Umbella 2011: Currency of staff IT skills

Umbrella 2011

Beyond Pathfinder: Currency of staff IT skills

[Being my notes on Alan Brine’s presentation who was talking at an impressive rate so my notes may be slightly garbled in places]

Integrating IT support at the point of delivery

Background was fast changing and volume of technology, 24/7 academic library environment, lots of IT-related questions to library staff e.g. because the IT Department had gone home and the Library with all the products was open or because they were easier to ask direct, so wanted to integrate IT support at point of delivery in library and ensure all staff could handle typical questions.

So there was a HEFCE funded project that involved talking to students and staff trying to figure out all the different skills that were needed and where these skills existed, and to what level in the staff and what type of staff needed what level in which functions. Drew up a very large IT Skills Matrix. Highest level skills were in the IT Department and the Library.

Addressing gaps through training and development

Gap area’s tended to be around bespoke areas, advanced functions, ATHENS  / e-resources. Things that were more specialist or asked less often.. Range of solutions used from short informal drop in sessions on how to do a specific thing (very popular) through to more formalised IT training sessions, ECDL etc. Also used wiki’s, guides, VLAD. Wiki was very popular and highly used. Improved technical literacy and gave rise to more use of some systems.

Issues

Clear will need to keep reviewing and up-dating requirements and ensuring the necessary skills are present. People preferred face to face and personal communication, meant there was a recognition of the additional workload on staff needing to use these skills and keep up with changes.

Future

Move towards giving information to users as they find difficulties and need it rather than trying to cover everything at induction, culture change required, lots of work on effective communication methods required, needed additional work to be carried out to define the way forward.