2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
Here’s how it all started. Our outreach librarian position is currently vacant at our
library. Every member of the library team does what he/she can to advertise our
services out to the command. I have always seen face to face vendor training as a
valuable asset that helps us make up for our current staffing scenario. There have
been many times when I wished online training could come with the same
guarantee. During a conversation with one of our vendors, I shared the reality of
our connectivity issues that prevail because of NMCI firewalls and the restricted
online environment we work within on a daily basis. Of course, he sympathized
with our situation. He wants to have marked success with his training too and has
a vested interest in seeing his participant numbers grow. We knew we needed an
alternative method.
I had heard about Defense Connect Online (DCO) which often serves as the
preferred DoD method for online meetings, collaborative sharing and presentations.
DCO has been tested in the NMCI environment. After watching a brief tutorial
about how to use DCO, I learned to navigate and initiate a session, as well as how
to invite participants to a join. Why not utilize our own DoD time-tested platform?
Of course! I knew the next step. I could recruit the vendor to come on board and
use one of our worry-free online training tools. It was all beginning to come
together.
Most vendor trainers are highly skilled at the use of a variety of online teaching
tools, which makes them more than willing to work with your existing online
training platform. I found that it is possible to improve a library’s online database
offerings when there is that cooperation and flexibility from a vendor trainer. The
Technical Library will soon be getting much more out of our traditional built-in
training sessions from our database vendor because we made it easier for our
online audience to connect in to the presentation. We also figured in a way to
stretch the rewards even further.
I set up a practice session in DCO and sent the link to our database trainer who was
able to run through the platform tools with ease. I prepared a five minute intro for
our library patrons that will clearly demonstrate how to navigate through our library
website and locate the most useful scholarly resources. I planned to hand over
presentation to the vendor trainer who would demonstrate relevant database
search strategies for the rest of the workshop hour. I suspected that all this effort
would result in a fine blend of personalized library access instruction and database
training in a “one-stop shop” style venue.
Interested in the results? Our first online workshop kicked off on July 10 th and it
was a wild success. We brought in 56 participants during our online event which
far exceeded the attendees at any previous workshops. In my humble opinion,
library outreach is alive and well with plans for our library to host more online
workshops of this nature in the future.
In summary, getting vendor trainers on board to use in-house established or other
preferred DoD online learning platforms could increase a military library’s chances
for reaching out and educating a larger audience. What’s more? It will likely reduce
the frustrations that are often brought on when patrons try to join an outside