“uh huh, i see.” “and then what?” “what do you do when that window pops up?” “and what does she do with it once you put it on her desk?”
it recently occurred to me that i’ve been an anthropologist in my own office since starting my new job. the position i fill is brand new for the library, and i’m spending quite a bit of time figuring out where my skills enhance the work already going on here. in order to be sensitive to the culture already established in the library i’ve been asking a lot of questions and gathering data before actually defining what it is that i will do here. the least obtrusive way i could think to begin the process of evaluating existing workflows (part of my official job description) is to write a documentation manual.
i’ve been asking people in my department to write down the steps they take to accomplish a specific task in a draft form, and then sitting with them to talk through those steps one at a time. what an eye opening process! in addition to finding out how they do the work they do, i’m getting bonus information: how they wish things could work; they always get stuck at step 5 and writing it down helps them remember; or they’re not really sure what happens once they finish their portion of a multi-person task. once the task has been documented and discussed, i’m having them train me to do that task using the documentation. the training process brings up all other kinds of issues: forgetting that we actually do step x before step y; thinking on the fly of more efficient ways to do things; gaining confidence in knowing that they really *do* know their stuff.
all in all, gathering documentation has been a success. we started this process by creating a student manual, and that has come in handy a number of times as students refer back to what is written down as they are trained to perform a new task.
leave a comment if you’ve done this yourself, or if you think of other things to try.
