Finding: The long tenure of many LC employees means that new skills and ideas are less likely to come to the Library through new employees who bring them along from other employers or schools. Instead, innovation must be fostered by the development of existing staff. Thus, training for Library employees is even more important than for the employees of most private-sector organizations.

Finding: Employees of the Library who might be expected to want to develop their professional skills have few opportunities and receive little encouragement. As a result, they have little interest in or motivation for learning.

Recommendation: The Library needs to provide more training opportunities for staff. Professional development, outside technical training, and practice in using the training are all crucial. Congress should be asked to increase the Library’s training budget by a significant amount. This increase should be more than an incremental one—it should be on the order of a doubling or tripling of this year’s amount in the next budget submitted to the Congress (for FY02).

Recommendation: The Library must increase the number of junior- and senior-level staff involved in professional association activities. Such involvement can be a source of learning as well as of networking, which can lead to more effective recruitment. It must also increase its training and travel budget to encourage staffers to participate in and assume leadership roles within the Library and in the professional community.

Finding: Additional learning opportunities for LC staff could come through internships at other organizations and through linkages to professionals in every part of the Library. Opportunities for learning could also be created by rotating personnel out for temporary duty in congruent government agencies.