Educating Your User – Day 2 Digipalooza 2011

OverDrive’s new Learning Central for Staff Training :   http://www.overdrive.com/LearningCenter

Jasmine Posey – Greenwich Library - in Connecticut – Their experiences with Educating their users! 

Last summer she did some soul searching to find out why their digital audiobook program was not going as well as their traditional audiobooks. She decided that it was HER attitude and so she decided to embrace the digital technology.  She started with patron and staff straining.  Apple Store came into their library and they brought iPads out for patrons to demonstrate.  They also partnered with Barnes & Noble to do training.  Staff can come in ON LIBRARY TIME to get help with their e-readers, individually or in a class.  OverDrive Staff Training in September became mandatory for ALL staff members.  Patron training became seasonal rather than monthly.  Attendance improved with this new schedule.

In the winter, staff members who owned different devices brought them into the training lab ON LIBRARY TIME and demonstrated them to patrons.  These sessions are advertised in a variety of media.

By spring, staff members realized that format didn’t matter to patrons as long as they could read the book.

When the presenter changed her attitude, use of e-books began to rise dramatically.  By embracing this technology on a staff-wide level, buy-in increased and key librarians actually got their own iPad to own.  None of them have to share it – theirs to keep as long as they are employees of the library.  They will start circulating e-readers to their staff shortly.

One program – “Help, My Phone is Smarter Than Me” was established due to the popularity of mobile apps for OverDrive.   These activities, along with a positive push for staff training has made a huge difference at this Library!