The Washington Research Library Consortium represents a community of nearly 700 library experts. The WRLC Sharing Expertise Committee develops strategies for sharing expertise and services within the consortium through a program of training and education, identifying expertise, and shared/sharing staff in order to build relationships across the WRLC.
Recently, we created the Sharing Expertise Inventory which is designed to capture the areas of expertise, level of proficiency and interest in learning about new topics of the staff in the WRLC libraries. The Inventory will help us share expertise, build community around shared interests and identify topics for future professional development.
The WRLC Annual Meeting provides an opportunity for the up to 200 members of the WRLC community to come together and discuss with their consortium partners the progress made and future plans for our work together. The program typically includes lunch with WRLC colleagues, a plenary session that includes an update on the WRLC initiatives and a keynote speaker. This is followed by a program of more than a dozen concurrent sessions highlighting the work and research of the WRLC library staff. The Annual Meeting went virtual in 2020 and 2021 and attracted an even larger number of participants. The Sharing Expertise committee is now looking at responses from our post-meeting survey to determine how best to proceed with future events.