Sharing Digital Navigators Among Public Libraries

Navigator training must be an ongoing part of your service model.  Navigator practice needs to be refined over time as community partners shift and the client base changes.  Experiences shared, and solutions developed collaboratively under the guidance of a project coordinator and hub library director, accumulate and become best practices.

Monthly navigator in-person sessions can function as times and sites for:

• Additional training. For example, the Regional Navigator Sharing Project added Trauma-Informed Navigation instruction when it became locally available.
• Clarifications about data collection questions. For example, the Regional Navigator Sharing Project invited both the data manager and the data entry staff person to meetings to address issues with issues that were revealed at the data entry and manipulation stage. 
• Navigator time management.  Issues observed can be addressed by the project coordinator.
• Communications from library directors or community partners. Information about new client needs can be shared and solutions discussed.
• New tasks. Community partners would sometimes request presentations.  Library directors might choose to schedule public programs that would be enhanced by navigator participation. 

Each monthly peer-to-peer session included:

• Remarks from the Hub library director
• Report from the Project Coordinator 
• Reports from each navigator that included experiences with their division of labor, with hardware or software, with assisting clients with new languages, and so on. 
• Summary of practices to be adjusted or adopted, and tasks to be carried out.