Posts tagged Paul Signorelli
27 Questions with Lori Reed
Jan 28th
1. Your One Sentence Bio
- Lori Reed, mom, library enthusiast, lifelong learner, passionate about helping people, team Edward!
2. Do you blog? If yes, how did you come up with your blog name?
- I moved my blog from LibraryTrainer.com to LoriReed.com yesterday. I chose my name because it will remain constant. I want the freedom to change directions with my blog as needed.
3. What is your professional background?
- I worked for several years as a firefighter/EMT and discovered that I love training. I conducted training for firefighters and EMTs for a while then moved to computer training (better hours and pay). I worked for a few for-profits and found that I really missed the environment of public service. A job came open at the library in Charlotte for someone to do computer support and training and it seemed like the perfect fit. 10-years and three jobs later and it’s still a great fit!
4. What training do you do? staff? patrons? types of classes?
- I coordinate the staff development at my library. This means that I don’t get to do as much training anymore. Instead I do more strategic planning. I look at the mission and vision and goals of the library and translate those back into competencies that staff need to achieve the library’s goals. I work with managers and staff to see what skills our staff need to accomplish the library’s goals and to get their jobs done well. I rely on a core group of staff trainers to facilitate most training sessions. I also serve as an internal consultant to help staff trainers develop their courses and materials.
5. What training do you think is most important to libraries right now?
- I think the most important thing is that we be strategic with our training. If you align your training with your library’s vision, mission, and goals then you are right on track.
6. Where do you get your training?
- Wherever I can! North Carolina State Library’s Master Trainer Program, Mecklenburg County, InSync Training, Learning Round Table, ASTD, ISPI, conferences, blogs, Twitter, friends…maybe the question should be where don’t I get my training.
7. How do you keep up?
- The first rule of … wait … wrong question. I follow other people who keep up with subjects I’m interested in. It saves me a lot of time! I live by GTD principles and use my Outlook calendar and tasklist religiously. It also helps to have a clear personal definition of keeping up. For me keeping up means keeping my inbox at or near 0 and having some idea of what is going on in the world. For other people keeping up may mean knowing about every new idea or gadget that is coming out.
8. What do you think are the biggest challenges libraries are facing right now?
- I think traditionally libraries have been slow to adapt and change. The world around us is changing at a faster and faster pace. To remain relevant and cherished by everyone in our communities we need to adapt faster. We need to take risks and be willing to try new things that might fail. We need to look at failure as a success and staying the same as a failure. We need to reduce the digital divide that exists among libraries. We need to continue to market our services. We’re being asked to do more with less–maybe it’s time to get more creative with funding and partnerships. We desperately need a new universal brand that reflects 21st century libraries!
9. What are biggest challenges for trainers?
- Training is not always the solution. Training does not solve problems that stem from poor management or software that’s not intuitive. These are bigger issues at an organizational level. Traditionally trainers have not been in a role to contribute to organizations at that higher level. That needs to change. Trainers need to be part of the strategic planning of libraries and need to have the flexibility to implement complete performance solutions. When training is called for, developing quality training takes time. It’s more than happy butts in seats. Like everyone else, trainers are being asked to do more with less or worse to deploy bandages that will not solve long term performance or organizational issues.
10. What exciting things are you doing training wise?
- We recently implemented a curriculum for staff training. We also received a generous donation of Lumenix (a learning content management system) from Handshaw, Inc. I’m working with my staff trainers to convert existing face-to-face training into self-paced, online training. It’s a very slow process because it takes exponentially more time to create self-paced modules that replace what we were doing face-to-face. I’m hoping to implement live, online training this fall. Fellow ALA Learning blogger Paul Signorelli and I are co-authoring a book on leadership for trainers that should be available this summer.
11. What do you wish were you doing?
- I’m doing everything that I want to be doing, I just wish there were more hours in the day to do more and to sleep more.
12. What would you do with a badger?
- Recruit it to the Learning Round Table and teach it to fish!
13. What’s your favorite food?
- Anything that is shared with good conversation and good company.
14. If you were stranded on an island, what one thing would you want to have with you?
- A lifetime supply of insect repellent.
15. Do you know what happens when a grasshopper kicks all the seeds out of a pickle?
16. Post it notes or the back of your hand?
- Post in notes are a GTD nightmare! I use my Outlook/Blackberry tasklist to action items. I use eWallet on my PCs and Blackberry for random information that I need to remember like passwords, printer IP addresses, security codes, etc. eWallet is well worth the small cost!
17. Windows or Mac?
- Doesn’t matter just give me a browser.
18. Talk about one training moment you’d like to forget?
- Potty training!
19. What’s your take on handshakes?
- Ackward early in my career, but now I’m comfortable with them. If I know you though, watchout, I’m more likely to hug you than shake your hand!
20. Global warming: yes or no?
- Ask him.
21. How did you get into this line of work?
- See question 3.
22. What is the best part of your job?
- Just about everything! Seeing the ripple effect that occurs as a result of good planning and strategy. Seeing staff whom I’ve worked with get promoted to new jobs. It’s all good!
23. Why should someone else follow in your shoes?
- Everyone else has a good point of wearing your own shoes, but if you have a passion for learning, love helping people, don’t mind public speaking, and have good problem solving skills then you might want to consider a career in training workplace learning and performance.
24. Sushi or hamburger?
- Hamburger.
25. LSW or ALA?
- I belong to both, and they both have pros and cons.
26. What one person in the world do you want to have lunch with and why?
- Only one? I’m going to break the rules and say the ALA Learning bloggers. I think it would be amazing to get these 12 people all in the same place at the same time. I can’t imagine what the energy would be like!
27. What cell phone do you have and why?
- A pink Blackberry Curve. I really wanted an iPhone but I can’t get a signal in my house using the Blackberry Storm or the iPhone. Verizon gives library employees a 19% discount which is substantial off a bill with two phones and two data plans. I also must have a phone that syncs directly to Outlook (See questions 7 and 16).
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...Paul Signorelli’s “Getting To Know Me” Post
Jan 19th
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).
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
Congratulations to MLIS Graduate Paul Signorelli
Jan 5th
Paul Signorelli at ALA Midwinter 2009 in snowy Denver, CO
ALA Learning contributor Paul Signorelli graduated in December with an MLIS from the University of North Texas. I asked Paul about his experience getting the degree through an online program and here is what he had to say:
I thoroughly enjoyed the University of North Texas MLIS program. The instructors are first-rate, accessible, engaging, and supportive. The courses help students remain grounded in the traditions of the library and information management professions while also improving our skills and immersing us in the contemporary issues and challenges we face. I also should add that the experience of learning about online learning by being engaged in a well run distance learning program was extremely stimulating and rewarding.
For those of you who do not know Paul, he has a wealth of experience in libraries and in training. I asked Paul what it was like to go back to school after already having so much experience in libraries. Here’s what he said:
As just about anyone in the ALA Learning Round Table will tell you, one of the best ways to become—and remain—good at what we do is to engage in workplace learning and performance from every possible vantage point. Being a student in an online graduate-level program after working in libraries for many years reminded me at a visceral level why I love libraries, why I love training-teaching-learning, and what it feels like to be a participant in a great learning program. It was a lot of work, and it was well worth it. I feel completely re-energized and inspired by the entire experience, and attribute a lot of that to the level of instruction offered through the University of North Texas.
Congratulations Paul!
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Training, Planning, and Collaborating to Build the Future
Oct 11th
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.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Leading and Training by Living: The Goldman Environmental Prize Winners (2009)
Apr 21st
Library directors and managers, colleagues have been assuring me recently, play a critical role in the success or failure of workplace learning and performance programs in the organizations they oversee. It goes beyond supporting and approving budgets: if they show an advocate’s interest in what is happening through training programs, check with their colleagues and their staff to see what effect those programs are having, and actually participate in learning opportunities offered within their organizations, they are setting a standard which encourages effective learning and the development of communities of learners.
It was no surprise to me, then, that these comments came to mind repeatedly when I was lucky enough to attend the awards ceremony for the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize recipients here in San Francisco last night. The awards honor people who, by the act of living and acting on their beliefs in spite of significant challenges, time constraints, and, occasionally, threats of incarceration and death, train the rest of us to believe that we, too, can make a difference. The usual high profile environmental activists were there: Al Gore and Robert Redford provided opening comments which (globally) warmed up the crowd and reminded all of us that we have a role to play. Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman provided entertainment by singing one of her own songs (“Talkin’ Bout A Revolution”) and doing a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”—“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
But the real stars and trainers were those being honored, including Maria Gunnoe. From her home in the heart of Appalachia, in West Virginia, she stood up against the removal of mountaintops to expedite coal mining because the byproducts of that process are creating toxic wastes which are destroying the area where her family has lived for more than a century. Although neighbors were afraid to testify, she did, and a court ruling halted one particularly damaging mountaintop removal project which was affecting her property. The joy all of us in the audience felt as she accepted her award was tempered by the image of the tall cyclone fence which was constructed around her house and the news that she needed around-the-clock security protection to counter the threats she was receiving while she carried on her fight.
Then there were Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini, who successfully organized entire communities in the Saramaka lands in Suriname (within the Amazonian forests) to halt destructive logging. And Yuyun Ismawati, who helped implement community-based safe and sustainable waste management programs in Indonesian communities through her organization, Bali Fokus.And Olga Speranskaya, a Russian scientist whose community-based efforts have become a model worldwide for efforts to encourage the clean-up of toxic waste sites. And Syeda Rizwana Hasan, an environmental attorney in Bangladesh whose efforts successfully stopped toxin-laden ships from being allowed to be brought up on beaches in her country so the wrecks could be broken into scrap—a process called “ship breaking”—to be resold while the waste polluted the beaches. And, finally, Marc Ona Essangui, a wheelchair-using activist whose successful efforts to stop a massive government-approved mining project in Ivindo National Park (in west central Africa) led to his arrest and detention for several days earlier this year. Each one of them received standing ovations from those of us who were there to hear their acceptance speeches. Hundreds of us joined them at a post-event reception in their honor to shake their hands and thank them for reminding us that significant effects begin with the efforts of individuals. And at least a few of us, in thinking about what we can do in our own lives to make a difference within the communities we serve, were reminded that some of the most effective training comes from those who live the lessons the rest of us still need to learn and follow.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
Recent Comments