The Survey of Library Employee Training Practices

• Publication date: May 2012
• Report size: 110 pages

The 110+ page study looks closely at how academic, public and special libraries train their employees and it helps readers to answer questions such as:: how many libraries and what type of libraries have specific training budgets and training directors?  Do they conduct internal courses? Send employees to external courses? Use library science schools? Do they reimburse employees for library science courses taken at universities? How much do they...

The 110+ page study looks closely at how academic, public and special libraries train their employees and it helps readers to answer questions such as:: how many libraries and what type of libraries have specific training budgets and training directors?  Do they conduct internal courses? Send employees to external courses? Use library science schools? Do they reimburse employees for library science courses taken at universities? How much do they spend on internal courses, external courses or library science schools?  Who oversees training?  Which areas receive the most training support? Technical services? Information technology? Digitization? Circulation? Management? To what extent does the library use training services such as LibraryU, Merlot or Webjunction, among others?
 
Just a few of the report's many findings are that:
 
-In the past year, the formal allocation for personnel training among libraries in the sample averaged $16,663. 
-Internal training courses are conducted by 66.67% of libraries in the sample, including 61.9% of academic libraries, 76.19% of public libraries and 33.33% of special libraries. 
-Only 11.11% of the libraries sampled pay for degrees at library science schools. 
-In the last year, libraries in the sample have spent a mean of $641 on external or adjunct instructors to teach training courses in house. 
-21.95% of libraries in the sample have one person in charge of staff training, i.e. a training coordinator, while 78.05% of libraries say that staff training is a collaborative effort shared among people with many different job titles. 
-21.43% of libraries in the sample financially support training in information literacy teaching and 11.9% strongly support it. 30.95% of libraries somewhat support training in information literacy teaching, while 35.71% do not support it at all, many of these libraries without a specific budgetary allocation for personnel training. 
-Digital training kits from PLA's Train the Trainer Series have been purchased or utilized by 6.82% of libraries in the sample, all of these public libraries with annual budgets over $5,000,000. 
-18.18% of libraries in the sample with more than 100 FTE employees and 20% of libraries with an annual budget of more than $5,000,000 use LibraryU. 
-60% of libraries in the sample with annual overall budgets over $5,000,000 use Webjunction for library personnel training. 
-50% of libraries with annual overall budgets of less than $1 million do not require formal staff training of new hires. 
-A mean of 19.88% of class takers attending training sessions in libraries in the sample are from institutions other than the library sponsoring the training.

Knowledge Management Industry