Dear Colleagues and Federal Library Supporters,

The FLICC Human Resources Working Group (HRWG) has completed its draft of The Federal Librarian Competencies. This project was inspired by a conversation between the HRWG and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and is designed to position federal librarians to meet the critical information needs of the 21st Century federal workforce and the expectations of the American public. It has already proven useful to recruit federal librarians, influence Library Science education, draft position descriptions, transition to the new federal employment system (NSPS), and to facilitate strategic planning and positioning across the federal library sector.

Now, we seek your input in reviewing the draft competencies and ask that you focus your energies on the concepts, content and organization of the document. Our intent is to be sure that we have included all the competencies for a particular job/position, and ask you to concentrate your review on the competencies that you know best so that we may have input from a diversity of working experts.

We encourage you to share this draft with colleagues and other professionals whose input would be most useful (e.g., human resources, records administration, archives, training, etc.). Feel free to distribute it to other discussion groups and collaborative workspaces.

Please do not concern yourself with editing or word-smithing. A professional editor will review the final document and make appropriate editorial changes.

As the HRWG will share the document with the Office of Personnel Management and professional associations we need your input and have devised a number of ways to collect your comments:

A Word Document that can be commented upon by using the "track changes" feature: On the Tools menu, click Track Changes. When the Track Changes feature is enabled, TRK appears on the status bar. Make the changes you want by inserting, deleting, or moving text or graphics.

A PDF copy of the original document that can be printed and used as a reference.

Two Town Hall Meetings will be held at FLICC on May 29th and June 12th. You may attend these via web conferencing. For more details on web conferencing, send email to [log in to unmask]

We plan to finalize this document by the middle of July 2008. To remain on schedule, we request that you provide your input by June 25, 2008. You may send comments via email [log in to unmask], fax 202-707-4828 or by mail to:

FLICC/FEDLINK Competencies Project
Adams Building Room 217
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20540-4935

Thank you for your participation in this ambitious initiative, which we believe will bring significant value to the federal library community, the profession, and the American people.

Sincerely,


Roberta I. Shaffer
Executive Director
FLICC/FEDLINK