A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Leveraging Connections for Innovative Professional Development During Turbulent Times

Background: Over the past year and a half, many librarians have had to curtail or forgo professional development activities. The pandemic, natural disasters such as wildfires, as well as regional blackouts and other interruptions have disrupted daily routines, upended access to physical workspaces of our colleagues, while scheduled conferences and classes were cancelled. This paper provides an update on a long-standing, peer-led professional development program, with a specific focus on how the program continued to meet the professional development needs of librarians despite the disruptions to ensure that the librarians were able to adapt to rapidly evolving conditions.

Description: Seeing the immediate need for training in relevant technologies and resilience needed for work-from-home settings, our long-standing Professional Development Committee adapted an existing program of continuing development classes to support librarians in the fully remote work setting. Offerings included journal clubs, search workshops, technology sessions and one-off instructional classes for a diversity of learning experiences. We rapidly created a Libguide featuring wellness resources and published a calendar of external professional development opportunities. Online surveys after each session measured the relevance of the class, evaluated overall satisfaction with the program, and gathered suggestions for improvement. Additionally, this program provided opportunities for the librarians to stay connected, motivated, and engaged.

Conclusion: Our professional development program provided continuing education, professional growth opportunities, and wellness resources during the recent pandemic. An end-of-year survey provided information on librarians’ participation and the benefits of the initiative to be continually responsive. We determined that despite the significant challenges and increased workloads many librarians faced, the program provided continuity, improved skills, and helped librarians weather the storm.