A field test of the Library of Congress Training the Trainer course

Abstract

Training library staff in the use of technical knowledge is an important responsibility of department managers, particularly in large libraries. These managers must acquire good basic training skills and gain sufficient practice in using them to become effective trainers, but few libraries afford them opportunities to do so. The library community might logically look to the Library of Congress (LC) for guidance in this area. LC's Technical Processing and Automation Instruction Office developed Training the Trainer, a thirty-hour course in development of training skills, which it offers to some of its staff members charged with training tasks. LC is considering sharing the course with the library community.

The author suggested an independent field test of Training the Trainer in which students and teacher all were non-LC staff, held at Simmons College, a non-LC setting. The author's preparation for the field test, and the field test's participants, evaluative instruments, activities, and results are described. Training the Trainer can be taught successfully by a non-LC trainer to non-LC staff in a non-LC setting, the curriculum is relevant to library training needs, and the teaching materials prepared by LC perform well. Based on her field test, the author believes that Training the Trainer can improve training results, raise performance levels, and more than pay for the investment it requires.