Cross-training Students for a Flexible Environment

Jennie McKeeReed College

Access Service ConferenceAtlanta, GA

November 9-11,2011

The Access Service Department at Reed College tries to cross-train most of its student employees in several if not all of the basic tasks so that they may be deployed where the need is as different work peaks at different times.

But it wasn’t – isn’t - as easy as it sounds …

History of Access Services Department

2005 Circulation and ILL merged to create Access

Services. A Librarian was to be in charge of Circulation for the first time in three years.Circulation, Reserves and Stacks Maintenance balkanizedILL moved from Acquisitions Department7 staff – 5 full time, 2 part time

Primary charge was to increase customer service

2006

Management of consortia borrowing moved out of circulation and merged with ILL

Hired new Reserves Assistant, new ILL Assistant and new Night Supervisor (twice)

Still working on the customer service aspect Required all full time staff to spend assigned time

as supervisor at circulation desk

2007First attempt to share and cross train

students between areas – ILL and ReservesBegan hiring all Access Services students as

a pool for all areas during intersession periods

Started departmental Moodle site for a manual of procedures

2009Moved to staff or Lead Student presence at

the Circulation Desk at all timesLose 3000 hours of student time from 9 FTE

to 7.4 FTE2010

Started ~20 hours of reference staff presence at the circulation desk

Included reference trained students

2011Another reorganization. Lost 2/3 FTE. Another staff member left to

return to graduate school.Responsibilities moved around. Parts of

consortia borrowing merged with stacks management, circulation and left with ILL.

Hired new Resource Sharing Assistant (ILL)

History of Student Employment In FY2009-2010 the Reed Library’s student

employment hours were 36% higher than the average when compared to the hours in a group of similar liberal arts college libraries.

Access Services employed 56.5% of that number.

FY2008-2009 and before Access Services employed over 64% of the library student labor

Cross training: where we are nowSeparate area student budgets for 32 weeks –

the two semesters. Combined budget and student pool for the 20 weeks of winter and summer intersessions.

Circulation students float to other areas during slack times at desks during class periods for short tasks.

Reserve students float to ILL during latter part of term (again).

All Access Service students have same basic training LC Easy to become familiar with classification

systemBasic library layout for shelving & pagingBasic circulation systemCustomer service training

Going Forward

Except for LC Easy, the knowledge of which student can do which job has not been recorded.

Last month the suggestion came from Access Services staff to build a central file of students and their training. (Yea!)

The ProcessList all the tasks that students do

The Splitting exercise.

They came up with more than 40, a bit too many for a simple spread sheet.

Next came the clumping process

Which tasks build on others?

Which belong together as one task?

Spreadsheet now has about 15 columns. It will be refined again next week.

The plan is to make the spreadsheet accessible to all staff by using the departmental Google Docs or the Moodle site

Even if it is never used there has been a great benefit

Suggestion came from the staff, not top down

Staff have gone through the exercise of looking at what all the departmental students doWhich tasks are the sameWhich are similarWhat can be transferred from one area to

another easily

What we have learnedDeeper than staff buy in - if “I am my job” is the

stance not even the verbal buy in will be sustainedNeeds a collaborative staff work environment What is making this work (finally)

Our students stay with us 3-4 yearsWe give them opportunities to learn and take on new

responsibilitiesWe set expectations as a group and more trust is given

to the students as they meet themCollaborative work environment includes the students

and their suggestionsPositive reinforcement encouraged for both students

and staff

Questions?

Jennie McKeeAccess Services Librarian

Reed CollegePortland, OR

jennie@reed.edu