Remote training

Remote training

With the COVID-19 crisis, libraries are asking for remote training sessions. This page can help organizing your seminars !

Schedule

Introduction to the Digital experience: We will cover the OPAC, how it works and allow staff to get comfortable with the OPAC interface.

1. The Path of the Patron: The circle of patron activity from registration all the way through lost books, damaged items and everything in between.
2. The Life Cycle of the Book (Part 1): We will walk staff through the acquisition process, cataloging, and withdrawing/removing materials. We will follow a title from its birth to death inside the ILS.
3. The Life Cycle of the Book (Part 2): Continuation from part 1
4. Freedom to Change: We will demonstrate the administrative side of the Path of the Patron and Life Cycle of a Book. We will review reports, tools and system preferences and how they relate to each of these processes.

If libraries want to use acq or serials or to go really deep into cataloging they need more time. Benefit of webinars is it’s relatively easy to tack on more as needed.

tips and tricks

Manage expectations - It’s really hard to get as much connection and hands-on work over a webinar.

people

• Shorten times - We usually do webinars in 2 hours blocks. That seems to be all the attention span most folks have for it in a day.
• Break every hour.  Take a 5 min break, let them get a cup of coffee, get up and stretch their legs.
• Stay animated!
• Have them talk about a process that leads into the next action, sometimes this helps refocus attention when you notice a lack of involvement. They feel more invested when leading the conversation.
• Offer to meet several times after webinar training for Q&A and workflow questions.
• participants seem to have less energy for remote training than in-person training

technical aspects

• Don’t assume the librarian will be comfortable with Zoom. Some time spent familiarizing them with it is worth it!
• Have your camera on!
• Have their camera on, too, if possible. We’ve even talked about sending folks a webcam when they don’t have one.
• If they are comfortable, let them share their screen and walk through creating a patron, going through the lost process, adding an item to a record, etc.
• it's harder to monitor their progress, since you can't look over their shoulders and do as much one-on-one work
• Offer to record the sessions- this will ease the idea that they have to remember everything!
• Upload the recording and make them available to download