This is an excerpt from Upskilling for Library Workers: A Guide for Future-Ready Professionals by Ann Medaille (ALA Editions, 2026).
With the advent of new technologies and rapid social and economic shifts, library workers’ jobs are being transformed. Compared with a decade ago, library workers now spend more time consulting on complex research tools, teaching digital literacy classes, supporting virtual learning environments, helping users troubleshoot devices, and codesigning projects with community partners. The pace at which library staffers are called upon to learn new skills is accelerating, and workers may struggle to keep up. In addition, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are altering many aspects of work. In the long run, technological innovations have the potential to increase productivity and lead to more interesting kinds of work, but in the short term, they often cause disruptions that can be difficult for workers to navigate. To address these changes—and manage the anxieties that come along with them—workers need constant support for skill development.
While corporations may embrace upskilling to stay competitive, libraries will have to support upskilling to remain relevant. Library leaders are under greater pressure to respond rapidly to changing social and economic conditions and demonstrate that their libraries make a difference in their communities. Continual upskilling of library workers is essential for ensuring that they have the skills to accomplish today’s tasks while enabling library leaders to plan for the future.
Learning should not be confined to one hour a month or the occasional webinar viewing. Library leaders cannot assume that workers will learn what they need on their own during their unscheduled or project work time. The charge of upskilling is too big to be handled passively.
How to upskill effectively
Upskilling initiatives in libraries are often conceived solely in terms of formal trainings, delivered through workshops, webinars, and courses using lectures, slideshows, videos, text, and assessments. While formal training has its place, it is just one component of a successful upskilling program.
Learning and development specialists often refer to the 70-20-10 rule: Only 10% of workplace learning comes from formal education, while the other 70% comes from on-the-job experiences and 20% comes from interactions with others. While these percentages have not been scientifically verified, the idea is striking—if a small percentage of workplace learning occurs through formal education, then it should be only a small part of an organization’s upskilling strategy.
Instead of approaching upskilling solely through formal training, libraries need to create dynamic programs centered around what the human resources expert Dani Johnson of RedThread Research has described as the four E’s: education, experiences, exposures, and environment.
When all four E’s are incorporated into an upskilling program, library workers have opportunities to engage in a process of continual learning that helps them develop and reinforce their skills, gaining confidence and even expertise.
Education: formal training opportunities
Educational opportunities are essential for delivering some fundamentals of skill development that may be cumbersome to pick up while on the job, such as cataloging standards, data analysis strategies, copyright law, digital preservation best practices, or database management skills. Education is often essential for new employees or those who are transferring to a different position.
Leaders must decide whether their training will be conducted in person or virtually. In-person training allows for more discussion, more interaction, more chances to build connections, and more opportunities to strengthen social cohesion than virtual training. Workers often get a chance to meet and interact with people in other departments, branches, or libraries. In many cases, in-person learning serves as the impetus for the creation of informal learning networks that can be sustained virtually.
Virtual training is often easier to deliver and more convenient to attend, and sessions can be recorded for future viewing for those who cannot be present. Some virtual training materials can be accessed on demand, so employees can apply the training right away on the job. At the same time, virtual learning has become so common in a post-pandemic world that learners are a little burned out on it.
Microlearning, also called learning bursts, consists of very short pieces of content that are focused on a single concept or learning outcome. Microlearning is typically delivered virtually, through text messages, infographics, podcasts, flash cards, short e-learning modules, videos, quizzes, or games. Often, small chunks of content, each with a single learning outcome, are delivered as part of a greater whole.
Microlearning should not serve as a substitute for other types of education, such as longer in-person workshops or online courses, in which more time can be spent on developing knowledge and skills. Instead, it can coexist with these instructional options, fulfilling a unique purpose when it is needed.
Experiences: on-the-job activities
When one engages in experiences, they learn by executing real tasks that address messy problems in authentic contexts. Often, these experiences enable workers to apply what they have learned in formal training programs to job tasks.
Once learned, skills need to be constantly practiced, developed, and refreshed or they will soon fade. But workers can engage in continual practice only if their managers give them opportunities to do so. Library managers should recognize areas for growth for library workers and plan experiences that can help them develop. Some possibilities include special projects, stretch assignments, job rotations and exchanges, internships, and early career opportunities.
Employee development can sometimes be resource-intensive. Peter Cappelli, management professor at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, recommends stretch assignments, a low-investment option intended to apply workers’ emerging skills at a higher level. “The way you train people and develop them the best is through stretch assignments and giving people opportunities, which cost you nothing,” Cappelli said on the Harvard Business School podcast Managing the Future of Work.
Stretch assignments should be demanding and push employees to the edge of their capabilities, but they should also be challenges that workers have the potential to meet. An e-resources technician, for example, could be tasked with a short-term project that involves visualizing collections data. A business librarian with good project management and planning skills might be charged with leading a user survey project.
Job rotation and exchange programs can help library workers learn new or enhance existing skills by giving them more exposure to different types of functions and situations within the library. They can also broaden workers’ perspectives, improve their flexibility, make them aware of other areas or job roles that they might want to move into in the future, and introduce greater variety into the workday, contributing to employee engagement.
While corporations may embrace upskilling to stay competitive, libraries will have to support upskilling to remain relevant.
Exposures: structured workplace interactions
Exposures are important for all workers, especially for those who are new to the library profession or organization and could benefit from opportunities to learn from interactions with peers and more senior staff. If novices work closely with excellent people, they are more likely to improve their skills. Shadowing others is often a good way to begin learning from others, not only for new library workers but also for those who move to different departments.
While exposure to experts may occur organically during shared work, this is not always the case. Instead, library leaders and managers may need to be deliberate in providing workers with the right kinds of exposures that will help them develop their skills. This may occur through strategies such as coaching and mentoring programs or by creating networks and communities of practice.
To support skill development, mentors can provide strategies for completing tasks, offer input on ideas, suggest alternative possibilities, suggest supporting resources, review work, and provide feedback about performance. Mentors and mentees can also collaborate on joint projects, enabling mentees to learn by observing how the mentor approaches tasks. These mentors also provide emotional and psychological support that can help workers develop confidence with a particular skill.
While networks may not be explicitly focused on helping members to learn skills, learning often occurs as a by-product of shared interactions and discussions. Anyone up and down the management chain, from administrators to frontline workers, can form networks and communities of practice to promote the learning of new skills. In addition to fostering learning, these groups may reinforce members’ identities, which can contribute to a greater sense of belonging and well-being.
Environment: tools, resources, and other supports
Resources that library workers can use to enhance their skills within the environment include intranets, wikis, department manuals, book collections, checklists, handouts from training sessions, instructions for accomplishing tasks, and collaboration tools, such as chat channels, that provide learning support at the point of need.
The environment also encompasses characteristics such as the amount of autonomy that library workers have to pursue education, experiences, and exposures; the amount and types of opportunities workers have to practice skills; and the time allotted to them for learning.
A critical feature of any upskilling environment is the degree of performance support that it provides. Performance support consists of tools and resources provided in a normal workflow that give information on how to complete a task.
If library workers need to learn new software, for example, they can access online help manuals or contact the company’s support line for external support, but if they can access a cheat sheet on their desk or message an expert on staff, that is even better. Tasks are better accomplished when performance support resources are in close proximity to the time and place in which they are needed.
Often workers forget what they learned in formal classes and workshops before they have a chance to apply the knowledge, or they struggle to know how to apply these skills in real-world contexts. Thus, integrating performance support addresses the limitations of formal education programs by reinforcing content and skills at the critical point of need.
Job aids, a type of performance support, are written or visual guides that are there to help people complete tasks when they need it. Even simple handouts with step-by-step instructions can be critical for helping people get work done more accurately, more efficiently, and with fewer frustrations.
Integrating the four E’s
Library upskilling strategies should take all four E’s into consideration. When deciding which of the four E’s a library worker would benefit from at any particular moment, the following questions should be considered:
- Is the library worker new to a particular skill, and do they need grounding in the basics? If so, education may initially be beneficial.
- Does the library worker need an opportunity to practice a skill or continue to grow a skill? If so, then experiences may be helpful.
- Does the library worker need ongoing support for the growth of a skill? If so, exposures may be the correct step.
- Does the library worker need to have access to information that supports the enactment of a skill at the point of need? If so, education in the form of virtual education and microlearning, exposures in the form of access to experts, and environmental aids in the form of performance support and job aids may be beneficial.
Ideally, upskilling in libraries should incorporate all four of these E’s simultaneously to support a model of continuous learning that can be responsive to quickly changing needs.
