Key Open Ticket research findings
One of the core elements of Open Ticket was to develop training skills in each Branching Out librarians. Although each member of the group had delivered training in some form before working on the project, this was their first experience of devising and helping to deliver a complete training package to other library staff in their authority and beyond. At their presentation at the Leeds conference in March this year, the group listed three things that working on the project had shown them:
- a range of different learning styles and how to incorporate these into training
- the skills appropriate for designing successful training
- the difference between training and simply presenting information
And questioning each member of the group after these planning sessions confirmed how useful they had found them, and how they had helped to reduce feelings of stage fright. Comments included, for example:
'I felt quite confident that what we had developed during the day was within my ability to deliver successfully.'
'I thought that everything we did on the day had a practical application and had developed my thinking about training.'
The training days themselves went very well, and although I wasn't able to be present at all of them, each member of the group gave me positive feedback, for example:
'I think it went very well it was varied in content and I felt everyone was participating and seemed to be enjoying the experience.'
Another said:
'The whole group participated throughout the day and were enthusiastic. I felt some attitudes towards contemporary fiction were changing to be more responsive and open I'm keen to have another go.'
Did those librarians being trained agree with this positive evaluation? Well, comments they made on training evaluation forms do seem to confirm the overall success of the programme:
'I will feel more confident in convincing my staff that this genre is accessible.'
'I discovered my own ignorance and prejudice against it [i.e. world literature] and that the best way to promote it is to read it yourself.'
Almost all trainees appreciated 'changing flavours', surely the only librarian training exercise to date to involve bags of fruit and vegetables! In this exercise, participants were encouraged to think about different perceptions of what was foreign, exotic or closer to home, using fruit and vegetable as a vehicle but then moving on to world literature. Their responses to the exercise included:
'The vegetables were a good fun way of getting people talking and got the day off to a good positive start'
'It was good as an icebreaker and a clear way to illustrate the rest of the course.'
For those training the trainers the Open Ticket method of delivery was very effective:
'With the accent on participation rather than information giving, and the emphasis on learning being a voluntary activity, the participants were equipped to consider how they might deliver other information in the future. It also allowed for a flexibility in delivery and an ability to allow the training sessions to adapt to different learning groups.'
The success of this one-day training programme was such that one trainer changed her view of the shorter session, and said that she learned 'that just one day of well designed training can have a much greater impact than I had previously thought.'
The Open Ticket promotion has been successfully running since its launch on World Book Day this year, and the response from heads of service has been very positive. Aspects of the promotion that they mentioned to me included cascading, strong issues, creative displays, enthusiasm from staff , events excellently done.
And finally, let's look to the project partners, in this case Book Communications Ltd. They summarised their perception of the project as follows:
' the whole process ran smoothly and, in our opinion, was a model example of how to work with partners working with the Branching Out librarians was equally rewarding. They taught us a lot and were always well briefed, positive and most importantly reliable.'
Further evidence of the success of this project from the partner's point of view must be the fact that there is now a second Branching Out project developing in partnership with Book Communications, a promotion called 'Future Tense' which aims to ease readers into science fiction and fantasy.
Click here to visit the Open Ticket site
