Background: Creating a professional portfolio is important for promotion, tenure, annual evaluation, and professional certification. As an early career health sciences librarian, I was advised to track my accomplishments as they happened to make applying for a promotion easier in the future. After successfully creating and utilizing a digital professional portfolio of my own, other librarians asked me to teach them how to develop digital portfolios. An in-service program was created that would provide training, support, and a template for both new and experienced library faculty.
Description: After investigating options for an electronic method of organizing and tracking my professional accomplishments, I chose Microsoft OneNote for its user-friendly interface, level of customization available, and integration with existing Microsoft programs. In 2021, the library hired several first-time faculty members who were not familiar with the need to create a professional portfolio. It was decided that the first in-service training session would be offered to this group. The training, which would provide an explanation of the portfolio and potential uses, was scheduled. This session also included a hands-on demonstration of both an active portfolio and the blank template. Future sessions have been scheduled to provide the in-service training and template to remaining library faculty. The blank template has also been shared with faculty outside of the institution – but no external training has been provided at this point.
Conclusion: The digital portfolio in OneNote was successfully used for the self-assessment portion of my annual evaluation, applying for AHIP, and achieving two MLA specializations. While the program is still on-going, comments regarding increased organization and effectiveness have been received and have been overwhelmingly positive. Outcomes that I am expecting to measure include: whether the digital portfolio helped with tracking professional accomplishments, if the portfolio was used to apply for any certifications or specializations, if it was helpful when completing an annual evaluation, and if other uses have been discovered for the portfolio. These outcomes will be measured by an anonymous survey distributed to in-service attendees who have also received the blank template.
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