The concept is simple. Match up two 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.

The NMRLS Assistant Directors group 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 is "Me and My Shadow", a peer-to-peer shadowing program that will be kicked off this fall.

The objectives of the program are as follows:

Benchmarking -give staff a chance to see how another library does its work and identify if there is any learning or improved processes that can be taken back to their own library.

Networking - give staff a chance to meet their peers in another library, develop relationships and build contacts.

Rejuvenation - provide staff with the opportunity to re-energize their thought process about their job by being exposed to new ideas, new people and new approaches.

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 formally identify what they learned that might address their issues or questions. The contact person for that library will then input those ideas/learning into a "blog" that will be shared by all the libraries involved. 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 hopefully acting as a host in return. All staff are invited to participate.

The committee developing this program will do the following:

• Identify all libraries that are interested in participating
• Match two libraries together based on interests and provide the names of contacts at each library
• Provide a process for capturing the learning from the visits
• Provide a common blog into which each library will be requested to enter their learning from the program

Each participating library Director (or Assistant Director) will need to do the following:

• Identify a contact person for their library
• Determine who on their staff is interested in participating
• Contact their partner library and work out a schedule of shadowing
• Capture the learning from the visits via the process provided by the committee

An email invitation is being sent to all NMRLS public library directors and assistant directors the week of September 12 with all relevant information. The Directors/Assistant Directors will need to respond to either Elizabeth Dickinson dickinso@noblenet.org or Nancy Ryan ryan@noblenet.org via email to indicate interest.

Academic, school, or special libraries interested in participating should contact Nancy Ryan ryan@noblenet.org. The committee will meet in October to match up libraries and then the shadowing can begin!