Copyright Statement Karin Medin, This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copyright is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Musical Chairs: A Successful Method for Adapting Technology A Poster Session Educause Southwest Regional Conference (SWRC07) 2/07 Austin, TX

Author, Karin Medin, has served Access Services areas in Academic libraries since 1988, when she began working for and studying at Harvard Divinity School. While earning her MLIS degree (Simmons College, Boston 2001), Ms. Medin took a professional position at the Harvard Law School Library. Her final post at Harvard was as Circulation Librarian for the joint Boston Medical and Harvard Medical School Library. She now serves the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Ottenheimer Library as the Head of Access Services and Assistant Professor.

Introduce Musical Chairs into Your next Staff Meeting and be surprised by results!

Why a Game? Relieves Stress by its very suggestion Is appropriate image for hyper-media age where everything is supposed to be ‘fun’ Inserts a necessary team mentality Encourages interaction, pooling of assets Learning to do a new workflow Is so NOT fun that suggesting it is rivets people.

Why is Musical Chairs Necessary? User-conscious librarians and staff frantically scurry to keep up with expectations and innovations arising out of hyper-media culture.

Why is Musical Chairs Necessary? Resource sharing expectations require generating, disseminating, and assimilating the assets of the organization. No single manager or management team can bear the responsibility.

What is really happening during Musical Chairs? Successful library administrators counter the tendency to panic by facilitating calm competence.

What is the Goal of Musical Chairs? Creation of a calm, competent staff, since they always provide the most efficient information retrieval and delivery possible.

OK, so what IS Musical Chairs? To begin Musical Chairs, the administrator creates a PowerPoint presentation of screen shots demonstrating and archiving a task to be done uniformly by all.

During a weekly staff meeting the manager, using a single workstation and data projector, demonstrates the activity in real time.

Each person performs the activity, rotating onto the workstation until all have mastered the skill.

A schedule is developed whereby each staff member is slated to initiate Musical Chairs.

(The manager approves the content prior to the creation of the PowerPoint and provides training as needed by the upcoming leader). The person in charge of the game chooses the topic and develops and archives the PowerPoint.

Benefits of the Musical Chairs Method: Leadership Development Opportunity Leadership Development – Everyone leads when they are up on the schedule –Presentation Prep skills

Accomodation of Various Learning Styles Provides ALL of the below –HANDS-ON experience –Ability to PREVIEW as one waits to perform or recovers after performing (e.g. Repetition) –Ability to REVIEW as one relaxes after performing –Archive of up-to-date procedure documents for review at any time.

Benefits for the Organization Those who cannot perform may –Leave –be subject to exposure for valid performance shortcomings –achieve major developmental progress –not have the excuse that management is singling them out or acting out of personal dislike for legitimate shortcomings (witnesses). Secure back-up systems Likelihood of improved customer service due to uniform skills, knowledge and behaviors Easily accessible archive of official procedure documents archived.

Ah, the sweetness of success! At whatever stage of advancement our increasingly hyper media culture is, our deserving constituents will be gratified with the resources we provide and placated by the demeanor of those providing the resources.

All of this occurs because we librarians and staff have played beautiful music together behind the scenes!

The End…is just the Beginning!