Thanks to Lori Reed for pointing out this excellent podcast from Joan Frye Williams and George Needham from their Thinking Out Loud series. I just listened to it for the second time and took some notes:

• What is the social contract…our obligation to keep our skills current.
• Training budgets are seen as an easy mark in cuts to save money (they keep staff, but cut training)
• What does it cost to keep skills current?
• Investment necessary if we’re going to keep up-to-date.
• How can you stay vital and active in your community? If the resources you work with are getting trimmed back, you may need more in your bag of tricks.
• Who’s responsibility is “learning”? The individual’s? The organization’s?
• Your organization may help you keep your skills up to date, but you need to take the responsibility to act upon the knowledge you’ve acquired and apply them to the goals of the organization.
• How can we move toward a state where learning is something we all agreed to do? …to see learning as an opportunity to help each other be more successful, instead of staying in our own little silos.
• Ask yourself: What can I learn or contribute to help others learn to do their job?
• And be willing to go to others with your suggestions AND for them to not take it as a criticism of their work or inability to do the work. Acronym to remember: Q-TIP (quit taking it personally)
• Learn how to transpose what you’re learning in other spaces to your work in the library (eg. customer service you receive when shopping)
• One of the ways to tell if you’re doing a library job right is if you’re learning something.
• Learning has intrinsic awards.
• Learning is not penance.
• Management: your support for learning helps your staff feel engaged.

Bravo, George and Joan!