Working With and For Each Other

Reading Huntsville-Madison County Public Library Staff Training and Development Coordinator Marianne Lenox’s wonderfully concise summary of learning theory and resources in a single posting on the American Library Association (ALA) Learning Round Table blog reminded me once again how close our cherished resources are these days.

Participating in web conferencing sessions through Maurice Coleman’s T Is For Training biweekly sessions, engaging in online chats and conducting interviews via Google Chat, and reading and responding to postings on individual and group blogs or LinkedIn discussion groups for trainer-teacher-learners means that we’re never far from Lenox and others who can help us in our training-teaching-learning endeavors.

What starts online can lead to treasures previously unimagined. Join the T Is For Training participants as they discuss challenges they are facing and resolving and you soon find yourself using and contributing to the links to training materials they are continuing to create on Delicious. Explore the links to individual and group blogs listed on the left-hand side of the T Is For Training page and soon you find yourself relishing Library Garden articles such as Peter Bromberg’s piece on “How to Ignite Your Passion” or John LeMasney’s “5 Great Tools and Techniques for Developing Presentations,” or discovering Jill Hurst-Wahl’s  “Assessing User Needs” article and following links to other resources. Respond to a posting by Lori Reed or Sarah Houghton-Jan and you are quickly on your way to being part of a community of learners that leaves you feeling less isolated than you otherwise might be.

The key remains engagement. Participating even at a rudimentary level in the various online activities available through these resources, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), and other groups and organizations supportive of face-to-face and online learning soon leads to contacts which are only an e-mail, a Skype exchange, or a phone call away. And that’s the real pleasure and benefit of the brief moments we give to these exchanges: they remind us of how much we gain while working with and for each other.

N.B.: For more on working with and for each other, please read the companion piece on the ALA Learning blog.

Training, Planning, and Collaborating to Build the Future

Emerging from an intense period of preparing for presentations at the American Library Association (ALA) 2009 Conference in Chicago this summer and the American Society for Training & Development Chapter Leader Conference to be held in Arlington at the end of this month (along with many other projects),  I’ve just rejoined my colleagues writing for the ALA Learning Round Table blog.

What has drawn me back to blogging is a desire to document the magnificent results coming from trainers’ collaborations. A key to our continuing successes in providing first-rate training opportunities through workshops, conferences, and other endeavors is that workplace learning and performance professionals seem to thrive on a fine combination of defining roles and remaining willing to step in as needed whenever time allows.

To see this process in action, you can read the entire piece at the ALA Learning blog, then continue on the same site to see what other trainers are producing.

The Spirit of Volunteerism (2nd of 3): Lori Reed

 

In writing about Librarian in Black Sarah Houghton-Jan and her decision to volunteer personal information about herself in the hope that it would make a positive difference for others, I was struck by the spirit of volunteerism which seems almost genetically imbedded into the trainer-teacher-learners I know.

There’s a willingness among them take risks; reveal personal details which contribute something meaningful to other learners; and ungrudgingly volunteer time and effort to support an incredibly large and significant number of projects, endeavors, and causes which make their—our—onsite and online communities better places than they otherwise would be.

Reading Sarah’s revelations about the health challenges she and others with Ehlers-Danlos-Syndrome face and knowing that she will do whatever she can to help others, I immediately thought of another friend-colleague-associate who is an equally committed trainer-teacher-learner with an incredible penchant for volunteerism: Lori Reed, the Employee Learning & Development Coordinator for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, a blogger whose work is highly admired and frequently read, and a volunteer who is active in the American Library Association’s training group (CLENE—soon to become LEARNING) and the American Society for Training & Development.

And, like Sarah, she faces challenges—in Lori’s case, a diagnosis of “a form of muscular dystrophy called charcot-marie-tooth disease,” which she disclosed in a blog posting in October 2008.

Neither Sarah nor Lori have spent much time talking about their conditions; each chose to make those revelations in one-time postings to help others learn something important. And then they have moved on.  Because they are far too busy volunteering and being paid to make significant contributions to libraries and those who use them. To training-teaching-learning. And many other causes to which they give themselves heart and mind and soul.

Lori, for example, currently serves as Co-VP of Membership on the board of directors for the ASTD Charlotte Chapter. She also frequently volunteers to speak at more conferences than most of us will attend in a lifetime; is a frequent presenter on webcasts and webinars; writes for publication; and maintains her Library Trainer blog and LibraryLearning Google group which provide our community of learners with additional virtual meeting places to exchange ideas and become better at what we do.

If you’re at all interested or active in training, teaching, and learning—particularly in libraries—you’re going to find Lori and Sarah at the center of the world where workplace learning and performance professionals meet. And, in the spirit of volunteerism which each so clearly and effectively displays, Lori and Sarah won’t be there as self-aggrandizing rock stars, but as passionate movers and shakers, as Library Journal acknowledged this year. Through words and deeds, they help keep the rest of us alive. Awake. And inspired.

Next: The Spirit of Volunteerism—The One Who Got Away