Transportation Librarians Toolkit

The Transportation Librarian's Toolkit is a product of the Transportation Library Connectivity pooled fund study, TPF- 5(105), a collaborative, grass-roots effort by transportation libraries to enhance information accessibility and professional expertise to serve the transportation community. At the time of publication study members included state DOT libraries in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Louisiana; and the University Transportation Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to the Toolkit, the study has also published an Interim Report of the formation, major activities and accomplishments of the study from its launch in October 2004 through its third annual meeting in September 2007. The Technical Advisory Committee members of the pooled fund study were instrumental in creating this toolkit, which is a product of the collective work of the study. The purposes of this toolkit are to ease the learning curve of those new to librarianship and/or transportation; to pull together the collective wisdom of pooled fund members on topics that the pooled fund has addressed through its work of connecting and networking transportation libraries; to serve as a living document, updated frequently in print and online; to capture some of the institutional memory that is leaving the DOTs as waves of retirements loom; and to give transportation librarians of varying experience levels and work situations some tools to inspire, enhance and streamline librarians' work as well as library operations to make the transportation library an indispensable resource within the parent organization.