Infopeople provides quality continuing education opportunities to library staff that are tailored to library needs and developed by experienced library professionals. Infopeople is part of the Califa Group, a nonprofit library membership consortium of more than 220 libraries based in California.
The Infopeople training brand has a number of distinguishing characteristics, i.e.:
- All training is tailored to the library environment, so even general topics such as customer service use library-specific examples.
- Infopeople works with dozens of different trainers from all over the United States, selecting a subject matter expert for any given topic.
- A team of instructional designers, coordinators, and technical support staff whose role is to ensure that the content and delivery meet Infopeople standards ensures the quality and consistency in training. Development and delivery of content is done by the subject matter experts.
Formats
Asynchronous instructor-led online courses: These are typically four weeks long. The content can be accessed any time of the day or night, as best fits into the learner's schedule. An instructor is available throughout the course to answer questions, review and comment on discussion forums, review assignments, and conduct chat sessions and/or live online meetings. Several of these courses have been approved by ALA for Library Support Staff Certification Program (LSSC) credit and are offered at least once a year. On average, Infopeople offers two-three online courses a month throughout the year. The learning management system that Infopeople uses is Moodle. Fees for most of these courses are $200.
Infopeople Academy: In collaboration with Niche Academy, Infopeople is using a new platform to offer a series of self-paced modules on a variety of topics of interest to library staff. These modules are free.
Infopeople On Demand: Infopeople's Teachable site provides an opportunity to take recent Infopeople courses at a discounted price. The courses are repackaged as asynchronous courses so that learners can take them any time.
Live online courses: These are similar to the asynchronous instructor-led courses in that they are three or four weeks long and involve assignments, but they are structured around weekly scheduled live online meetings. Fees are the same as for asynchronous instructor-led courses.
Webinars: Infopeople webinars are typically one hour and are usually scheduled from noon to 1 PM Pacific time. The platform Infopeople uses is Zoom. Webinars are designed to teach a skill, introduce something new, or provide updates (e.g., on children's or young adult literature). Webinars are free and all are archived and can be accessed from the Infopeople webinar archives page.
Who Can Attend
As mentioned previously, the online training offerings are open to any library staff, wherever they are located and regardless of the type of library or state of employment. Library school students, library trustees and friends, volunteers, consultants, and unemployed librarians are all welcome.
Offerings tailored specifically to California or to a type of library are identified in the announcement and on the web page for that event. All other offerings will be of interest to all types of libraries.
Other Information
Planning process: Infopeople sets its annual training program after a rigorous planning process that includes an online needs assessment survey, interviews with key informants, focus groups, and an environmental scan.
Suggestions: Infopeople welcomes suggestions for training topics as well as general comments regarding ways to improve our training program. You can make suggestions for training by sending email to [email protected].
Annual calendar: An annual training calendar is available online. This calendar is intended to help library directors and training coordinators as well as individuals plan their training development for any given fiscal year. It is subject to change and is revised as needed throughout the year.
Announcement process: Once a training event is ready to go, an announcement is posted to the website and announcements are sent to a variety of mailing lists. Infopeople also has its own announcment mailing list, to which you can subscribe and recieve a notification whenever a new training event is announced.