UC Berkeley Library

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.