Lori Reed | A Passion for Learning

February 25, 2010 By Lori Reed Leave a Comment

Congrats to Allison Sloan, 2010 Paraprofessional of the Year

Allison Sloan

Library Journal announced the winner of the 2010 Paraprofessional of the Year Award. Congratulations to Allison Sloan, senior library associate at Reading Public Library in Massachusetts. From the Library Journal article:

Her outstanding service and her championship of the term paralibrarian illustrates her passionately held and most fundamental belief: “This is not just a nice job, this is a career.”

“Of course there is an important place in libraries for people who do not have an advanced degree but who want to pursue a library career,” she says. “In Massachusetts we know that, and we call them ‘paralibrarians.’”

I am so happy to see Allison, a true advocate for the librarian in all of us, receive such well earned recognition. Please take a minute to read the complete article and see for yourself all the contributions Allison has made to the library profession.

Filed under: News

February 16, 2010 By Lori Reed 1 Comment

Webinars for Trainers and Training Managers

The Learning Round Table is happy to have two Emerging Leaders teams working on projects for our group. The message below is from one of the teams:

Our team has been tasked with the designing and planning of a series of webinars on topics of interest to trainers and managers/coordinators of training and staff development. The first step in this process is to determine topics for the webinar series, and we would like to hear what you have to say!

We would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to complete the following survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YK9YFV6

Thank you!
Jennifer and Team (Angela, Natalie, and Sonnet)
Jennifer Spriggs

If you have questions about the survey please direct them to Jennifer at jspriggs@allconet.org

Filed under: News

February 10, 2010 By Lori Reed 2 Comments

Finding Your Place in Your Organization

Yesterday during the Technology Essentials 2010: WebJunction Online Conference there was a session by Sandra Nelson about integrating your technology plan with your strategic plan. Home with a sick child, I enjoyed the conference via Twitter as tweets like this came in:

This tweet really stood out for me because defining the problem or what it is that we want is crucial, and I can’t agree with Sandra enough on the value of integrating anything that’s important to an organization into its strategic plan. The strategic plan is the North Star that guides an organization into the future. Not having a strategic plan is like sailing blindly into the night without any tools for navigation. You may end up in the Bahamas or you may end up in Antarctica. Your strategic plan determines your final destination and provides you with a map of how to get there.

My employer recently created a new strategic plan, and I was overjoyed to see the following listed as a strategic priority:

Once an organization has a strategic plan it’s important that each and every employee can find his or her place in the plan. This may seem like a small thing, but when employees know how they are contributing as an individual to the overall success of an organization, they feel ownership and pride in their jobs.

My place is clear, and I have this strategic outcome posted in my office. Why? Because this portion of the strategic plan is my North Star and it guides everything I do.

Any time I find myself with too many projects and not enough time, I step back and make sure that the projects I am working on contribute to my strategic plan (taking ownership). All of my goals and outcomes for my job support this one part of the Library’s bigger plan.

Last fall we created a new Employee Learning & Development Curriculum. All of the training within the curriculum ties in to the strategic plan for the Library.

Does your organization have a strategic plan? If so, have you identified your role in that plan? If your organization does not have a strategic plan, are there ways that you can ensure you are contributing to the overall success of the organization?