Cross-training Students for a Flexible Environment

Abstract

Reed College merged ILL and circulation services six years ago to form the Access Services Department. After the first year the consortial borrowing group was moved from circulation to the ILL group. We examined when the peak times for work was for each group with in Access Services to see where we could share student workers. The first cross training was between ILL and reserves workers. The third summer after the merge we began to combine all the departments student workers into one pool of students. Cross-training was established and tasks were assigned on a rotating basis to try to have a student work no more than 3-4 hours a day at the same task. This helped increase worker retention over the summer and began to give us a pool of students that could shifted around the department between areas as task needs shifted with the season. We have continued to increase the cross-training during the school years with the students who work over the breaks or for 10 hours a week to create a more flexible environment to accomplish the department's responsibilities.