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Paul Signorelli’s “Getting To Know Me” Post

January 19, 2010 By

1.   Your One Sentence Bio
I was born; have been deeply immersed in writing, training-teaching-learning, and working with libraries and nonprofit organizations for many years; am honored to sometimes be mistaken for ALA Learning colleague Peter Bromberg when the two of us are lucky enough to be on Maurice Coleman’s T is for Training podcasts at the same; and plan to die someday—which, I believe, covers all bases.

2.   Do you blog? If yes, how did you come up with your blog name?
You’ll find me blogging here at ALA Learning and at Building Creative Bridges. I came up with the name because “Librarian In Black,” “Library Trainer,” and “(almost) Bald Trainer” were already taken by writers better than I’ll ever be, and Building Creative Bridges seemed like a good way to describe what I hoped to accomplish through the blog and everything else I’m doing.

3.   What is your professional background?
As far as I can tell, I’ve worked for newspapers, magazines, a couple of schools in Japan, the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the San Francisco Public Library system, and with a variety of other groups and organizations, but if you’ve heard differently, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

4.   What training do you do? staff? patrons? types of classes?
My position as Director, Volunteer Services & Staff Training for the San Francisco Public Library system had me providing orientations, software introductions and updates, and other learning opportunities for staff and volunteers; current training-teaching-learning efforts include writing e-learning courses for Infopeople and LE@D (Lifelong Education @ Desktop)–http://www.leadonline.info/–and conducting workshops at professional conferences.
 
5. What training do you think is most important to libraries right now?
We need to be combining sessions on practical matters (software upgrades, customer service, leadership and collaboration skills, conflict resolution, health and safety issues) with inspirational/visionary/long-term matters (how to continue serving library members and guests on site and online, maintaining libraries as on-site and online community centers, becoming collaborators with members of the communities we serve rather than one-way providers of information and services).
 
6.   Where do you get your training?
For training-learning, I try everything I can think of, including conversations with colleagues; on-site and online workshops and courses; blogs/RSS feeds; books; journals, magazines, and newspapers; webinars; conferences; speakers at ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) and ALA (American Library Association) meetings and conferences—and I’m sure that’s only about half the list.

7.   How do you keep up?
Keep up?

8.  What do you think are the biggest challenges libraries are facing
right now?
One of the many large challenges is to recognize and respond to their increasingly huge role in being learning centers for their local and online communities while not abandoning any of the important and life-changing roles their members and guests still expect them to fulfill. 

9.   What are biggest challenges for trainers?
All too often, we have training-teaching-learning as part of our job rather than as the entire focus of our job, which leads to lots of half-finished projects, lots of stress for everyone, and less than optimum learning opportunities; focusing on our own continuing education and our primary roles as workplace learning and performance providers might be the best lesson-by-example that we can provide to colleagues whose workplace focus is equally divided to their own detriment and the detriment of those they serve. 

10.   What exciting things are you doing training wise?
Trying to be creative face-to-face and online in the way I respond to learners’ needs: delivering a synchronous online learning opportunity through live Google Chat, for example, was a fun distance-learning experiment with a University of Nevada, Las Vegas colleague and his class in October 2009.

11.   What do you wish you were doing?
Writing; oh, wait, I am writing.

12.   What would you do with a badger?
Teach it to use Google Chat so it could more effectively participate in synchronous online learning opportunities.

13.   What’s your favorite food?
Pizza.  Purchased somewhere in NY, NJ or the Philly area.  If you’re not buying pizza in one of these geographic areas it’s not really pizza.  Sorry, it’s not.  (OK, an exception for Chicago deep-dish.  As long as you qualify it.)

14.   If you were stranded on an island, what one thing would you want
to have with you?
A confirmed flight back to the mainland.

15.   Do you know what happens when a grasshopper kicks all the seeds
out of a pickle?
I live in San Francisco; can someone tell me what a grasshopper is?

16.   Post it notes or the back of your hand?
No, thanks.

17.    Windows or Mac?
OK, but definitely not on the first date.

18.   Talk about one training moment you’d like to forget?
Can’t remember; must be an occupational hazzard since at least one other ALA Learning colleague has responded similarly.

19.   What’s your take on handshakes?
A handshake is certainly a pleasant way to avoid open warfare in a learning environment.

20.   Global warming: yes or no?
Best response I’ve seen is Jill Sobule’s “happy song about global warming”; who am I to argue?

21.   How did you get into this line of work?
My supervisor at the time told me I had to take over the organization’s staff training program if I was going to keep my job; I found that to be tremendously motivating.

22.   What is the best part of your job?
Being part of what ASTD refers to as the effort to “create a world that works better.”

23.   Why should someone else follow in your shoes?
This question reminds me of a story from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidism, which I will now paraphrase to the best of my recollection. The gist of it: Samuel, a very devout man who is struggling to be good in the eyes of the Lord, approaches the Rabbi and asks, “Rabbi, should I try to be more like Moses or more like Abraham?”  The Rabbi replies, “Rather than trying to be more like Moses, or more like Abraham, the Lord would be pleased if you tried to be more like Samuel.” And that’s all I have to say about that.

24.   Sushi or hamburger?
Depends on who is asking.

N.B.: Special thanks to Peter Bromberg for allowing me to insert, verbatim, his answers to questions #13 and #23 here. I figured if I couldn’t match his responses for cleverness, I might as well just outright steal them and see if I could further confuse colleagues about which of us is speaking (please see response to question #1, above).

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Training, Planning, and Collaborating to Build the Future

October 11, 2009 By

Trainer-teacher-learners are by nature forward-thinking and collaborative. There is no reason, after all, to invest time, money, energy, and other precious resources into helping others learn if we don’t believe there will be a payoff for everyone involved.

It’s no surprise, therefore, to see that local, regional, and national groups of trainers are providing replicable examples of how to produce magnificent results with a modicum of effort even during the challenging times we’re facing. Members of the American Library Association (ALA) Learning Round Table, for example produced two sell-out training workshops at the 2009 ALA Conference in Chicago this summer while other groups were struggling to attract minimal audiences; we also once again presented a first-rate “training showcase” open free of charge to our colleagues throughout ALA.

Training and other professional groups around the world, undaunted by the difficulty of attracting participants, are producing “future of library” conferences and panel discussions to inspire like-minded colleagues.  ALA itself, this summer, had a standing-room-only panel discussion on the topic.  The University of Arizona has sponsored conferences for several years. The Colorado Association of Libraries, Queensland (Australia) Department of Education and Training, and Southeast Florida Library Information Network have all recently been involved in future of library conference planning, and a “Future of Libraries within the Framework of Sustainable Development” was held on the island of Guadeloupe in June 2009.

An earlier article for this blog detailed the successes achieved by trainers in the Mt. Diablo Chapter of the American Society for Training & Development in attracting and retaining new members; at the heart of the success were the collaborative efforts of a few of us who improved the Chapter’s speaker series so it provided effective training for the trainers it is meant to serve.

Similar successes have come from another informal group of trainers meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Pacific Library Partnership Staff Development Committee (formerly the Library Staff Development Committee of the Greater Bay Area). Seeing how this group operates suggests that we are far from living in a protracted dark age for training in spite of training-budget cutbacks.

The 10 to 12 core members of the group, in planning our fifth annual future of libraries conference this year, recognized early in our planning process that attracting attendees would be a challenge, so we made some key decisions. We would continue to rely on the individual skills of our planning group to use available resources—attracting an enthusiastic speaker whom we knew we could afford, enticing local presenters who were willing to volunteer their time to be part of what we were developing, relying on a combination of a first-rate publicist on our committee and additional well coordinated marketing efforts undertaken by other members of the committees to do much more than we have done before in reaching prospective paid attendees—without letting any part of the process become overwhelming for any individual member of the planning group.

A key to our continuing successes—and this year’s event was another profitable endeavor even though attendance was, as anticipated, considerably lower than it has been in better times: approximately 100 people compared to the sell-out audiences of 220 we have had in previous years—is that we employ a combination of well defined roles and a willingness to step in wherever needed as our time allows.

As is the case with every successful group I work with, I see an amazing ability for my colleagues in this training group to accomplish a lot in very little time (one face-to-face meeting every other month), combine skills to attain a well establish goal (producing conferences and other training events with real value to the people who attend them), and donate a very limited number of hours of work (five to 10) between each meeting so the projects stay on track. If we see that we need to increase our marketing and other promotional endeavors, we coordinate our efforts to combine personal contact, email messages, and the use of listservs to reach our audience. If we discover that we’re not attracting the presenters whom we need, we continue sharing resources by phone, email, or face to face until we have a winning package.

The result is that we continually produce events we’re proud of offering—events which inspire our audiences with useful and easily adapted ideas they can apply when they return to work. And we have fun—which, I believe, is the real future of libraries, training groups, and everyone we touch through all the work we do. For by showing others how easy it can be to achieve significant and long-last goals, we are offering the best we have to offer as trainer-teacher-learners.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Thank You to Our Sponsors

August 21, 2009 By

At ALA Annual in Chicago the Learning Round Table, formerly known as CLENE, held its 6th Annual Training Showcase.

We want to send out A HUGE THANK YOU to our training showcase sponsors! Their generous sponsorship helped offset the many costs of the showcase. Please check out what our sponsors have to offer in the way of library staff training and development resources and services.

6th Annual Training Showcase Donors

Sincerely,

Pat Carterette
President
ALA Learning Round Table

Lori Reed

Lori Reed, Managing Editor of ALA Learning, has more than 15 years experience in training and is the Learning & Development Coordinator for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library where she oversees the learning & development of a diverse group of staff at twenty libraries. Lori’s passions are performance consulting, learning strategies, and e-learning. Lori is coauthor, with Paul Signorelli, of Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers. Lori also blogs at LoriReed.com and can be reached at lori[at]lorireed.com.

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The Learning Round Table (formerly CLENERT) is sponsoring its first Emerging Leader in 2010!

July 27, 2009 By

We’re looking for Emerging Leader applicants with interest and/or experience in the following areas

  • staff training;
  • staff development; and/or
  • continuing education of library staff

Do you want to learn more about the ALA Learning Round Table, take on a project related to continued learning and be engaged in the work of the round table? The Learning Round Table has committed to sponsoring an Emerging Leader and providing $1000 towards conference expenses for the person selected.

Applicants must meet the general Emerging Leader criteria set forth by ALA as well as criteria set forth by the Learning Round Table:

  1. Be under 35 years of age or be a new library professional of any age with fewer than 5 years of experience working at a professional or paraprofessional level in a library and
  2. Be able to attend both ALA conferences and work virtually in-between each
  3. Be willing to commit to membership in both ALA and the Learning Round Table if accepted
  4. Be prepared to commit to serving in ALA or your state or local professional library organization upon completion of the program

Upon review of the applications and resumes, the Board of the Learning Round Table will select one Emerging Leader whom we will sponsor.

Applicants, please submit the Learning Round Table Emerging Leader Application no later than August 15, 2009. In addition, email your resume to info [at] alalearning.org.

Applicants will be notified on or about September 1, 2009.

Note: Applicants may complete both the Learning Round Table Emerging Leader application and the ALA Emerging Leader, if desired. The Learning Round Table will select an Emerging Leader from our pool of applicants. ALA will select a larger number of applicants.

Please contact LearningRT’s president Pat Carterette at pcarterette [at] georgialibraries.org with any questions.

Lori Reed

Lori Reed, Managing Editor of ALA Learning, has more than 15 years experience in training and is the Learning & Development Coordinator for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library where she oversees the learning & development of a diverse group of staff at twenty libraries. Lori’s passions are performance consulting, learning strategies, and e-learning. Lori is coauthor, with Paul Signorelli, of Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers. Lori also blogs at LoriReed.com and can be reached at lori[at]lorireed.com.

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Tipping Points and Cows

March 31, 2009 By

It’s not as if trainer-teacher-learners—a group which includes nearly anyone currently affiliated with or using libraries—have any extra time on our hands. There are mornings when the act of opening our eyes and glancing at our to-do lists is enough to make us want to dive back under our blankets, close our eyes, and hope that visions of things to be done will somehow miraculously vanish before we move out of the comfort of our beds.

That, however, didn’t stop several of us from immediately rising to the challenge posed by our fellow CE Buzz blogger Peter Bromberg this morning when he noted–in much kinder and gentler words than I’m using here–that we’ve become somewhat slothful about keeping up our commitment to contribute to CE Buzz and the community of learnersit represents. In asking us whether we wanted to continue as contributors and, more importantly, whether we were willing to commit to a fairly easy schedule of posting articles so that fresh content appears regularly, Peter inadvertently reminded us why we were so attracted to the site initially.

My immediate reaction was to call Peter; discuss what we’re doing and what we might be doing better; and promise that I would return sooner than later. Excited and encouraged by what we know will come of this, we both noted that there seems to be a rising wave of energy and excitement around the work CLENE is currently doing and the level of commitment CLENE members bring to the organization and to our parent organization, the American Library Association.

The blog, for many of us, is both an extension and an integral part of what CLENE provides and inspires—a 21st-century physical and online variation of the Third Place which Ray Oldenburg, inThe Great Good Place, suggested we need in addition to home and workplace. It should and deserves to be nurtured. And it’s only going to grow if those of us who are committed to contributing to it meet our commitments, and those of you who are drawn into this community of trainer-teacher-learners become active participants through your responses and engagement with all that CLENE and CE Buzz can offer.

“It feels as if we’re right at a tipping point,” Peter commented, and I began to laugh, for even though I recognized the term “tipping point” as coming from Malcolm Gladwell’s book which uses the term as its title, my mind—in equal states of exhaustion and hyper-caffeination—began to latch onto the word “tipping,” picture things being tipped, and—for no reason I can offer other than my penchant for always enjoying word and visual playfulness—started thinking about things being tipped over. Like a glass of wine. Or a glass of milk. Or, in the oft-cited image which must hearken back to our rural roots and people with too much time on their hands, cows—as in “cow-tipping.”
Now please understand that neither Peter nor I are suggesting that we’re going to pursue cow-tipping as a learning technique or a fundraising effort on behalf of CLENE or any of its activities under the auspices of the American Library Association. (I frankly doubt that ALA and its incoming president, Camila Alire, would be very supportive of this kind of endeavor.) On the other hand, the trainer-teacher-learner in me did spend a little time this afternoon with Wikipedia and other sources to learn more about the alleged practice of cow-tipping and read the wikipedians’ report that “According to popular belief, cows can easily be pushed over without much force because they are slow-moving, slow-witted and weak-legged, have a high center of gravity and sleep standing up. Numerous publications have debunked cow-tipping as a myth. Cows do not sleep standing up, nor do their knees lock, making the act of cow-tipping impossible.” (See, you actually learned something by staying with me this far into the blog.)

Please, furthermore, don’t expect us to suggest that current efforts to find a new look and logo for CLENE’s materials might somehow involve the image of a cow being tipped over while engaged in learning—at least not unless other CLENE members and ALA’s wonderful membership director, John Chrastka, want to make a connection I’m not willing to make right now. (No, John, I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to take the lead on this one.) But do understand that if we could take the time it took to have that conversation this morning and giggle over improbable images and apparently non-existent pastimes, we and our fellow CE Buzzers certainly can carve out the time to continue thinking out loud here on the blog in the hope that some of the more serious ideas and practices which we document and propose will somehow contribute, overall, to the improvement of the training-teaching-learning arena which we all so clearly cherish. And we hope you’ll join us here on the blog, as well as in CLENE, as we continue promoting creativity and innovation in workplace learning and performance to the benefit of libraries and all we serve.

For more information about CLENE and how to join the group, please follow this link.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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Community, Training-Teaching-Learning, and CLENE

July 10, 2008 By

I’m not part of WebGen: I didn’t grow up wired, online, and connected to the world 24/7, and I do appreciate moments as well as hours of solitude. But, like most people who are honest about what is most important to them, I also value, crave, and am nurtured by community. So being in Anaheim for the annual American Library Association (ALA) conference earlier this month and spending every moment I could with colleagues in the library training-teaching-learning community provided lots of food for thought on the theme of what makes communities thrive when the Web 2.0 world and the face-to-face world of conferences with thousands of onsite participants converge.

 

The loosely knit community of trainer-teacher-learners who work in libraries throughout the United States—and who often feel incredibly isolated from each other, as evidenced by exchanges in the LibraryLearning Google Group started by Lori Reed less than a month ago—suddenly seems incredibly intimate and welcoming when you attend an American Library Association conference.

 

The central point of this convergence, for me, is my membership and increasing participation in CLENE—the Continuing Library Education and Networking Exchange (CLENE) training group. Right behind it are the overlapping connections resulting from the joint memberships and associations many of us seem to share through our affiliations with groups like Infopeople and the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), and the online community of bloggers who so frequently and effectively build a sense of community where none might otherwise be found.

 

Although there were more than 20,000 library staff members in Anaheim for the annual conference, those of us interested in training-teaching-learning kept running into each other everywhere we went, and a large part of it was due to the community we’ve created through CLENE and its series of workshops; meetings; discussions; and its training showcase.

 

The group, like Infopeople, is fluid rather than rigidly structured. It’s welcoming. And it’s like being part of a large family where somebody is always bringing someone else home for dinner without bothering to phone ahead, knowing that there somehow will be enough food for everyone so no one will go to bed hungry that night. It’s the kind of group where everyone around the table jumps into the conversation, and everybody goes away enriched. It’s the kind of group where you’ll find the same sort of arguments and hurt feelings that come up whenever people let their guards down and say what they’re thinking, but we know that we’re not going to let the arguments and hard feelings go unacknowledged or unresolved. The result is that we’re always ready to get together again as soon as we possibly can to eat and talk some more.

 

And when we part ways, there’s already that numbing twinge of implied loss as we realize we probably won’t see each other again for at least six months—until we reconvene for the next conference which brings us all together. But what remains is the strength of collegial exchanges and the warmth we manage to create through a community of learning which benefits all of us and all we touch.

 

For more information about CLENE and how to join the group, please follow this link.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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On Leadership, Training, and the Opening of Doors

May 28, 2008 By

 

Looks as if we have a little revolution on our hands, and it’s centered on the issue of access—or the lack thereof—to training opportunities for potential library leaders.

 

It started late last week when Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County Training Specialist Lori Reed posted an article on her personal Library Trainer blog to explain why she would not renew her ALA membership next year: to protest the exclusion of library Support Staff from the American Library Association’s Emerging Leaders program.

 

Lori writes of the excitement she felt when she first read that the program is “designed to enable more than 100 new librarians to get on the fast track to ALA and professional leadership,” then felt the wind being taken out of her sails when she realized that she, as someone without an MLS degree, could not apply to participate in this wonderful opportunity being offered by an organization which she supports through membership fees.

 

“So ALA will happily take the money from library support staff…for membership but does not allow those same members to apply for leadership opportunities within ALA as this one…No thank you.”

 

A few responses—including mine, meant to encourage her to work within ALA to change the situation rather than leave and give up hope for opening the doors to more opportunity for non-librarians within ALA—trickled in over the weekend. And then the number of responses doubled and included thoughtful pieces in support of Lori’s dissatisfaction from two treasured associates whom I have known since we first met through Infopeople: Pat Wagner and Sarah Houghton-Jan.

 

Pat suggests that “a goodly number of libraries in small communities are run by people without masters’ degrees” and says she has been involved in “a number of library leadership programs that were open to everyone, and the quality of participants remained very high.”

 

Sarah takes this a step further with a posting on her Librarian In Black site today in addition to what she wrote in her “Library Trainer” posting, assures her readers that “I agree with Lori wholeheartedly,” and calls for ALA to “pay them (members of library Support Staff) the respect they deserve.”

 

Lori, encouraged by the responses, produced a follow-up post this evening as I was editing this article. Perhaps the rest of us who so passionately support training opportunities for the widest possible audience can support her and our colleagues by trying to gain the attention of those who are already involved in the program and might be willing to expand the definition of—and playing field for—prospective library leaders today.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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