Across industries, competencies provide a foundation on which to build coherent efforts to increase the knowledge, skills and abilities of employees and ultimately to strengthen the organization as a whole. Libraries need such a foundation, especially in times of rapid change and evolution, in order to choose the most efficient and productive paths for staff training, recruiting and other personnel directions. In an effort to fulfill that need, WebJunction created the Competency Index as a compilation of competency statements that address a broad spectrum of library practice and service.
In formulating the Index, the WebJunction team reviewed competency sets from many library organizations, aggregated the statements and synthesized them into the Index. The acknowledgments include a list of the primary competencies sets consulted for the aggregation, in addition to the subject matter experts in the field who reviewed and informed revisions of the final document. Given the variety of library size and organizational structures, we have not attempted to define competencies by work roles and classifications. Instead, we offer a menu of categories and competencies from which an individual or library can select and combine to meet their particular needs and structures.
Three sections of the Competency Index are displayed in conjunction with the WebJunction course catalog—Library Management, Technology (Core Skills and Systems & IT) and Personal/Interpersonal competencies. Within the sections, competency statements link to relevant courses and resources on WebJunction, all designed to help librarians and library staff build knowledge and skills and increase on-the-job effectiveness and to help managers and directors develop coherent training programs and job descriptions.
The effort to integrate Library Competencies into the WebJunction learning platform began in 2006 when WebJunction received a Library Skills Training grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant was intended to increase WebJunction’s capacity to meet library organization needs to continually develop staff with essential skills for today’s libraries.
