Good morning, everyone!
We're going to shift our focus a little built to adult learning and workforce development
now.
We do not have a PowerPoint.
We discussed it and decided not to do that and part of reason for that is, we really
wanted to have a discussion and that so much of workforce development is about helping
people attain a better quality of life, whether that's helping them get the literacy skills
they need, the digital skills to get a job, to get a better job, all of those kinds of
things and so much about that is connecting with people not just in the library and in
the greater community and going out to them as opposed to them coming to us and beginning
to address the challenges and barriers that so many people face like literacy, language,
disability, like transportation and other practical kinds of things that keep people
from taking advantage of opportunities.
I think you'll hear from our three panelist, the great and innovative work they're doing
and so much of the work they're doing is happening in collaborations and partnerships with agencies
outside of the library which I think are exciting.
Our three panelist today are Karisa, director of learning and literacy, and Cindy Gibb Bonn
who is the access and information service director for Mecklenburg county library.
So Karisa.
>> So I'm so fortunate to be in this room like many of you feel being able to talk about
adult education and workforce development together as a priority for IMLS moving forward.
I am the director of an adult education agency in Rhode Island and we serve immigrants and
are a collaboration of different city libraries working together.
So I'm often in rooms where adult education is discussed, where workforce development
is discussed and where libraries are discussed but rarely, I find, they're discussed together.
So about two years ago, we received national leadership grant from IMLS and it's come out
to be what we call all access, adult lifelong learning in the libraries.
Our goal has been really about putting down barriers mainly for populations, people with
low literacy, low educational attainment, people with disabilities and people with low
digital literacy.
It's really though, serving everyone.
We're finding very quickly, unemployed, under employed people and what we're doing is we're
creating new learning and funding models and how that's been implemented is we have learning
lounges in library that are open access for adults to come in and improve their education
and employment needs.
We have an assistive technology exploration station through a partnership where people
can come in and find out how technology can help them with a prescribed disability or
not.
We have iPad clubs, typing clubs, one on one technology appointments where adults can meet
with librarians one on one for help and I have to tell you, the list keeps growing because
our main goal is what are the barriers for adults getting the education and employment
they need and how can we adjust and make programs to help that.
So it's really been about a continuum of care and really talking about no more silos and
interestingly our partnership is really involved with workforce development and adult education
and libraries and the more they get to know us, the more they want to do with us.
That's one of the big lessons I'm learning but it takes a lot of time and effort and
someone was saying earlier about, it's really about alphabet soups of acronyms.
You really need a list when you go in.
You know, as we all are driven by different outcomes, those systems have different outcomes
that we have to be aware of so that we can have really meaningful partnerships.
So I came into this work because I have been in so many rooms where I hear workforce development
say, well, send that person to the library.
They'll help with you with cover letter and then I hear in adult education, they'll HOPE
you with your computer knowledge but from my stand point, we rarely receive the funding
to do that and are we really doing the best for people in what those services are.
So there are 36 million adults, just a recent survey that need basic skills in the country
and I would argue that skills building is our business.
And the adult education system is willfully under funded in the state, in the country.
In my program alone, we constantly have waiting lists for services so I'm familiar with many
of these worlds and I find that it's absolutely clear that public libraries can be a major
solution to these challenges.
We're open access, adults have worked many jobs, juggling family.
They can't often go to adult education classes or the workforce development system center
or they can come to the libraries if we personalize our services around their needs.
It's very patron focused.
I want to tell you one thing, in Rhode Island, we have 78 locations and we have three workforce
development centers.
Think of the capacities and the barriers over come just by doing things in the library.
So I would have to say that one thing that's been really helpful is the depth of partnerships
that we have developed because I can't be in all of those rooms but all of our partners
are in those rooms and they're speaking up on our behalf.
So I want to tell you about a really urgent need we have right now with a new workforce
innovation and opportunity act.
This is the new legislation for the workforce development system in adult education in our
country.
Public libraries are noted as eligible partners as one stops and we're important providers
but what does that really mean?
Right now in your states they're required to develop unified plans on how they're going
to work together for workforce development but I want to ask the question, how many libraries
are in the rooms in the conversations and I've been knocking on the door and it's really
hard.
I am imagining the scene is true.
For us to truly recognize that public libraries are in it, how can we take full advantage
of that and I'm going to talking about my priorities for that in a little bit.
I mean, for IMLS, the priorities moving forward but I think we need to come up with a system
so it's not a matter of knocking on doors.
I have heard many conversations or comments here that libraries are over looked.
I see it, I definitely see it.
If we could do work in the future of how to meaningfully implement we're at the table,
there's a lot of sources of funding that could really help us so thank you!
>> Good morning!
My name is Diosdado and I'm the director of learning literacy for Queens library and I
want to conceptualize my comments.
What we do in queens this is one of the biggest with the largest immigrant population so within
that context, we have to respond to the demand.
So we have seven adult learning centers.
We have three sites for young adult literacy as well as ESL classes, about 100 a year at
the libraries so we're under pressure to always meet the challenges and most of our registration
where we do intake and assessment.
This is fund by government and we typically turn away 40 percent because we don't have
enough seats so that's a challenge to staff as well as program administration in how to
better meet the challenges.
In particular, there's always a discussion about funding, right?
So when we're looking at city operating budget as well as our government grants, we're always
looking at how we can share resources.
One of the great things though, I think that a lot of the government agencies have recognized
that with adult programming requires that there needs to be partnerships.
So we run two literacy zones and it's really following the program model that adult education
is the front and center of really bringing together all of the partnerships within a
service area model.
So we have guiding coalitions where we have at least 20 to 25 people who come to our sites
and we talk about what is our strategic direction and what is our planning in terms of how we
increase and enhance our programming.
So that's something we always look at.
We serve about 5,000 unduplicated students a year in all of our programs and that's why
I think, our IMLS in particular posing a great opportunity.
The IMLS grant we have was really to better train our librarians in immigrant services.
The queen's library has about 65 locations so this is a great opportunity for our adult
education folks to work with our 65 community libraries to figure out so the first year
of the grant, we developed the curriculum and the second year, we developed the training.
We are having to train 400 plus librarians on immigrant services.
So it's a great collaboration in Queens to how to better improve the services and one
of the this things we have looked at is what model are we going to use?
Typically in adult programming, we utilize case management.
We follow them because we pretest them, and then we look at attendance and retention and
we post test them based on educational gain.
That's how we can continue to get our funding.
And then we have had discussions with our community libraries.
Specifically, we look at head counts in our community libraries so the compromise we came
up with is really to be the facilitators for information.
So this is really a new model that our IMLS grant has sort of kind of created this opportunity
for collaboration within our community libraries and our librarians.
There are challenges especially, as Karisa mentioned, a new legislation that is just
being rolled out right now but also with common core state standards and a new task in New
York state in terms of the instructional shifts required by our programming to be able to
really prepare our students so we have basic adult as well as preHSE.
As a line to the core common standards.
Last week was the second year we conducted a graduation where students came in with caps
and gowns and they achieved, you know, they passed the exam, you know, in all five areas,
writing reading, math and social studies.
So it's the first cohort of students that predominantly had to pass all five sections
according to the new task, the new GED exam, testing for secondary completion.
And so those are the kind of things and the things we have looked at not just funding
but also what do we need to do in terms of professional development and training for
our staff.
Because one of the things that we're also developing within the department of labor
is developing a curriculum on task transition and we actually campus then tire field in
terms of who out there can develop the curriculum and the common core is still trickling into
the adult education world in terms of how you take the standards and apply it to the
class room.
What practices do we need to change to better prepare our students for the task exam because
we it seems like the statistics have shown that for most of our students, the math and
the writing seems to be the most challenging for all of them so that means that again,
another opportunity for what kind of programming.
So we have developed programming and classes that particularly look at the math and the
science in particular to help really prepare our students for the task exam.
I think it's going to continue to do that so in terms of priorities for future funding,
we're going to discuss it a little bit later.
I think we're going to go through all of our recommendations but really, this is a lot
of the things we need to be looking at.
One of the things though in terms of opportunities that we have had to look at is really a mirror
the changes that are happening with the program and the common core in that we really have
looked at integrating all of our different departments.
So we have integrated our adult program with workforce development and we have looked at
it from a continuation of services in the perspective of student needs.
We have also incorporated our new Americans learning under one umbrella so when we're
looking at students under intake and assessment and pretesting, we are cross referring not
only to other programs but also within our own departments in terms of adult learning
towards workforce development as well as legal services for a lot of our ESL students who
might need those services.
So that's something that I think both challenges as well as opportunities for really great
program enhancements.
Thank you!
>> Hi, I'm Cindy Gibb Bonn, the access and information services director from the Mecklenburg
library in Portland Oregon and I want to start by telling you about a recent IMLS project.
We're just getting off the ground but we think it has great promise to create some baseline
data for us to start measuring the outcomes of what we are doing in libraries.
This grant has a lengthy title.
It's quite a mouthful.
It's called advancing digital equity in public libraries, assessing library patrons problem
solving in technology rich environments.
Like I said, it's quite a mouthful.
This is a partnership funded by IMLS between the Mecklenburg library and urban library
and urban University, Portland state University.
Dr. Jill is in the audience.
She'll be on the research panel later today and Jill is with Portland state's literacy
language and technology research group and we're going to be working together to do an
assessment using a tool that has been validated on an international level to understand the
readiness of working age adults to be in the workforce and use the technology that is available
today that you have to be proficient with as a worker.
POK, the program for international assessment of adult competences comes out of the workforce
development world, not a world where libraries are necessarily thought to have a place at
the table.
As we have been hearing from the other panelists.
It has three assessment areas.
Literacy numerous, and this new one, problem solving in technology rich environments.
While the library, of course, is a technology rich environment, so this relates very well
to what people do in libraries as well as to what people do in the workforce.
The idea here is to measure the skills of workforce age adults in the U.S. and also
internationally.
And in the United States the assessment tools are validated in both English and Spanish.
We will be administering the problem solving in technology rich environments online tool
to library patrons and we will get some very interesting data, I think, as a result of
that to help us understand where our patrons are in terms of the baseline that we can use
to work from to assess what we're doing.
We'll be testing a small group of library staff to start with.
This tool measures not basic online literacy skills, can I use the mouse, do I know how
to navigate the screen and that kind of thing.
This really measures a higher level of skill.
Can I manage my files?
Can I look at a site and understand what I'm seeing there and what the services are offered
to me on that site?
Can I do something practical like figure out how to return the lamp that I just bought
online?
Or can I figure out how to use the online resume site or determine that the job ad I'm
looking at actually is for a position that might fit my particular skill set into something
that I should be applying for.
We're hoping to assess 700 library patrons.
Some of these will be through our out reach services, some through the library and some
will be people coming in online through our website and we'll be doing assessments in
both English and Spanish.
And of course, the goal here is to really reach out to people who are struggling and
who may not be finding a place in the workforce.
Why do we do this?
Because we want to understand what our patrons need to learn to thrive in this technology
rich world that we live in.
We want to create that body of baseline data that will help us measure outcomes, not just
outputs of what we do.
We want to understand the needs of our library workforce because we know our own workforce
needs better technology skills to thrive and be able to get the service we need to give.
And we also need to bring libraries to the workforce development and one of the ways
we can do that is to make sure that we're making an impact through the outcomes.
They have a task on performance measurement.
We have just received a 2.5 million grant from the Bill gaits foundation and we have
to be able to show what we have been saying for so long.
We know that libraries change lives but we need to be able to prove it.
That's what our funders are asking for so this idea of outcome measurement is very important.
I also wanted to just mention something about the development of our own library workforce
because I think this is something really important and as we talk about priorities, I'll say
more about that.
Our library workforce needs to change and I particularly have noticed this in the Mecklenburg
over the last few years.
We have an initiative called, we speak your language.
What that initiative is about, is making sure that people who work for the library look
like people in the community.
That's a really struggle for us in Portland Oregon, one of the whitest cities in the country.
Where an increasing number speak languages other than English at home.
Don't look like me.
So as
a white middle class institution has nothing for them and we need to over come that.
>> Before we open it up for questions, I ask our panelist to think about strategic priorities
for IMLS.
We have talked a little bit about challenges and opportunities and I think coming from
that, they have been thinking about things they would recommend as strategic priorities
for IMLS.
>> The library is
a place for
that table.
That would be very powerful.
How can we co locate services of partners in the libraries and I'm not speaking of a
six week workshop.
I'm speaking of something, a community resource that our patrons can count on week after week
after week.
I do see it as a win win situation.
We do that in assistive technology.
Let's explore more of that.
I would really like to see the conversation continuing about credits and digital badges
in the library that do validate skills.
Speaking of the maker space, taking the next step forward so it can really result in jobs.
I would like to continue the conversation on the WEOA funds, title one and title two
funds, how libraries can access those funds.
One example is in our all access IMLS funded program, that's two libraries.
We have a minimum of nine other libraries in our state just wanting to create learning
lounges, one on one, an everything that we're doing and those can be a source of funds for
making that happen.
Lastly, I really love the conversation that's come up so many times about out reach.
What I'm really interested in is the people who don't come in the library and why are
they not coming in?
How can we reach out to them and bring them?
? The barriers are much deeper than I ever realized.
I have worked with immigrants many many years and through my IMLS project, I did focus groups
and I found many more reasons why they don't come in than I ever realized.
I'll give a little plug.
Here's a win win situation.
We have been hiring our adult literacy students to work in our children's library and they're
getting workforce development skills and they're reaching out to their communities to bring
people into the library and then they are also seeing like, we speak your language,
it's that program.
I didn't even realize, that's happening.
So I think we could explore that much more.
>> Again, I think it's challenges as well as opportunities and I think largely based
on new legislation at this time, there's some people who are already doing this within adult
education programs but obviously additional program additional funding would allow us
to expand our services.
One is capacity building, looking at this and immigrant services.
I think that's really important is to develop that resource sharing and all of that.
I used to be in K 12, I was a high school teacher and when it comes to new standards
that comes out, K 12 gets a mountain size of the funding and adult education gets a
small part.
So I think it's good and bad.
I think the good part of it is it allows for a lot of innovation and a lot of partnerships
because you have to in the field.
Secondly, I think because of common core and the new GED exam, I think ongoing and in field
professional development is crucially important for instructional staff.
Especially as they respond to instructional shift required by the new common core standards
and that would result in more education for students and more students achieving their
high school equivalence diploma.
We have sent admin staff as well as others to have task centers and we also have the
national external development program all of which are computer based.
I think a lot of the testing of the moving, I think, by 2016, 60 percent of the testing
are going to happen on computer so really to prepare our students by infusing a lot
more technology and it isn't really just sending them a computer literacy class, I think it
needs to be in the class room and that's how you really cement the learning.
So when you get to that, it's a natural evolution for them and they're not, you know, intimidated
by the computer based part of it as well as the content they need to master for the task
exam.
For a lot of the students, thankfully, I think now that the bar for passing the new GED is
pretty low.
I think you only have because, well, normally, with high school students, you only have to
get ten out of 25 questions right but as they develop more versions of the test, I think
the standards are going to increase.
That's going to be in the pipes so we really need to infuse technology and more computer
literacy in realtime in the class room.
I think that's a third priority.
>> Thank you!
>> So I would say one of my first priority really is more research that supports outcome
measurement.
I really feel that this is an area that we're so far behind in the library world.
Public libraries in particular have a greater and greater need to be able to show outcomes
and we have measured outputs and counted stuff for so many years.
We have to be able to show the impact of our work.
So I'm it's wonderful that PLA is moving towards the idea of outcome measurement and the work
they're doing will be great because what they're really striving towards as I understand it,
is some fairly simple tools that can be implemented by any public library anywhere.
To measure impacts but I also think that a more sophisticated level of research around
outcomes is also still very beneficial and something I want to see IMLS continue to fund.
Another area I want to point out is, what is the library workforce need to be going
into the future?
I would really love to see some more support from IMLS around understanding best practices
for how we diversify our workforce not only in its ethnic make up and its language abilities
but also in the breadths of its skill set.
You know, libraries need people to work in them other than libraries, sometimes.
Librarians are great!
We do amazing work and in a lot of small libraries, librarians, you know, really do wear every
hat.
We need folks who are experts in early childhood education.
We need folks who are experts in adult education and workforce development.
We need to diversify the skill sets of the people who are working with us if we really
want to achieve the impacts we need.
So looking at that library workforce and figuring out what it needs to be in the future, how
we train our professional staff and what we do that works to recruit and bring people
into libraries who reflect our communities and who have the skill sets we need.
So those are my two pitches.
>> Great, thank you all!
Now we'll take questions and I'll remind you to say your name and your organization, which
I did not do.
So I'm David Singleton.
>> Hi, I'm from the University of Tennessee.
I have a comment to make.
The comment is the small businesses and libraries to allow a blueprint for a tool kit and we're
doing a gap analysis so I'm really happy to hear what Theresa mentioned in terms of what
we're also finding in that project.
From the small business community end, we are realizing there's a need for them to find
appropriate workforce people with specific para professional or professional skills to
be able to refer various types of small businesses in terms of cost, reasonable hiring and such
too.
And on the other side from the librarian group, you're finding that adult education is going
beyond just the traditional mode of understanding it too.
High school or the community college graduate is just on the brink of becoming adults and
how to train them.
It seems psychological that there is in the rural areas in Tennessee, there is unemployment,
lack of skill in the labor force and from the small business side, they need that at
a reasonable cost.
So I'm really glad to hear you mentioned a potential area of priority for IMLS to be
able to support libraries that are engaging in those, who are working to help the graduates
from the schools to fit in with specific skill sets for small businesses and how they can
become part of that.
So that was to this.
My broader question comment is also what some of you mentioned and it kind of resonates
with the first session when there was talk about transformation and experience and knowledge
in this case, and mentioning in about capacity building and out comes.
As the co chair for the conference that took place in Chicago 2015, reflections on social
justice and looking at the past and future, also, editing social justice as well as a
monograph that's coming up soon found that from the library trends especially, 51 submissions
were presented on social justice but only ten were accepted because of a lack of conceptualizing
the work we're doing.
Learning is not just learning but it should be action and tangible outcomes as you pointed
out so maybe there's a need for us to conceptualize our work in a more assertive and aggressive
manner beyond just learning, something maybe a little bit more passive in my understanding
about it.
So I would love to hear the comments from the audience and from the panel list here
in terms of embracing the understanding of social justice in terms of change, tangible
change versus positive action beyond learning.
Thanks, sorry.
I got long.
>> David from Syracuse University, I'm going to cheat because I want you to help me with
my presentation by the end of the day.
So far what I have heard is we need to prepare librarians to work with immigrants, work with
children, identify autism, be able to speak other languages, work in communications, have
broad skills and Cindy, I want to pick up on your comment which is, if we expect librarians
to do everything, then they will do nothing well.
It occurs to me that when we talking about the potential for broad impact, if we constantly
believe, what are the core skills and we constantly expand, here's a population and let's learn
this, they're going to get a wonderful skill there, locally.
It occurs to me to have broad impact, we really need to focus on what is really, to me, is
to facilitate the community sharing its expertise.
Part of the way to look at the community is not just to hire them but to actually put
them in charge and invite them and put them in front of classes.
Part of the way that we deal with immigrant populations is as they go through this, they
become part of the welcome process and the learning process.
Part of when we talk about all of this is the idea that, as a librarian, I get frustrated
because we think we can train ourselves to be anything and oftentimes miss the point
brilliant people who are coming into our buildings everyday or more importantly, if we stop phrasing
the problem as if only how do we reach non users to come to us?
Why do we keep phrasing it that way as oppose to the problems of the librarians not going
to the community?
Sorry.
Lots of frustrations.
I'm just picking up, what are the core skills?
Do librarians have to be everything or can we talk in adult education such that we can
facilitate that process without having to become Ph.D.s in every topic under the sun.
>> Well, I would will happy to address that a little bit because I think that, in fact,
we are still turning out librarians from our library schools who think it's their job to
do everything, who think they should be the only people who work in libraries and they
should have all of the jobs in libraries whether or not that happens to be their personal skill
set.
And that is not really what we need our professionals to be.
We need people who know how to assess the needs of their community, who know how to
create partnerships in their community in order to bring resources together and bring
them to bare on the community's needs.
We need project managers who know how to see a need and figure out how to bring together
to fulfill it.
We need people who want to get out of the library, get out from behind the desk.
You know, really be people persons who aren't so totally devoted to books that they can't
see that it's really people that are what our work is about.
You know, it is a different skill set than we are necessarily seeing from some of our,
even our new graduates still.
There's definitely work to do there.
>> And I think the IMLS grant we currently are running on year two, that's the particular
challenge that we actually were supposed because we had to develop this curriculum which is,
huge, and it goes from demographics totem graphics analysis, community based organizations
on how to make referrals down to legal services and the whole citizen process.
So we're talking about a lot of content.
You can develop the curriculum but how do you implement that and have librarians embrace
that as something they need to have, right?
So from the get go, we surveyed them as part of the initial part of our curriculum development
and we actually put together focus groups that really had their input and contribution
and we really hashed out what program or strategy we're going to use in term of implementing
this.
We don't expect librarians to be case managers but we do hope they are facilitator of information
and that's the compromise we came up with.
Initially we were moving towards case management which is really honor behind the desk but
they recognize the needs for it.
In Queens, 40 percent of the population is foreign born.
They have to serve that need but how do you get them to embrace that right?
They are either going to our internal website our they're Googling certain sites so this
curriculum really provides them the information on year three of the project, it's really
devoted towards creating an online resource that would make it easier for them to access
information so they don't have.
This all came out during our focus group discussions and the survey.
I think there's a certain set, at least the sense that I'm feeling is they they're interest
indeed it.
They want to know more.
It will benefit them in the end and they do see it as continuing education to a certain
degree.
>> I don't have the answer on the librarian side of things but I will say, since we had
the learning lounge and all of the things happening at the public libraries, our librarians
are so relieved to have solutions for people coming in and they just love bringing people
up and that's really, just taken off in many ways I would have never anticipated.
I will push back a little bit on the comment about why I'm 100 percent about, we, class
room walls falling down and library walls falling down, it's absolutely here and needs
to be.
I will say one thing because I'm not a librarian and I have been in other places but we do
go out into the community but I still am and I think I'm more strong in my opinion of this,
is let's take those little steps to get them back to the library because what I have been
finding is when we take, we serve whatever the need is, the librarian goes out and serves
the need out there but if we can still pull some strings back to the library, then they
get connected to other programs that they didn't even though existed.
So I might go out to adult education and help someone with their English outside of there
but we'll encourage them to get a library card so it's impacting the family in a more
holistic way.
That's exactly right!
That's part of the framing.
And that's why we need to be out there a lot because the reason, what I heard from at least
the new immigrant population, is that they're too afraid to come in the doors so getting
that trust and face right outside, will take those tiny steps in.
Yes, that's a good way to phrase it, on what needs to be done!
>> I'll just add, I'll agree that librarians can't do everything but one skill that every
librarian needs to have is community engagement to get the expertise that we don't have and
we need.
>> Mary, University of Denver, again.
A couple of comments that have come up in not only this presentation but in a couple
of the other ones relate to assessment skills.
Being from the proud state of Colorado, I just need to mention the research institute
for public libraries that is being supported IMLS and it's happening this summer outside
the mountains in Colorado springs.
The response to that institute is amazing!
Obviously, that's an area that's needed.
And public libraries in particular, academic libraries have that advantage because I just
want to mention that and thank IMLS for that.
>> Hi, everybody, I'm from Chicago public library.
I have two things.
One is a comment and the other is a question.
The first is a comment back to you Karisa.
This really started with the IMLS grant to launch the maker space a couple years ago
in our central library and now we're taking that programming out across the system.
It was inspired by the positive experience we had with you media and you know, with interactive
learning for little ones in the summer and after school et cetera.
It has been incredibly well received by adults.
The maker lab experience is looser, it's more exploratory.
Whatever your interest is, let's have you as adults can explore your curiosity, your
ideas and get support to do so and make something that is valuable to use.
So it's been very well received and positive.
On the other side of the spectrum, we're having much struggling with how do we help adults
achieve their life goals, learning goals in particular whether it's adult education or
something more advanced and we just lunched last week four kind of explore prototypes
with a partner called peer to peer University that has designed a lot of tools and facilitation
guides that allow a para professional in our library to launch a peer learning circle between
5 and 10 people.
Adults who agree to meet with one another once a week while they're engaged in an online
course.
During their engagement in an online course, some of the courses are in GED math prep.
Some of the courses are in python.
So we are really experimenting with these very different ends of the learning spectrum.
We expect to see you know, course completion go up really high because people are holding
each other accountable so we think that's very promising.
We will share everything we learn as widely as we can.
I hope IMLS will help us do so.
And then we look to expand this moving forward and we think it's something that is scalable
across all libraries.
The second thing is really just a question for him about the staffing model in your library.
It sounds like you are organized very differently than most libraries I have seen.
If you have staff that are actually teaching course content and doing things that in many
libraries, are things that outside partners are doing.
Could you talking about how you're organized and who is staffing all of these courses?
>> And I think it really starts with the strategic plan for the library.
I think for a lot of the work that we have done historically, and will continue to in
the future goes back to the strategic plan.
It's about looking for funding.
Whenever there's a rationale to provide for a particular type of funding to fully staff,
we go back to that.
It's part of our mission.
Is it part of the organization's vision but as it relates to the staffing model, yes,
we have all of our teachers who are part time, although we're moving toward a full time instructional
teacher because we feel that a lot of our teachers who are part time, are teaching from
other organizations and we develop them and then they go somewhere else.
So we're really moving towards that kind of model.
Secondly, each of the adult learning centers has a center manager and an assistive manager
who looking at accountability, outcomes, attendance retention.
Each center has a literacy specialist who is focused on the class room and professional
development and the needs of the staff as well as data manager, data coordinator, et
cetera.
We're also moving towards really putting people in functional groups so we have a case management
cabinet that discuss all of the particular case studies they have encountered and did
a lot of best practices.
That's something fairly new.
We have a data management cabinet as well as management cabinet as well as supervisory
and strategic planning.
So we really looked at not just the staffing model but the support for the staffing model
and creating the structure.
We have a pretty ambitious goal in terms of how we want to expand because we know the
funding is coming and we want to be able to do that to enhance with all of these standards
and requirements that are going to be required.
So yes, supervisor staff, literacy specialist who look at professional development as well
as all of these cabinet groups that support the operations.
>> I was going to make a comment that ties.
Funding is coming out of our mouths a lot if you noticed.
To some degree, I'm housed in a library too but I have to raise all of my own grant funds
to make that happen but yet we are the library.
So we're often to the side and so that's why it's challenging with the funding so it does
root us back into the strategic plan.
So I think that's why you're hearing some of the things you're hearing.
>> I wanted to just make a point about our, we speak your language initiative that relates
to what Dave was saying before.
One of the things we found by creating positions that have required bilingual, bicultural skills
and abilities, but don't require an MLS, it is a great way to recruit a more diverse group
of people at the library school.
A lot of folks actually do end up deciding that the library is a great place to work
they would have never thought about before.
They want a career in libraries and they choose to go to library school.
>> Hi, this is Cindy, Cleveland public library and I don't know if this is a question specific
to the panel but I'm hoping at some point during the day, someone addresses it.
My question has to do with when you're in a unionized setting and you're trying to switch
from a transactional culture to a trans-formative learning organization, where staff are expected
to develop and utilize new skills, is there anyone in the room who has had experience
with not just doing that but the questions of how they is influencing compensation structures
and performance management systems.
It's a big question so if anybody has the answer, I would love to hear it.
>> I can actually speak a little bit to that but I would probably also refer you to our
HR professionals at Mecklenburg library and to Rita who is our neighborhood libraries
director but also has been in charge of our, we speak your language initiative for many
years now.
We had to do a tremendous amount of work with our union, with our HR practices, and looking
at what the competencies are for various positions in the organization and it has not necessarily
been a smooth ride all the way.
I think it's probably an easier sell to some extent in Portland because we have that liberal
vibe and people know what they're supposed to think about that based on what all of their
neighbors think but when push comes to shove and there's a job you don't qualify anymore
because suddenly the person in it needs to have an African American competency or needs
to be able to speak Spanish or Russian or Vietnamese or Chinese and be culturally competent
in those areas, then it's, you know, people don't feel quite as good about that as maybe
they would have before.
So it's been a long transition for us but we have been at it for probably 15 years
or so now.
It has made a tremendous difference in the way that our community sees the library.
So it's definitely worth doing the work because the people who come into our library are much
more reflective in the community we're serving.
We're going out and doing out reach in parts of the community we're not really getting
to when we didn't have people who could speak the language and who people fell comfortable
with.
It's all about how comfortable you feel that someone shares your experience and really
can talk to you but HR practices like if you wanted to be a page at our library and you
were a high school kid, you were competing with people who had a Ph.D. who wanted to
work at the library or people who had an MFA and wanted their library job to support their,
you know, it was their day job to support their art, whatever that might be.
So we have completely changed practices like the way we draw pools of people we're going
to interview out of the pools of people who have made it through the first part of the
civil service process by drawing random pools, we have broken down the barriers.
There's nitty gritty kinds of things you can do that level the playing field a little bit
and making sure that you're interviewing a more diverse group of people than if you just
started with the top people on the civil services exam and then went down.
There's different ways of recruiting that can make it easier.
You know, the bilingual, bicultural competencies were definitely a negotiation in our union
and something we had to talk to our staff about over time.
The rest of the county was definitely on board.
That has helped us.
Again, I think some of the experts can really help you with ideas for how to make that work
better.
>> It's an ongoing process.
I think for many, for all of our grant funded programs, they're all driven by attendance,
retention, goals, outcomes, post test rate, educational gain, right?
So we have tried to streamline all of the performance evaluations so that everybody
is on the same page and everybody is working towards something.
So this is always an ongoing negotiation process with the union and I think a lot of it to
try to convey the importance of it and really what we have done is to do the graduation
because we can see in real life, one of the things that was very visual for me.
When you go to a typical graduation, you have young people who don't really have much life
experience.
They're looking forward because they have potential but these are graduates with children
and kids and when they speak and give testimonials, they talk about the struggles they went through
and all of it very rocky but they have kids and they have wonderful things planned for
the future and I think for many of our staff who are invited to this graduation, that becomes
the motivation as opposed to anything that is, you know, in terms of performance, the
numbers.
So we try to combine both numbers to try to get everybody to work together but it is an
ongoing process.
By the end of the day, it's the stories that really make the impact and remind us why we're
doing what we're doing.
There's nothing to be said.
You can't under state that enough or over state that sorry.
>> I'm a lex learning so I still get things mixed up, sorry.
>> I know there are other questions today.
I think we're out of time.
So it's lunchtime.
But our panelist will be around and I would encourage you to talk with them.
You can see they're doing some incredibly innovative things in their libraries.
Adult learning is hard because it's so big and getting your arms around it and around
specific things within adult learning is hard but I really encourage about all of the great
work out there.
So join me in giving them a round of applause.