ARL has published the latest entry in its Workforce Transformation Stories column. Jill Mierke, director of human resources for the University of Saskatchewan Library, contributed the April essay, “Creating an Aboriginal Internship.”
Mierke describes the development of the Aboriginal student internship that the University of Saskatchewan Library established in 2014 as part of a campus-wide effort to promote, develop, and enhance the university’s Aboriginal outreach and engagement. The internship is gaining attention from other Canadian libraries and being replicated as a means to effect a more diverse and representative workforce.
ARL hopes this column will enable library leaders to point to evidence of trends and general truths, and to support organizational change. Collectively we will build a shared understanding of what it means to work in a research library and what skills and competencies are required.
Potential topics might include:
- How evolving pressures and priorities in higher education are changing library work
- The library’s role in promoting new technologies
- Techniques for the successful on-boarding and mentoring of new library staff
- Unique staffing models through campus collaborations
- Innovative ways to provide professional development opportunities
- Effective annual evaluation and promotion review processes
- Successful reorganizations and the resulting organizational synergies
If you are interested in contributing a story, contact Judy Ruttenberg at judy@arl.org.
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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
