How can we teach student employees to interact positively with patrons? At UC Berkeley, Access Services supervisors worked with Reference and Instruction librarians to create a training to better equip student employees to interact with the public and learn basic reference tools. The “Public Services and Effective Referrals Training" teaches student employees how to 1) Apply public service guidelines, 2) Deploy de-escalation techniques, 3) Make effective referrals, 4) Navigate key search tools, and 5) Identify methods for seeking research assistance. The program has been running since 2016, and we have trained over 200 student employees. We believe that all student employees should receive training on these basic tools to excel at their jobs and their studies.

Celebrate the possible with service design! The design of academic libraries is often rooted in the history of the institution. But how might these processes be improved to meet the needs of today’s users? Join us as we discuss our year long journey learning about service design and applying service design tools at UC Berkeley. We will share how we examined the entry sequence from the perspective of various user groups to meet user needs. Ideally service design incorporates user observations and feedback, but we will show you how service design tools and principles can be used even while a library is closed during a pandemic. After this session, you will be ready to embark on your own service design journey.