Designing Government Documents Training Programs
from the 2002 FDLC
On the final day of the conference I started off with a presentation on training. The first speaker, Suhasini Kumar, outlined the subject modules that she has developed for training reference staff at the University of Toledo. (She did not have a handout; her email is skumar@utnet.utoledo.edu.)
The most exciting part of this session concerned the training of peer tutuors in library research at the Univ. of New Mexico. They have a center which sounds much like our Learning Assistance Center, or tutoring center. They hire upper division students to tutor in various subjects, and a few years ago they started hiring and training students to be peer tutors in library and research skills. The speaker, Kathleen Keating, who is a professor at the library school at UNM but who used to be a documents librarian, gave us an overview of the program, an outline of the training they offered, and some tips on pitfalls to avoid. She was very enthusiastic about the program and proudly noted that several of the tutors have decided to go on to library school after finishing their undergrad years. I do not have a paper copy of her presentation but her PowerPoint is at www.unm.edu/~kkeating/dlc.ppt and her email is kkeating@unm.edu.
