Busy Mondays

It’s one of those days where we are short-staffed and you can tell the summer is winding down as parents are coming in frantically trying to find their children’s summer reading books for school, not to mention, it’s shark week so shark books are flying off the shelf.  I’ve also started working on our reference manual.  Updating, adding, deleting and just pulling everything into one document on the computer.  This is something that our library has been discussing for quite awhile, but it’s never a top priority and often gets ignored because there are so many other things we need to do.
I’m putting together opening/closing directions for the library, computer passwords, simple ILS instructions, all those little things that are so helpful to a new employee.  It’s also kind of interesting because my undergraduate degree is in Information Studies – basically understanding that the knowledge available in a company or organization needs to be well-documented and stored so that when an employee leaves, their job responsibilities can be easily taken over by a new employee because the information is available.  It’s a really interesting concept that I don’t think many companies and organizations take advantage of and focus on.  I’m proud of our department, we’ve started to create a circulation manual, the reference manual that I’m working on, and I would really like to see a processing manual get started as well.  That would cover most people’s job responsibilities and it would make for a much easier transition during staff training.
How do other libraries train new employees or provide reference material for current employees?