Poster Board Number: 90
Title: Letting Go of Learn-As-You-Go: Establishing an Official Employee Handbook and Formal Orientation Process in an Academic Library after Forty Years
Objectives: The goals of this project were to create an official employee handbook and design a formal orientation process for library employees in an academic health sciences library forty years after being established.
Methods: Under the leadership of a newly appointed director, a long-range strategic plan for the library was prepared in 2002. One of the goals stated the need to develop a formal orientation process for new library employees. Upon the hiring of several new librarians recently, the authors volunteered to design an orientation process, as well as write an employee handbook. They explored options for hosting the handbook online and chose the MediaWiki platform because it was already being used as an internal collaboration tool in the library. Brainstorming sessions were held to determine the information to include in the handbook and the organization of the final product. The authors wrote sections of the handbook and provided links to information already available on the institution’s website. Finally, the authors developed an orientation procedure to ensure that all employees would be trained equally.
Results: Developing the employee handbook and orientation process has been a long and arduous task. The project was temporarily suspended due to lack of time. At the time of this abstract, the authors are planning a formal presentation of the handbook and orientation process for the medical library department. However, several librarians have already utilized the handbook and have provided positive feedback. Library administration is currently seeking to fill a position within the department; therefore, the orientation process will soon be “tested,” as well.
Conclusions: The handbook provides information and links to pertinent resources in electronic format in one convenient place for all library employees. The structured orientation process provides a knowledgebase of departmental and institutional procedures and establishes a solid foundation for ongoing training.
Authors: Deidra Woodson, Metadata and Digitization Librarian; Mark Baggett, Assistant Systems Librarian; Kimberly Pullen, Liaison Section Program, Head; Medical Library; Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Shreveport, LA
