WebJunction

WebJunction bridges the barriers to learning by providing open, affordable, online learning communities like the one you are visiting right now. Our members take courses, attend events, share knowledge, and network with others – all in an environment that fosters collaboration and mutual support. Our vision is to be the place where the worldwide library profession gathers to build the knowledge, skills and support we need to power vibrant, relevant libraries.
 

Our Beliefs:

• Libraries play a vital role in their communities
• Library staff have the power to make libraries "vibrant, relevant and sustainable"
• Community is central to everything we do
• Partnerships are the foundation of our success
• User experience is more important than a lot of new features
• Ownership of content and resources should be retained by our contributors
• It's OK to try and fail, so long as we learn and share
• Having fun makes learning and sharing more memorable, and rewarding
• Our common trust is what makes us possible — the trust that our members, partners, and investors have with us and with each other

Our Partners

WebJunction is supported in part by OCLC, additional grants from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, our library service organization partners, and by a community of individual library staff actively participating on WebJunction.org.

Our Community Partners create entirely customized versions of WebJunction for the library staff in their service areas. Their members enjoy additional, localized content, a custom look and feel on their site, and access to free courses through a customized catalog. These partners work closely with us to develop new content, courses, and features for the entire network of community members using WebJunction.  

Other partners work with us to provide custom online learning for their library staff. Please visit our services to learn more about our partners or their subscriptions.
 

The Team

Our current staff are listed to the right and are linked to each person's WebJunction profile page. You are welcome to contact us with suggestions, questions, concerns, or other inquiries.
 

Our Advisors

• Jaime Green, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Martin Gomez, Director, San Mateo County Library
• John D. Hales, Jr., Suwannee River Regional Library
• Marilyn Mason, Founder, WebJunction
• Kate Nevins, SOLINET (Southeastern Library Network)
• Jill Nishi, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Loriene Roy, University of Texas at Austin
• Daniel Walters, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District
• Kendall Wiggin, Connecticut State Library
• Alane Wilson, Executive Director, British Columbia Library Association
• Sari Feldman, Cuyahoga County Public Library
• Dottie Hiebing, Metropolitan New York Library Council

Our History

In 2002, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded OCLC a three-year grant to build an online community for public libraries and other organizations that provide public access to information. Building on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's five-year Library Program, which provided over 40,000 computers and Internet access to more than 11,000 libraries across the United States and Canada, WebJunction was initially a collaborative project with five organizations, led by OCLC.

For the initial grant, OCLC partners for the WebJunction project were:

• The Colorado State Library: initial needs assessment and evaluation
• The Benton Foundation: online community development
• Isoph: online learning management
• TechSoup: technology related content and community building

The original WebJunction site launched in May of 2003. A year later, we launched our first five customized sites with our initial Community Partners in Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, New Mexico, and Iowa. Since 2004, we've completed special projects for Technology Planning, Hardware Upgrades, Outreach to Rural and Spanish-speaking communities, Managing Public Access Computers, and a variety of learning and training related research and pilot programs. In 2005 we started offering volume course purchase to library organizations, followed by a web-conferencing tool in 2006.

In 2008, WebJunction migrated to an entirely new platform, also supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The new platform includes features that allow us to build on our community features, capture contributions more easily, and provide additional services to library organizations. For details around this transition, you can read The Next WebJunction blog posts we made about the changes as we went through them, or take a look at the Looking Forward and Looking Back articles we published at that time.
 

WebJunction in the News

• Inside, Outside, and Online–New book by Chrystie Hill offers practical advice for libraries building communities (June 2009)
• WebJunction–British Columbia joins online learning community for library staff (April 2009)
• WebJunction's Custom Course Catalog and LibraryU make staff training easy to manage for library organizations (March 2009)
• WebJunction connects library staff competencies to new social learning platform (February 2009)
• Marilyn Gell Mason to retire as executive director of WebJunction (June 2008)
• ARSL and WebJunction to Collaborate (September 2007)
• WebJunction Awarded Gates Grant to Enhance Site (October 2006)
• WebJunction E-Learning Advisory Committee Announced (March 2006)
• WebJunction Awarded Gates Grant to Extend SLO Program (October 2005)
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awards grants to WebJunction (April 2005)
• Public Libraries Meet at WebJunction (May 2003)

WebJunction occasionally publishes research about library staff and services. You'll find these publications in our content collection in their relevant topic areas as well.

• Latino Perceptions of Public Libraries (2008)
• Sustaining Public Access Computing Programs: Technology and Management Competencies (2007)
• Blended Learning Guide (2007)
• Trends in E-Learning for Library Staff: a summary of research findings (2006)

In addition to these publications, check out the right sidebar for links to a blog and Twitter searches for "WebJunction." For links to our most recent promotion materials, or if you have something you'd like to add, please visit our Member Center.
 

Jobs

Upcoming employment opportunities in either Seattle, WA, or Dublin, OH, are posted on OCLC's career page, PNLA's job listings page, iProJobs (ListServ) and on Craig's List (Seattle).