Back in the early 2000s, the OLC's Futures Initiatives recommended the creation of core competencies. The Library Education Committee then began the creation process in 2014. What we did was review the competencies of many other professional library organizations like the American Library Associatiion and WebJunction and had the OLC divisions and committees review them and offer feedback. We also spoke to certified librarians and library staff at a luncheon at the 2014 Convention to get their opinions and views on the competencies as well. At the fall meeting we took all of that work and did one final revision before submitting to the OLC board for approval. They were officially approved by the OLC board in the fall of 2014.

The goal of the core compentencies is to be a tool that can help libraries handle various aspects of job creation and management. They're designed as a framework, but not the final word on jobs.

The idea is that you can use these central ideas of what the OLC believes a library employee should be capable of doing. But because no two libraries are the same, libraries can then take this framework and shape and adapt them to fit their unique environment.

We also are aiming to align these with all of OLC's continuing education opportunities. From now on, each educational and training event offered by OLC can now be identified by the competency that they address. They unfortunately don't appear to have made it into your printed program guide, but are available on the online version. That should be fixed by the next time around.

The 41 different competencies are arranged in a couple of ways. I've included in your handout an example of each, but to print the whole thing for everyone would be a good amount of paper. To find the full set you can go to olc.org and check under the resources tab for core competencies.

The first way you'll find them organized is the competency summary section that includes every competency and to which section they apply. This can be a helpful guide to seeing the overall group of competencies.

The second way to view them is by how they align with any given job in a library. In this layout, the competencies are aligned so that you can view a particular position and just the competencies that apply to that specifically. Let's take a look at the summary page first.

This is the the first of the competency summary pages. As you can see there are the competencies listed on the left hand side with their definition after that, and then which positions they apply to. Looking at this page, you can see that Acquisition only applies to materials selector and technical services. But Adaptability and Basic Computer Use / Hardware Knowledge are both core competencies and they apply to every position regardless of where they are located in the library.

And as a reminder, this is a customizable tool. What works for one library may not work for another. Remember that this is a basic format and it can and should be adapted to each library's unique situation.

So within the whole competency framework, there are some competencies that are labelled as core. The competencies in general are the measurable knowledge, skills, and abilities critical for successful job performance, and the core competencies are those that are central and foundational to success in an organization.

This list here is the full list of core competencies, and it's laid out in a format like you would see if you were looking at just a specific position. As you can see from this list, these combine a lot of the basic areas of library work from intellectual freedom to basic computer use. It's a wide variety of skills that you should make sure you're capable of. After all, these will be the foundation for everything else you'll do in your work with public libraries.

Additionally, each of the position lists will always list the core competencies on them, but will also include the extra competencies that apply to that specific position as well. That way you don't have to compare between two different lists all the time. That said in some situations you will need to combine lists together. For example, instead of having a page for every potential position in a library, we opted to aim for the most general forms we could. So you'll find a page for Children's Services, and a page for Management and Administration. However, you won't find one relating to the Children's Manager position. As you can probably assume, the way you handle that is by looking at both lists in this case. You'll want to make sure you're covering the children's competencies in addition to the management competencies as well.

Any questions so far?

So let's now that we know what they are, let's cover how to plan your career using the core competencies. Just like the guy in the photo, it's important to have a plan when it comes to your career. You don't need to have your entire future planned out, but at least knowing what you want to do next and where you're going is a good idea.

The first step in planning your career is to assess your current position. You'll want to review the competencies associated with your current position to make sure you're meeting the goals of that position. Because if you're doing well in your current position, you'll be in a better place to move into a new position. You might not be as hireable in a new position if you're not capable of doing the one you're currently in. So let's take a look at how we do that now.

So let's now that we know what they are, let's cover how to plan your career using the core competencies. Just like the guy in the photo, it's important to have a plan when it comes to your career. You don't need to have your entire future planned out, but at least knowing what you want to do next and where you're going is a good idea.

The first step in planning your career is to assess your current position. You'll want to review the competencies associated with your current position to make sure you're meeting the goals of that position. Because if you're doing well in your current position, you'll be in a better place to move into a new position. You might not be as hireable in a new position if you're not capable of doing the one you're currently in. So let's take a look at how we do that now.

So let's now that we know what they are, let's cover how to plan your career using the core competencies. Just like the guy in the photo, it's important to have a plan when it comes to your career. You don't need to have your entire future planned out, but at least knowing what you want to do next and where you're going is a good idea.

The first step in planning your career is to assess your current position. You'll want to review the competencies associated with your current position to make sure you're meeting the goals of that position. Because if you're doing well in your current position, you'll be in a better place to move into a new position. You might not be as hireable in a new position if you're not capable of doing the one you're currently in. So let's take a look at how we do that now.

So let's now that we know what they are, let's cover how to plan your career using the core competencies. Just like the guy in the photo, it's important to have a plan when it comes to your career. You don't need to have your entire future planned out, but at least knowing what you want to do next and where you're going is a good idea.

The first step in planning your career is to assess your current position. You'll want to review the competencies associated with your current position to make sure you're meeting the goals of that position. Because if you're doing well in your current position, you'll be in a better place to move into a new position. You might not be as hireable in a new position if you're not capable of doing the one you're currently in. So let's take a look at how we do that now.

But also these seven competencies as well. This shows the level of work required to move from what's required at the base level of library work, to circulation, then a reference position, then to management. There is an evolution of position over time, and the competencies that go along with that. But you'll also see here that there's nothing in these competencies that deals with the competencies we've had before. These are 14 new competencies that we haven't been exposed to in a previous position. Hitting this point takes dedication.

Remember how I said that not every competency you have experience in or are interested in will apply to every position? That's still true. But what you also can remember is, that those competencies you're interested in, or are gaining experience in outside of your position, may come in handy for the next step.

So as long as I'm meeting the goals of my genealogy position, maybe I'm also working with a volunteer, doing grant writing for new projects, and maintaining the local history collection with new items and revising old records. These skills that I'm gaining aren't wasted, in fact they're preparing me for the eventual step down the road into a management position. Even if I don't go for a management position, those skills are still valuable to have and helpful in my career to have.

A couple last notes on how to evaluate your position. As you're looking over these, identify your weak spots. For me and my future position, reader's advisory is definitely the weak spot for me. I don't spend a lot of time reading or keeping up with book culture, so I don't usually know what to recommend if someone wants something similar. I know there are tools to use, but I don't have much experience with them and haven't had the chance to really dig into them. Once school is done for me, that's the next step in my planning.

Additionally, take classes, workshops, and webinars to fill in some of these holes. While in school I made sure to take a workshop on library instruction because I knew this was a part of my future career. I wanted to make sure I had those skills lined up and had at least a baseline understanding of them, even if I don't have the practical knowledge to back them up yet. It's the first step in preparing to meet the competency even if I haven't gained a lot of experience in it yet.

Any more questions at the point?

One extra area you can use to potentially give yourself an edge is certification. This is something offered by OLC to prove your willingness to seek out continuing education and improve yourself with new skills.

By being able to put you're certified on a resume, it shows a potential employer that you're willing to go the extra mile and help improve the standards of your library and its employees by learning new skills and bringing them back to integrate into your library.

Like the competencies, the Library Education Committee oversees certification as well. We sought to develop certification to form a uniform standard for librarianship in Ohio, and to publicly recognize individuals who meet these standards.

It doesn't take much to join. There's a small fee associated with either, but it's not much to handle, and your library may cover the costs if you ask them. There are basic requirements that you have to work in a library for 2 years, and have a high school diploma for library staff and an MLIS for librarian. In addition, library staff need to have 10 credit hours of continuing education in the last two years. Today in fact counts for 6 hours , so if you attended this event last year as well you're set to go. You then apply, and you get a certificate in the mail along with a lapel pin that say you're certified.

You then have to renew every 5 years, and for library staff you need 50 hours for library staff and 75 for librarian to renew.

One extra area you can use to potentially give yourself an edge is certification. This is something offered by OLC to prove your willingness to seek out continuing education and improve yourself with new skills.

By being able to put you're certified on a resume, it shows a potential employer that you're willing to go the extra mile and help improve the standards of your library and its employees by learning new skills and bringing them back to integrate into your library.

Like the competencies, the Library Education Committee oversees certification as well. We sought to develop certification to form a uniform standard for librarianship in Ohio, and to publicly recognize individuals who meet these standards.

It doesn't take much to join. There's a small fee associated with either, but it's not much to handle, and your library may cover the costs if you ask them. There are basic requirements that you have to work in a library for 2 years, and have a high school diploma for library staff and an MLIS for librarian. In addition, library staff need to have 10 credit hours of continuing education in the last two years. Today in fact counts for 6 hours , so if you attended this event last year as well you're set to go. You then apply, and you get a certificate in the mail along with a lapel pin that say you're certified.

You then have to renew every 5 years, and for library staff you need 50 hours for library staff and 75 for librarian to renew.