TRAINING NEW LAW LIBRARY PERSONNEL: THE NEGLECTED, ESSENTIAL ACTIVITY

Responsible management of law library resources requires effective training of new employees, yet law librarians have focused little attention on this management topic. Ms. Johnston discusses the value of training and how to build a successful training program for new employees . Training has been defined as "the planned effort of an organization to foster and enhance the learning of job-related behaviors by employees." 1 Although law librarians have sought expertise in numerous management skills, they have paid little attention in the past to improving their ability to train others. 2 This lack of attention to training new employees may be attributed to the fact that most law librarians were never trained to be trainers; few, in fact, ever received much training themselves. Formal library school instruction rarely offers any exposure to training methods as part of the normal curriculum. Generally, what law librarians know about training has been learned through experience. Yet, most law librarians have not had the opportunity to develop effective training skills in this way, either. Developing a training expertise is difficult because most law library staffs are small and new staff members are added only occasionally. Also, many libraries forgo providing new employees with extensive training because of the large investment of time required and the assumption that new employees will learn their tasks without the assistance of thorough training. Yet the training of new employees is of critical importance to the quality of service each law library provides. Too often, ...