Cross-training Students for a Flexible Environment Jennie McKee Reed College Access Service Conference Atlanta, 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 balkanized ILL moved from Acquisitions Department 7 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

2007  First attempt to share and cross train students between areas – ILL and Reserves  Began hiring all Access Services students as a pool for all areas during intersession periods  Started departmental Moodle site for a manual of procedures

2009  Moved to staff or Lead Student presence at the Circulation Desk at all times  Lose 3000 hours of student time from 9 FTE to 7.4 FTE 2010  Started ~20 hours of reference staff presence at the circulation desk  Included reference trained students

2011  Another 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 FY 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.  FY and before Access Services employed over 64% of the library student labor

Cross training: where we are now  Separate 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 system Basic library layout for shelving & paging Basic circulation system Customer 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 Process  List 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 do Which tasks are the same Which are similar What can be transferred from one area to another easily

What we have learned  Deeper than staff buy in - if “I am my job” is the stance not even the verbal buy in will be sustained  Needs a collaborative staff work environment  What is making this work (finally) Our students stay with us 3-4 years We give them opportunities to learn and take on new responsibilities We set expectations as a group and more trust is given to the students as they meet them Collaborative work environment includes the students and their suggestions Positive reinforcement encouraged for both students and staff

Questions? Jennie McKee Access Services Librarian Reed College Portland, OR