Hello, my name is Kevin Yezbick and I’m an Adult Services Librarian with the Farmington Community Library in Farmington Hills, MI. Now that I’m finally able to log on to the free PLA wifi, I can contribute my coverage. Yay!

My first session this morning was spent attending Where do you think YOU’RE going?! Retaining Institutional Knowledge of Soon-to-be-Retirees, as presented by Meg Delaney and Amy Hartman from the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library.

With the often mentioned boom in librarian retirements apparently upon us, not to mention budget cuts creating the unexpected departures of several of our colleagues, retaining their knowledge for our institutions should be a critical goal demanding our attention. Several suggested steps were offered to begin the process of gathering the wisdom of our peers.

The first step is attempting to recognize what knowledge you are looking to retain. This can be achieved through the careful perusal of annual evaluations. These evaluations are simplified into four questions:

• What did you do in the last year?
• What are you most proud of?
• What do you want to do next year?
• How can I (as a supervisor) help you?

The responses to these evaluations are also simplified into one page responses. Knowledge can also be found in daily reference collaboration. Sharing our stories of stumpers and successes at staff meetings become instant learning opportunities. Amy and Meg mentioned rewarding staff initiative with what they called the Spotlight award. Staff nominate each other when they see someone excelling for the “Spotlight Award”. (Our own library has been wrestling with how best to reward staff initiative lately, so it was nice to have our attention brought to one possible reward: movie tickets. The rewards don’t necessarily have to be monetary however – I’ve often found the recognition from a peer to be rewarding in itself – and more genuine.) At the end of the year, the Spotlight Award winners are evaluated for an annual award for “Legendary Service.”

Staff knowledge and expertise obviously isn’t limited to what occurs at the reference desk. Some of us excel at programing, others at weeding, storytime, programming, community connections, displays or tech instruction. It’s important to break down these silos of expertise by encouraging collaboration. It’s also important to pass this knowledge through documentation. Encouraging staff to contribute to a “Handy Folder” at the reference desk, or incrementally note successful strategies on a staff wiki is a positive step towards knowledge retention.

Managers play a vital role in encouraging use of the staff wiki. To counter the “I don’t have time” argument, managers should schedule training and offer suggestions for contributions. One idea for first time contributors is to establish a fun around town page, or a recipe pool, so that wiki newbies can get their feet wet. Once people begin to see the worth in the tool, the incremental contributions will increase and the tool becomes an invaluable institutional resource.