Christina Pryor Joins Amigos as New Continuing Education Services Manager
Christina Pryor joined Amigos Library Services on January 6th as the new Continuing Education Services Manager.
As CES manager, Chris will oversee Amigos' well-respected schedule of Know & Go and Live Online training sessions, Online Conference series, and Community Conversations. Chris will also help further strengthen and promote Amigos' partnerships with NISO and Skilltype, two important investments that have helped expand continuing education offerings across the Amigos membership.
Chris previously served as the Associate University Librarian for the Specialized Libraries at the University of Missouri University Libraries. She is a past president of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and actively involved in the Missouri Library Association, Library Marketing and Communications Conference, and the Core division of ALA.
Chris had previously worked with Amigos as CES Manager (2015-2017) and helped implement several of the courses and series offered to this date. She has also worked in public and academic health sciences libraries and as an adjunct instructor in LIS education.
Please learn more about Chris' training interests in our Winter Training preview below.
A New and Improved Registration Experience
Amigos is pleased to provide a new and improved registration experience for our continued education offerings. New registration pages feature a more informative and dynamic presentation of course offerings, easier navigation for member and non-member registrations, institution look-up for member libraries, options for registering multiple attendees, and distinguishing registrant contact from billing contact. We hope this new investment will create an easier learning experience. Any questions about the new registration system or any of our offerings can be sent to learning@amigos.org.
More from The Essentials - A New Free Learning Series for Amigos Member Libraries
Amigos is pleased to continue its new series of Essentials online learning sessions available for free to Amigos member libraries. Response to our three previous offerings has been incredibly positive and we appreciate attendees' engagement with this new series.
Upcoming sessions include The Essentials: Library Values (February 27) and a forthcoming session on Teaching and Presenting in the Profession. Previous sessions have addressed Customer Service, Workplace Communication, and Conducting the Reference Interview.
The Amigos Continuing Education Services team believes these sessions will address some perennial topics for library staff at all levels and encourage more staff to join Amigos for a training opportunity individually or as a part of group from your library.
The Essentials series joins Amigos' Know & Go and Online Conferences as another free member benefit to support staff development and growth.
Questions or suggestions for future The Essentials offerings? Contact us at learning@amigos.org.
Winter Training Preview with Christina Pryor
Christina Pryor is the new Continuing Education Services (CES) Manager at Amigos. We asked Chris to answer a few questions for us as we look ahead to our Winter schedule.
What course are you most excited to teach this quarter (and why)?
Having spent several years in library management and administration, I am most excited to teach the Library Management: Motivating & Retaining Employees class in late March. Library workers are the foundation of everything we do in our organizations, and it is more important than ever that as library leaders we do what we can to provide positive work environments. During my time with the Network of the National Library of Medicine, I focused on issues around employee wellness in the workplace – so the topic of motivating, retaining, and building employees up has been of the utmost importance to me throughout my career.
What course would you most like to take this quarter (and why)?
Oh, it's really hard to choose! Since I'm early in my onboarding stage here at Amigos, I look forward to attending as many of the Know & Go sessions and classes as I can manage to. I think the course that I would most like to take is Improving Accessibility Through Document Remediation. Providing materials online that are accessible is paramount especially given the Department of Justice's rule updating its regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The updated rule will impact so many state and local entities with the deadline approaching in April of next year.
How are you spending your training time? What are you learning about right now?
Much of my focus the past few years has been on growing my knowledge in improving accessibility in physical library spaces especially when attempting to update older facilities to accommodate all of today's library users. Building that knowledge was critical in my last role at the University of Missouri but now I look forward to changing gears and refocusing on broader topical areas related to library leadership and management. Also, I plan on spending time on learning more about emerging technologies, especially AI.
How did you start out training in libraries - and how are you continuing to grow as a trainer?
Training has been a touchstone throughout my career in libraries. I've been designing and presenting instructional training sessions since my first position as a corporate medical librarian after completing my MLIS at the University of Missouri. Since then, I've offered training to library users, all levels of library employees, as well as served as a mentor for new library leaders and managers. As always, I will continue to monitor library literature and information sources to continue my growth. However, one of the foundational elements to my continuous growth as a trainer and a practitioner in the field has always been through ongoing conversation with others in the field. Talking with members and hearing about their successes, challenges, and pain points drives me to help support them and find solutions but also leads to me learning some new things along the way.
