"Me and My Shadow"
Staff Exchange for Learning and Development
By Giselle Stevens, Newburyport Public Library
Laura Zalewski, Boxford Town Library

The concept was simple. Match up libraries, providing each interested member of a library's staff the opportunity to visit another library for a morning or afternoon. Each staff member shadows a peer in their partner library, seeing how that individual accomplishes his/her work and collecting ideas to take back to the home library. A simple concept, yet the thirty-five participants in the "Me and My Shadow" all agreed that they "enjoyed the experience a great deal" and more importantly, all would participate again.

Last year, the NMRLS Assistant Directors Forum thought the concept sounded like a good one and four individuals (Mary Behrle, Elizabeth Dickinson, Liz Doucett and Nancy Ryan) took on the challenge of putting together the program. The result was "Me and My Shadow", a peer-to-peer shadowing program that kicked off last fall and involved thirty-five participants, eleven libraries and was awarded the 2006 H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant.

Because the program was such a success, the Assistant Directors Forum is running it again. Information about the program will be sent out in early October and the program is scheduled to run from November 2006 through March 31, 2007.

The objectives of the program are as follows:

• Rejuvenation - provide staff with the opportunity to re-energize their jobs by being exposed to new ideas, new people and new approaches.
• Networking - give staff a chance to meet their peers in another library, develop relationships and build contacts.
• Idea Gathering - give staff a chance to see how another library does its work and identify new learning or improved processes that can be taken back to their own library.

To ensure that the program fosters active learning, each participant will be asked to go with a question - come home with an idea! All involved will be asked to identify issues or questions in their home library that they would like to find a way to address during the "Me and My Shadow" experience. At the end of their visit, each person will be asked to identify what they learned that might address their issues or questions and post those ideas on the "Me and My Shadow" blog nmrlslibraryshadows.blogspot.com. This will allow all libraries both to communicate what they've learned and, in turn, learn from others.

Each library Director (or Assistant Director) will be responsible for identifying who among their staff might be interested in shadowing a peer in another library and if they would like to act as a host in return. All staff are invited to participate.

The "Me and My Shadow" committee will do the following:

• Identify all libraries that are interested in participating
• Match libraries together based on interests and provide the names of contacts at each library to get the ball rolling

Each participating library Director (or Assistant Director) will:

• Identify a contact person for their library
• Determine who on their staff is interested in participating

Contact person will:

• Contact their partner library and work out a schedule of shadowing

"Shadowee" will:

• Visit partnering library
• Capture the learning from the visits via the "Me and My Shadow" blog.

An email invitation is being sent to all NMRLS public library Directors and Assistant Directors the week of October 2nd with all relevant information. The Directors/Assistant Directors will need to respond to either Laura Zalewski lzalewski@mvlc.org or Giselle Stevens gstevens@mvlc.org via email to indicate interest.

Academic, school, or special libraries interested in participating should contact Laura Zalewski lzalewski@mvlc.org. The committee will meet in October to match up libraries and then the shadowing can begin!