To paraphrase an old adage: "when the going gets tough, the tough get creative." Library support agencies are no strangers to tough financial times. In Iowa, Library Service Areas, the State Library, and Area Education Agencies have all seen budget cuts and have coped in various ways. But repeated and prolonged reductions in funding take a toll. WebJunction is delighted to share this story of the one system's new approach to providing library management training and consulting to member libraries. "Between 1993 and 2005, staffing at Northwest Iowa Library Services (NWILS) had fallen from 6 FTEs to 2 FTEs," said Bonnie McKewon, the NWILS administrator. By 2005, they had lost 20% of their state funding and barely held on through staff attrition. And while technology brought great efficiencies in service delivery (facilitating interlibrary loan and continuing education) the service most in jeopardy was consulting with member libraries. As Bonnie tells WebJunction, consultation with library staff and trustees, along with mentoring new directors, forms the heart of their work. But with only two fulltime office staff, she said their heart was breaking. The sheer size and shape of the service area was a huge challenge to this work for an organization that comprises: NWILS needed more bodies—a larger, geographically-diverse workforce—if they hoped to sustain a physical presence around the region. In an effort to rebuild their consulting service, the NWILS board decided to outsource consulting projects, drawing library directors past and present into a virtual field consulting workforce. NWILS Special Project Consulting Service was born! Bonnie tells us the organization's goals are lofty, but they are meeting—and exceeding expectations—every day. "The Special Project Consulting Service has made a profound impact on our ability to sustain a physical presence around the region by: The NWILS currently has 11 consultants on the team. The organization pays for travel time and travel expenses, on-site time, and even allows time for prep or post work. Of course, supplemental income makes this the most sustainable part of this program—we pay them!" In a system this large, there's no shortage of requests for assistance. The team size means they can easily divide up the projects so no one is called upon too often. One big advantage of the geographically dispersed team—reasonable driving distance! Bonnie tells use she's long loved the phrase from PLA's Staffing For Results: "Hire for abilities, train for skills." It's a concept she's promoted countless times with library boards and used practically in developing this project. Staffing For Results defines abilities as innate characteristics, personality traits, things born of natural talent while skills are those things which can be taught... Because NWILS recruited consultants from the ranks of their library directors, they knew the consultants' abilities. These are people who willingly served on the NWILS Advisory Council long, before the organization could offer any financial incentive. These are people with a track record of helping with area workshops—as presenters or behind the scenes. They are looked to as leaders in their community and by colleagues in their county. Recruiting a team of field consultants was the easy part; harder was building the parameters of this new service. The NWILS Board approved the policies and finances and their Advisory Council helped shape the details. The design and development phase was a great team effort. "We first landed on a list of board-sanctioned, "green light" projects that would be given financial approval: They developed two sets of contracts: one for consulting and one for training, each with compensation formulas. Most field consultants are also very competent trainers and work in both capacities. NWILS developed report forms to summarize consultants' time on the job. Report forms and expense sheets are required before consultants can be paid, so those come in very promptly! Bonnie says "a very important piece of the process is the disclaimer that NWILS requires all consultants to sign". It ensures that consultants have discussed the opportunity with their own library boards. By signing the disclaimer, they've aggreed to work with their local boards to decide whether this "work of the region" can be done on local library time or on personal time. Then NWILS cuts the checks accordingly. And one more advantage of building a virtual workforce: "We've latched onto Web 2.0 tools. For instance, we have a Special Teams Wiki to share best practices and collaborate on documents. We keep in touch with instant messaging. We use Library Thing to showcase our office collection of library management books. Del.icio.us and Flickr accounts help us share useful websites and post photos of our work in the field. And now, NWILS has a Wimba Live Classroom, thanks to our State Library's community partnership with WebJunction". This new service launched in the spring of 2006. In that time, NWILS added 10 Special Project Consultants—talk about swelling the ranks of office staff of 2 FTEs! To date, NWILS has spent $7,000.00 helping 23 libraries with 25 projects. Bonnie feels like they are on the financial upswing these days, having received increases in state funding in the past 2 years. Even so, funding from the state legislature fluctuates, so they have every intention of continuing this new service approach because it's innovative and it's working. NWILS consultants have gone from being the recipients of regional service to being providers of regional service. With personal, first-hand stories to tell, they're now great advocates when we need voices at the state capitol speaking for Iowa's library systems. You might say they've adopted Wimba's motto "People Teach People." NWILS Special Project Consultants are doing just that and in a larger sense, they're doing great things to help advance consulting services throughout the region. Bonnie McKewon, Administrator NOTE: Bonnie presented a WebJunction webinar that has on January 24, 2008 which has been archived on the topic of Let's Collaborate in 2008 with suggestions on how to reinvigorate cooperation amongst libraries. Please join us for the webinar or stay tuned for the archive and associated resources.
Bonnie McKewon, Administrator Northwest Iowa Library Services in Sioux City
Mindy Swieter, Director Rockwell City Public Library and Dave Netz, Director Sioux Center Public Library
Nathan R.E. Clark, Director of 2 libraries: Emmetsburg Public Library and Ruthven Public Library
Northwest Iowa Library Services
P.O.Box 1319
Sioux City, IA. 51102-1319
712-255-2939
mckewon@nwils.lib.ia.us
www.nwils.lib.ia.us
Documents
| Building a Virtual Workforce: NW Iowa Library Services Consulting Service |
Northwest Iowa Library Service's new approach to providing library management training and consulting to member libraries with their Special Project Consulting Service.
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