Featured: Professional Development Resources for Remote Library Workers
In response to a global public health crisis, many libraries have had to transition their staff to working remotely. In order to continue to support the professional development goals of these remote workers, the Professional Development Committee has compiled a list of no cost webinars and online courses on a variety of academic library topics.
- Free Webinars and Training for Academic Library WorkersGoogle Document
Compiled for academic library workers, this list of free webinars and online courses covers a wide range of topics including distance learning, accessibility, copyright, instruction, and others. - ACRL's Pandemic Resources for Academic Libraries LibGuideWebsite
This resource guide was created by ACRL to support the academic and research library community during a global public health crisis. The guide features no cost resources for distance education and engagement, professional development, and up-to-date information from public health officials. - Managing Virtual TeamsOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
55 minutes
In this course, the instructor provides managers with a clear approach for getting the most out of their remote teams by zeroing in on key factors that ensure productivity, engagement, growth, building trust, nurturing connections with team members, and setting clear goals. - How to Build Virtual AccountabilityOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
57 minutes
This course covers the fundamentals of virtual accountability. It also explores methods for building and demonstrating accountability and creating the infrastructure for accountability to thrive. - Be an Effective Hybrid or Virtual EmployeeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
21 minutes
This course provides tips about establishing a routine, organizing your workweek, and optimizing communication with your boss and colleagues in a hybrid and remote work setting.
Adaptability
Anticipates and adapts to change and challenges effectively. Demonstrates flexibility and a willingness to learn new skills. Embraces and adapts to change with curiosity and enthusiasm.
- Change ManagementOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 40 minutes
This course helps you prepare, manage, and support the change process, outlining the five phases involved and the eight competencies required for success. - Embracing ChangeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
11 minutes
This course explains how you can harness the power of change and benefit those around you by avoiding quick reactions, adopting a positive attitude, and developing a 30-day plan to integrate change. - Handling Workplace Change as an EmployeeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
2 hours
This course explains why we struggle with change, and shares many practical techniques that can help you manage—and even thrive—in a world of constant change. - Leading Your Team Through ChangeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
21 minutes
This course covers topics like how to address active resisters (and manage passive ones), take pulse checks, and hold people accountable for making change happen. - Preparing Yourself for ChangeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
28 minutes
In this course, business psychologist Erin Shrimpton provides you with tools to help you survive changes in your work life and thrive in uncertain times. She delves into techniques and strategies you can use to protect yourself—and even give yourself a boost—while navigating change in your workplace and beyond.
- Adaptability: The Art of Winning in an Age of UncertaintyE-book
Author: Max McKeown
232 pages
In a series of powerful rules, Max McKeown explores how to increase the adaptability of you and your organization to create winning positions. - Who Moved My Cheese?Book
Author: Johnson, Spencer
94 pages
This book is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.
Communication
Ability, through both verbal and written methods, to provide concise, timely, professional, and accurate information, internally and externally.
- Communicating with ConfidenceOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 16 minutes
This course covers simple communication tools, strategies, and tips that are easy to use and produce immediate results. - Communication FoundationsOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 17 minutes
This course helps you communicate better in a variety of professional situations, including meetings, email messages, pitches, and presentations. - Giving and Receiving FeedbackOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
28 minutes
Giving—and receiving—feedback is a skill that's relevant to every member of an organization. This course guides you through both how to receive feedback effectively—by tuning into a growth mindset, managing your emotional response to feedback, and implementing feedback. - Managing Team ConflictOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 10 minutes
In this course, the instructor shares strategies and techniques that can help you confidently lead through conflict. - Tips for Better Business WritingOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
28 minutes
This course provides relevant, actionable tips to improve the quality and impact of your writing.
- Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and BeyondE-Book
Author: Jay Sullivan
290 pages
An all-encompassing resource to improving your communication, this book connects skills with scenarios and purpose to help you hear and be heard, and provides comprehensive guidance toward getting your message across, and getting the results you want. - What's Your Presentation Persona? Discover Your Unique Communication Style and Succeed in Any ArenaE-book
Author: Scott Schwertly & Sunday Mancini
288 pages
A practical guide based on a proprietary skill assessment tool -- a Myers-Briggs for presenters -- that provides tips and strategies that address the core element for becoming a successful presenter.
Critical Thinking
Ability to define a problem, assess the accuracy and importance of evidence, and make reasoned and accurate judgements.
- Critical ThinkingOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
59 minutes
This course outlines a series of techniques to help develop your critical thinking skills. - Critical Thinking and Problem SolvingOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
45 minutes
In this course, you will learn how to critically assess the source of information and how to determine the right approach to take. The course also covers strategies for approaching both simple and complex problems, and details taking your team through the entire life cycle of a challenging decision. - How to Act Quickly Without Sacrificing Critical ThinkingArticle – Harvard Business Review
1400 words
This article describes three strategies to practice reflective urgency – the ability to bring conscious, rapid reflection to the priorities of the moment.
Customer Service
Provides professional, helpful and efficient service to library users. Ability to create library experiences that are high quality, consistent, and robust regardless of users’ location, access methods, or objectives.
- Customer ServiceWebsite – WebJunction
This collection of resources features up to date webinars, news, recordings, articles, and documents about customer service within a library setting. - Customer Service FoundationsOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 22 minutes
In this course you will learn how to make your customers feel valued, how to deliver outstanding customer service, and keep them coming back to the library. - Customer Service in LibrariesWebsite – American Library Association
This website provides information on ethics and behavior guidelines for library employees as well as provides a bibliography of print and online resources concerning customer service. - Ten Common Customer-Service MistakesArticle – Public Libraries
1374 words
This article highlights ten common customer service mistakes and offers advice on how to avoid them.
- Customer Service in Academic LibrariesE-book
Author: Steven Mossop
153 pages
This book examines customer service in an academic library setting and focuses on relationship-building, meeting customer needs, marketing, and communication. - Perfect Phrases for Customer Service, 2nd EditionE-book
Author: Robert Bacal
256 pages
This book readies staff with phrases for every type of customer service situation.
Emotional Intelligence
Ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.
- Communicating with Emotional IntelligenceOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
43 minutes
This course defines exactly what emotional intelligence is and how it can help you manage your emotions and build stronger relationships. - Developing Your Emotional IntelligenceOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
30 minutes
Emotional intelligence can help you build strong relationships at work and respond to change effectively. This course covers what emotional intelligence (EQ) is and why it's important. - How Emotionally Intelligent Are You? Boosting Your People SkillsQuiz – Mind Tools
10 minutes
This quiz will help you identify what areas you can work on to improve your emotional intelligence at work.
Innovation
Ability to think creatively and innovatively about new ways to serve users. Fosters a culture that’s friendly to risk-taking and failure.
- Creativity at WorkOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
37 minutes
This course lays out how to help your team let go of the fears that hinder your creative progress and start creating work that matters. Discover how to tap into your team’s creativity by embracing the possibility of failure, cultivating practical empathy, and exploring the root causes of writer's block and impostor syndrome.
- Perfect Phrases for Creativity and InnovationE-book
Author: Karen Eriksen
176 pages
Perfect Phrases for Creativity and Innovation provides hundreds of ready-to-use phrases for building the kind of exciting, solution-driven work environment that turns average companies into industry leaders. From creating powerful teams to prioritizing ideas to rewarding success, this hands-on guide offers the language and proven tools to help you:
- Jump-start your own creativity
- Trigger whole-brain, divergent thinking in your employees
- Inspire teams to collaborate in new, effective ways
- Transform every team into an innovation machine - The Power of Strategy InnovationE-book
Authors: Robert E. Johnston and J. Douglas Bate
332 pages
Applicable to any organization in any industry, this book presents a Discovery Process for staging, aligning, exploring, creating, and mapping paths between analytical, numbers-oriented, day-to-day planning and market-centric, discovery-driven, forward-thinking innovation.
Knowledge of Library Services & Resources
Ability to identify and help others find and use the library’s services and resources - both physical and digital.
- WebJunctionOnline Courses
There is a course catalog and webinars that are all available to anyone working in the UTSA Libraries. Simply make an account and sign up for the courses that interest you. - Alternative Basic Library Education (ABLE)Online Courses
This free program is part of WebJunction and provides courses on collection development, technical services, and public services. - UTSA's LibGuidesWebsite
We have many resources to refresh your memory or teach you the basics if you are new to library work. Of particular notice are the Library of Congress Classification LibGuide and Library Lingo LibGuide.
Leadership
Ability to set and model high-performance standards characterized by integrity, and to earn trust and respect of others by coaching, inspiring, motivating, mentoring, delegating, and empowering teams of people.
- 7 Steps to a Truly Effective Leadership StyleArticle - Forbes
1314 words
This article highlights seven steps to selecting the best leadership style for you, with tips for putting those steps into action. - Bill George on Self-Awareness, Authenticity, and LeadershipOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
22 minutes
This course helps you to examine your strengths and weaknesses, solicit honest feedback, and become more authentic in how you behave and lead. - Creating a Leadership Development ProgramOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 3 minutes
This course takes you through a five-step process for designing and implementing a high-impact leadership development program that helps your organization achieve its specific business objectives. - Leadership: Practical SkillsOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
2 hours 30 minutes
This course provides leaders and managers of all levels with an introduction to the basic skills they need to lead their teams to success. This course explores the qualities of a great leader, theories of motivation, leadership styles, and core proficiencies like connecting with your team and effectively delegating work. - Leading with VisionOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 17 minutes
Learn out how to build your personal vision and gain the skills and tools to build a vision for your organization, division, department, team, community cause, or nonprofit. - Leading Your Team Through ChangeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
21 minutes
This course covers topics like how to address active resisters (and manage passive ones), take pulse checks, and hold people accountable for making change happen.
- Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the BoxE-book
Author: The Arbinger Institute
240 pages
This book uses an entertaining story about an executive facing challenges at work and at home to expose the precise psychological processes that conceal our true motivations and intentions from us and trap us in a “box” of endless self-justification. The book’s central insight—that the key to leadership lays not in what we do, but in who we are—has proved to have powerful resonances not only for organizational leadership, but in readers’ personal lives as well.
Organizational Awareness
Knowledge of the culture and structure of UTSA and the UTSA Libraries, and commitment to supporting their missions. Understands and supports the library’s role in providing access to information.
- A Vision for UTSA - Strategic Planning Themes and InitiativesWebsite
UTSA: San Antonio’s University of the Future
President Eighmy has outlined a vision for UTSA as San Antonio’s university of the future, producing graduates who tackle the grand challenges of today’s world.
A set of institutional themes and initiatives form the vision framework. President Eighmy is seeking the collective wisdom of the university community through a series of dialogues around these visionary ideas. - About UTSAWebsite
The UTSA About page has general information about our history, leadership, and campuses, as well as our mission, vision, and core values. - About UTSA LibrariesWebsite
UTSA Libraries about page has information on our history, facts, strategic plan, library policies, and collections information. - Library Organizational ChartPDF
The library’s organizational chart will help you familiarize yourself with the structure of UTSA Libraries' departments.
Personal Organizational Skills
Ability to identify and prioritize work needs, practice sound time management, and work productively to fulfill the needs of library users, staff, and the university.
- Time Management FundamentalsOnline course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 47 minutes
The course lays out the theoretical and practical foundations for being more productive and explains the obstacles that can get in the way.
- Time Management and Organizational SkillsPowerPoint Presentation
Indiana University Bloomington – Indiana Institute on Disability and Community
Self-paced PowerPoint with concise tips on time management and organization skills. Could be used for group training.
- Everything's OrganizedE-book
Author: Lisa Kanarek
191 pages
Whether you're a manager in a big corporation or a small business owner, Everything's Organized will help you get ahead, take control over projects, and even maintain balance in your life. - Procrastination : Why You Do It, What to Do About It NowE-book
Author: Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen
322 pages
The authors offer a practical, tested program to overcome procrastination by achieving set goals, managing time, enlisting support, and handling stress. Burka and Yuen even provide tips on living and working with the procrastinators you may know. - Time ManagementE-book
Author: Brian Tracy
139 pages
This guide reveals 21 proven time management techniques you can use immediately to gain two or more productive hours every day.
Teamwork
Works constructively and collaboratively with others to achieve the team’s and organization’s goals and objectives. Contributes to a problem-solving environment and works toward mutually acceptable solutions.
- Cultivating Collaboration: Don't Be So Defensive!TED talk
15 minutes
Former judge, Jim Tamm, talks about his experiences improving teamwork. - Developing Your Team MembersOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
52 minutes
This course shares a practical approach that can help you address the unique needs of your team members and determine how to best allocate your time in their development. - Leading Your Team Through ChangeOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
21 minutes
This course covers topics like how to address active resisters (and manage passive ones), take pulse checks, and hold people accountable for making change happen. - Managing a Cross-Functional TeamOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 9 minutes
This course outlines the skills needed to successfully manage a cross-functional team, explains how to communicate effectively with team members, and shares how to resolve conflict when it arises. - Managing a Diverse TeamOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 20 minutes
This course equips you with knowledge and strategies to help you successfully manage, counsel, and lead a diverse team. - Managing Virtual TeamsOnline Course – LinkedIn Learning
55 minutes
In this course, the instructor provides managers with a clear approach for getting the most out of their remote teams by zeroing in on key factors that ensure productivity, engagement, growth, building trust, nurturing connections with team members, and setting clear goals. - The Silo Mentality: How To Break Down The BarriersArticle – Forbes
1273 words
This article explains what silos are and how to break them down to increase team effectiveness. - Team BuildingWebsite - Management Study Guide
This collection of articles covers team building topics including team development, conflict management, effective communication, goal-setting, and the role of a team leader.
Technological Literacy
Basic computer skills and an ability to identify technological issues. Knowledge of internal policies for information security and assurance. Basic understanding of the technology, software, and terminology used in the libraries. Awareness of changes in the technology landscape and willingness to adapt as necessary.
- Excel 2019 Essential TrainingOnline Course - LinkedIn Learning
2 hours 8 minutes
In this course you will learn how to enter data, organize data, perform calculations with simple functions, work with multiple worksheets, format the appearance of data and cells, build charts, and create PivotTables. - Access Basics for Excel UsersOnline Course - LinkedIn Learning
27 minutes
This course is designed to help Excel users make the jump to Access and create their own simple databases. - Microsoft Access Essential Training (Office 2021/LTSC)Online Course - LinkedIn Learning
4 hours 38 minutes
Learn how to build Access databases to store and retrieve your data more efficiently. This course covers the concepts behind relational databases, building tables, defining the relationships between tables, using queries to find and filter data, and building interfaces for the database from forms. - Google Drive Essential TrainingOnline Course - LinkedIn Learning
1 hour 10 minutes
Google Drive is a cloud-based storage solution that allows you to store and access files. Learn the basic toolbars and overviews of editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides right from Google Drive. - SharePoint Online Essential Training: The BasicsOnline Course - LinkedIn Learning
2 hours
This course covers the essential skills you will need to work with SharePoint Online including navigation, use of team and communication sites, editing and coauthoring documents, working with lists, integration with Microsoft 365, and document storage. - Windows 10 Essential TrainingOnline Course - LinkedIn Learning
3 hours 25 minutes
This comprehensive course can help you work effectively with Windows 10 operating system. In this course learn operating system basics such as: managing files and folders; using apps that come with Windows; browsing the web, working with email, calendar, and contacts; customizing Windows; and adjusting display preferences and account settings. - Using Microsoft Teams and Outlook Together: Maximizing ProductivityOnline Course - LinkedIn Learning
49 minutes
In this course, discover how to use Microsoft Teams and Outlook together to increase collaboration and maximize productivity. Learn about managing calendars, creating meetings and appointments, and the features of private and group chats. Explore the overlapping tools provided in both programs and which type of communication is best accomplished with each application.