Good Practice       

• Use a development plan to assist in meeting the needs of your job and career and to contribute to your organization's performance.
• Identify relevant needs and opportunities in your employing organization together with personal interests and goals.
• Seek advice from those with expertise in areas you wish to explore.

Begin by assessing the requirements of your present job, or the specifications of a future job. For your present or future job:

• Library and information skills
  • Meeting user needs and demands
  • Organizing knowledge and information
  • Retrieving knowledge and information
  • New developments I services, processes and products
• Personal effectiveness/communication
  • Problem solving
  • Verbal, non-verbal and written communication
  • Teamwork
• Management skills
  • Planning
  • Finance
  • Personnel/staff management
• Organizational skills
  • Analysis of power structures internally and externally
  • Achieving organizational goals
  • Leadership
  • Developing structures and procedures to facilitate organizational success

Program Choice

• Are you interested in increasing your competency in the original competencies of Minnesota Voluntary Certification? If so, consider the General Library Services competencies in the Appendix.
• Are you interested in pursuing a subject specialty? Which one? Specialties for which lists of competencies are included in the Appendix are:
  • General library service
  • Management for one-person and small library, for top management teams in larger libraries, for Multitype library cooperation systems
  • Readers' advisory service
  • Reference
  • Systems/information technology
  • Technical services
  • Youth services

As other sets of competencies become available, information concerning them will be added to the Certification website at www.arrowhead.lib.mn.us/certification. You may also submit another list of competencies to the CLIME Committee at Library Development and Services, 1500 Hwy 36 W, Roseville, MN  55113, for approval. Or, you might wish to develop an individualized program e.g., archives management, fund raising and grant writing which can be submitted to CLIME for approval. (See "Request to Design a Special Track," p. 16.)