Growing a Learning Organization

What IS a Learning Organization anyway? A Learning Organization is an organization that creates, captures, and transfers knowledge so that new knowledge leads to improved performance. A learning organization… • Encourages and supports continuous learning, critical and innovative thinking. • Allows mistakes and values employee contributions. • Learns from experience and experiments. • Disseminates new knowledge throughout the organization for incorporation into day-to-day activities. Last July I began serving as the Learning Organization Librarian at UC Santa Barbara. My call is to "promote Library effectiveness by defining, creating and implementing the organization’s learning and development programs for Librarians, Library Staff and Student Assistant positions and for ensuring the assessment and continuous improvement of these programs. Working collaboratively with department and unit leaders, facilitate processes to enable UCSB Library to become a Learning Organization." This is no small undertaking, however much progress has been made. This session will share the philosophies, strategies, and early successes of this exciting professional development program for all library staff