be useful to poll your team for what they are interested in.
I also take a look at the university calendar of events and see if there are events or training around campus that my staff might be interested in. My staff enjoys talking walks, so I planned a walking tour of some of the campus. Highlighted some student thesis projects and we found that the university has an old steel.iron printing press.
I also try to let staff know that they can attend special collections talks or exhibit openings. It's nice to support our colleagues and learn more about the collections we house. Sometimes the Alumni put on free webinars too with interesting speakers. The University also sometimes has access to workshops, like the library was able to book a communication styles workshop that the whole library was free to attend because the university has a strategic goal and through a University wide deal made it available to units.
I keep an eye out for webinars that relate to our work and see if there is a group rate. Then ask my department head to request funding. NEO-RLS has a great archive of trainings that if you are in North Ohio and become a gold member (~300-400 to join) they are all free.
The
Georgia Library Association has a series of free webinars. Core does a Virtual IG week that is open to all. NMRT and ACRL's RIG puts on some free webinars (good for early career might not be TS focused) Sometimes the consortia you belong to puts on webinars or train and because your library is a member you get access. They can be useful as they tend to be library focused and allow your staff to interact with other library staff!
Our university does have some basic training for free. It tends to revolve around communication, supporting students, and being a supervisor, but making staff aware and confirming they are allowed to sign up for this during work hours can help people see them as an option. Sometimes places have access to LinkedIn training or stuff. My colleague and I are interested in Team Building so we find those types of training and then can see about running it for our staff. Good teamwork can make a department run smoothly!
I know here making sure our people know they have their supervisor's approval to do PD in various forms helps them see it as an option. So That's why I send invites to campus events that might be of interest so they know they have approval to attend. We try to keep things as flexible as possible.
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