T19: Grassroots Professional Development: Peer Coaching From the Ground Up
Session Description
Generously Sponsored By: Simon Fraser University Library
Amidst all of the exciting new service models, services, products and programs being offered at public, special and academic libraries, a core element that cannot be overlooked by any progressive library is professional development for library staff. In many instances, professional development is costly, inconvenient and ineffective- but that does not have to be the case. Peer coaching provides participants with the opportunity and responsibility to set their own goals, be held accountable for those goals on a regular basis and actively contribute to a colleagues’ professional and personal growth. This session will introduce a framework for creating a peer-coaching program from scratch, with the presenters sharing the valuable experiences they had and tips they learned along the way. British Columbia has many outstanding libraries that have been recognized for their excellence. What would happen if librarians from the University of British Columbia’s Koerner Library partnered with colleagues at SFU, the University of Victoria, or even the Vancouver Public Library? The possibilities of such collaborations are endless- just like the benefits of peer coaching as a professional development strategy.
Speakers
Dee Winn, Concordia University
Biography
Dee Winn is the Head of Information Services at Concordia University’s Webster Library in Montréal, Québec. Among her primary responsibilities is the supervision, motivation, training, development and performance evaluations of support staff and student librarians in the Information Services Department. Her research interests include peer coaching in academic libraries and social media use by academic libraries.
Max David King, Illinois Institute of Technology
Biography
Max King is the Information Technology Librarian at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In this position he works with Drupal, Python, PHP and MySQL. Coming from a background in eResources, he has a strong interest in how the Internet is changing many of the day to day workflows that shape libraries and librarians' work. As a new manager he's also interested in exploring how technology changes the role of managers.