Planning Great Library Training Sessions

The most recent issue of the AALL Spectrum (Volume 14 No. 6 April 2010) features an article by Carol J. Schmitt called Public Relations: What Goes Around Comes Around - The cycle of success for great library training sessions.

It offers a number of useful tips on organizing training activities:

"Library training is a blessing and curse. While it gives librarians a chance to showcase their knowledge about services, products, and how the library can assist in meeting the organization’s needs, training also requires taking time out of everyone’s days and routines. It is the first thing everyone asks for and often the first thing that everyone tries to get out of (...) Here are some strategies to ensure that your training is more of a blessing than a curse."

Earlier Library Boy posts on the topic of training include:

• Coffee Talk Training Sessions at the Supreme Court of Canada Library (November 17, 2008): "Getting people to come to training sessions in legal research is never easy: law students, law clerks, lawyers, other personnel are always busy, they may not be working on your presentation topic and therefore see no reason to attend, or they would rather not be lectured to for 45 minutes. Solution: bribe them with free coffee!"
• New AALL Research Instruction Blog (January 7, 2009): "RIPS, the Research Instruction and Patron Services interest group of the American Association of Law Libraries, recently launched a blog..."
• Use of Instructional Videos by Dalhousie University Libraries (February 21, 2009): "Dalhousie University Libraries in Halifax, Nova Scotia provide some great examples of instructional videos to help library users. They show a great diversity of approaches."
• Canadian Law Librarians Share Training Materials (November 10, 2009): "The Courthouse and Law Society Libraries Special Interest Group of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries has updated its list of instructional materials compiled by members. This includes tutorials, research guides, handouts etc."
• Legal Research Teach-In Toolkit from American Association of Law Libraries (March 22, 2010): "The Research Instruction and Patron Services Special Interest Section (a sub-group of the American Association of Law Libraries) has released its 18th Annual National Legal Research Teach-In Kit. Every year, the Section solicits contributions from the law library community that other librarians can use to develop their own instructional activities at their institutions."