[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Costs/Staff training/testing

[Sally Fortin]

Hi,

Regarding the discussion about training, there are companies, in 
addition to my employer, Equinox, that provide training on the Evergreen 
ILS.  Lyrasis and Alpha-G come to mind, as well as Dan Scott of 
Laurentian University, although I’m sure there are others that also 
offer training.   I joined Equinox Software in December 2009 as the 
Educational Services Manager.  In addition to its System Administration 
and Migration training, ESI also offers comprehensive training on all 
modules of the ILS for a variety of audiences, from those who are 
testing Evergreen to long time users who need refresher training.

ESI is currently redesigning our training website to include more 
information about our training programs and drop-in classes.  For some 
of these classes, interested clients will be able to register and pay 
for classes online.  I’ll be posting an announcement on the list soon 
that will direct you to that site and the training information that will 
be available there.

If you have questions about training, you can contact us at 
training at esilibrary.com. <mailto:training at esilibrary.com>  We are happy 
to customize a plan for any library!

Thanks,
Sally

Dan Scott wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-06-15 at 11:50 -0400, Cynthia Williamson wrote:
>   
>> Couldn't agree more re staff testing - our one "do-over" would be
>> changes to the way we did staff testing/training.  In a past migration
>> project at another library, when our vendor did the training months
>> before we went live (we had no choice about timing), I knew staff
>> wouldn't retain what they'd learned.  I created exercises for them to
>> do on a weekly basis, they had to work together in pairs and they had
>> to hand in their "homework".  In going a more casual, open source,
>> learn-yourself way, my big under-estimation was staff engagement.
>> They just weren't as excited about EG as Robert and I were.  We're
>> lucky to be an academic library with a slower summer time so it all
>> worked out for us.  And our circ desk is not crazy busy as some public
>> libraries circ desks can be so that made the "learn while live"
>> situation doable.  It all really means that, in spite of some
>> universal truths, you have to make your plan according to your own
>> situation. Its not a one size fits all situation, many things can be
>> done differently depending on how much time & money you have and
>> depending on the skill levels and engagement of your staff.
>> Cynthia
>>     
>
> To add one more voice to the mix; during the months leading up to our
> go-live date, our cataloguers had weekly training / exercise sessions
> where each week we went over the previous week's tasks and then
> introduced some new tasks with practice exercises. When we went live,
> they were in a relatively happy state. Kudos to Ron Slater, who put
> together the training schedule, and the cataloguers for tackling it with
> good spirits and humour.
>
> In contrast, our circulation desk is very short-staffed, so the staff
> had very little time to commit to formal training sessions of this
> nature. It was also a little bit harder coming up with good
> representative samples of problems they would encounter; setting up the
> system with dummy data was a lot of work (this would be a good part of a
> test & training package, if someone wants to develop that!). When we
> went live, they were very unhappy because they were trying to learn how
> to solve problems on the fly - and that is not a fun thing to do in
> front of users. I think we would all like a do-over on that one.
>
>   


-- 
Sally Fortin
Educational Services Manager
Equinox Software Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
Tel:    770-709-5572
Email:  sfortin at esilibrary.com
Fax:    1-866-497-6390


Please come by and visit the Equinox team and learn more about 
Evergreen, Koha, and open source options
ALA Annual meeting in Washington, DC
June 24-28, 2010
booth # 1303