Well said, and thank you for saying it.

I would like to push back just a tiny bit on the time argument. If time is a problem for everyone, what is the justification for spending a technical person's time working through another person's elementary technical problems?

I'd add one thing, although I'm not sure if I can come up with a nice title for it. Probably because it is actually a consequence of some of these issues and not a cause.

I frequently see people doing tasks that could be done much quicker and easier through automation or a similar technological solution. However, that solution would require a steeper learning curve. A rough example of something I've seen recently. Someone had to change a certain name in a lot of documents. Can you guess how I found them doing it? Opened each file, reread it, and made changes as necessary. As the size of files increases, both does the time required and the likelihood of mistakes. Of course, a quicker way would be to use search and replace. Had these been text files, an even quicker way would have been a script that did this for all the files in the folder. The use of search and replace really starts at someone to pause and say "This is too frustrating/boring/annoying, there must be a better way" and poking around the word processor and be willing to try "search and replace". The second step requires another level of knowledge.

Perhaps one of the causes of technology learning is staff is just "Not frustrated easily enough","Willing to do repetitive work", or "just too hard of a worker" ;).

Dorothea, I'm not sure there is a justification. This gets back to some of the factors I described in my post that bring people to ask elementary questions in the first place. I think I have more explanations than I have solutions!

One thing I sometimes see in my library is informal peer assistance. If someone is aware that a colleague knows how to do something, she'll often ask that person for help. In this way, some problems can be solved without involvement of the technical staff. My library may be large enough for this to happen (40 librarians, 80 other staff), so this scenario might not work in smaller environments.

Jonathan, I agree that what you describe is a consequence of these issues. Maybe another issue is a lack of periodic review procedures that examine the way things are done, followed by a commitment to take things to the next level when possible.

Sure, Laura, but that has its own pitfalls, notably turning someone into unremunerated and unacknowledged technical-support staff to the detriment of her actual job duties. (If you sense a certain amount of personal frustration, it's because I've been there, done that, and have some!)

I hear Dorothea's frustration, but I don't fully understand it.
The time justification is not on a personal level, but on an organizational level. Sure, I am capable of spending a couple of hours working my way through a technical task I need to perform once every 6 months, or I can call my buddy Fred who can do it in 5 minutes. Hard on Fred, perhaps (although he never complains) but a more efficient use of the organization's total resources. This is not a one-way street: I am a resource, too. When Fred needs my expertise, I am thrilled to save his time by sharing what I know.

Technical training is the same. We can all bumble forward, each taking a long time, with much trial and error, to get up to speed, or we can leverage one person's expertise to bring several people up to speed faster. That said, administration needs to be smart about making sure everyone's time is used effectively, and that training/hand-holding gets the priority (high OR low) that best advances the organization's goals. Not mine, not Fred's.

Robin, Thank you. I can't speak for Dorothea, but if I'm understanding her correctly, she's concerned about the technical staff whose time is inordinately taken up with helping colleagues with simple things. To my mind, this is where train-the-trainer concepts can be very useful, if informal peer assistance doesn't work out. And this takes cooperation from both administration and staff. Without that, I can see her point.

I've been the beneficiary of the scenario you describe, on both the giving and receiving end. So I think you both make valid points.

This is a great conversation. My addition to the thread is this-staff will not learn without making mistakes, perhaps lots of mistakes. But this is part of the learning process and most of us learn through our mistakes.

If IT/ADMIN have too much fear of someone downloading a virus or wiping out valuable information, the tendency is to not turn on permissions. There is no incentive to learn new skills if you cannot use them in your daily routine. Some libraries have the computers so locked down that permission must be granted for a change in a screen resolution or backgrounds. Staff are unable to download an upgrade to Flash/Adobe/Media Player or other useful and ever-changing tools. I hear lots of frustration from staff.

Also, if we substitute "library customer/patrons/user" for "staff" does our perspective change? I have read reams of text about making the internet/catalog/website easier for our patrons. "Don't make me think", make the web intuitive/easy/findable/, save the customers' time and all that.

Well, staff are IT/trainers' customers. I don't say this to excuse professional staff from continuous renewal of skills at all. But if you are having to repeat yourself maybe there are steps to take. Core competencies? Performance reviews? Leading by example? Changing the requirements for the position? Re-thinking what needs to be done on what level and who should be doing the job? Library 2.0 training a la PLCMC's Helene Blowers? Haven't we all been working our tails off to make our library customers' experience better and doesn't the same apply for staff?

Dorothea, love your blog, even on the rare occasion I don't agree with you. Laura, a fan since about 1999. Thanks!

Susan, Thanks for joining the discussion. I hadn't thought about the issue of staff permissions. That's a very good point. While I fully support good security policies (and have been involved in setting some of them), such policies shouldn't prevent exploration and learning. For example, in my library, we have a test Web server that staff can use to try out new things.

I'm with you about the "steps to take." Much of what you suggest requires savvy and focused administration. I think this is the key to so much!

Karen Coombs had a good post on restrictive IT policies and Library 2.0.

Laura's enumeration of the reasons behind the "training wheel culture" seems pretty accurate based on my experience. I would say on the issue of spending time to figure things out, however, the question of the time commitment really seems to me to depend on the nature of the specific task and/or technology. Spending an hour figuring out something you'd only do twice a year, as in Robin's example, would be a waste of time. Spending time learning something you'll actually use, or that serves as a building block for more complex functions, is not wasteful.

Not using a useful technology until someone is available to train you on it is a different story. I realize many people really learn best via instruction, but I think too many people insist that this is the only mode that will work for them, which seems self-limiting.

Bruce, Thanks for alerting us to Karen's post. It's a good one.

I completely agree, the nature of the skill and how often you'll use it is an important consideration in deciding whether to spend the time to learn it or to ask for help. In this posting, I assumed I was referring to skills that are relevant, frequently useful, and a good step forward for the staff.

If possible, I would LOVE to get a copy of your tutorial you are planning/talking about in this blog post. I, too, create tech instruction for faculty.

It sounds to me the best way to overcome training-wheel mentailty is making it a recurring training topic.

Have a weekly, byweekly session where technical problems are discussed. Have the IT expert bring up a topic from his recent experience and demonstrate the solution. Ask for other issues that staff members bring up. make sure they are comfortable to raise their problems, encourage everyone to contribute and do not blam anyone for his/her missing knowledge (in public). Motivate staff members to use technology to save time and repetitive frustration.

Make it a management priority to develop the technical skills of users/librarians. Identify in those session the staff members that can't follow the demonstrations. Make it part of the individual development program (learning goals, classes, courses) to improve on those things. Reward technical skills with awards and recognition as well as money and promotion.

Just my five cents.

Conficio, Recurring training sessions that are comfortable for the participants are, in my view, definitely a good thing. We used to have these in my library and they petered out. I think one reason for this was a missing piece of the puzzle: the "management priority" that you describe.

The technical skills are more necessary than ever before, yet I'd have to say that they are not always stressed in the library school curriculum. Even for a relatively new grad-- perhaps even 5 years out of school, if they have been employed by institutions that have not taken a great role in the advancement of technology then they're behind the times. Taking a rudimentary class in cataloging doesn't make someone an expert cataloger, this holds true with other areas of technology- once library schools break from the model of theory (which, don't get me wrong is truly important) and impart more practical knowledge with a heavy dose of technology - we'd all fall behind. Secondly, the necessity of keeping up with technology. Most of us don't have computer science backgrounds, yet we have to keep on top of developments. Keeping abreast of new technology needs to be seen as important by library directors and other department heads-- this may mean having tech sessions for librarians in various divisions, as well as giving time (and $) for employee training and association participation.

Re: "the nature of the skill and how often you'll use it is an important consideration in deciding whether to spend the time to learn it or to ask for help."

With technology, the skills that you learn doing one task may often help you better understand another. Technology skills often build upon one another and if you only extend your skills based upon what you think may or may not be immediately useful, you are doing yourself and your institution a disservice. The task that you do twice a year may become a more frequent occurrence as technology advances.