Building skills F2F – Using chat reference techniques

The UTSA Library, like many organizations, has been experiencing a period of rapid growth and change. Even positive change can cause stress in departments, and one way to help employees deal with change, while still providing customer-oriented service, is to establish a regular forum for discussion that encourages departmental communication. Training is an important aspect of employee development; however, the literature indicates that, in many organizations, training is often given little attention and relegated to the sidelines due to other demands on staff. With the hiring of new personnel, including a new Head of Reference and a Training Coordinator, the UTSA Library’s weekly meetings model was expanded to include more systematic training, including special events such as summer workshops. UTSA librarians provided training in-house, worked with vendors, and collaborated with librarians at other institutions to provide a variety of training sessions to Reference staff. This paper illustrates the training process by providing an overview of training offered to the UTSA Library Reference staff. To compare their training program with those at other libraries, UTSA librarians surveyed other academic libraries in the San Antonio area to determine what types of ongoing training were incorporated into their Reference departments. This paper concludes with recommendations for the future of the UTSA Library’s Reference training program