Polished & Prepared

INCLUDED COURSES

This certification series includes 4 live (Spring 2026) or self-paced (Fall 2026) online courses. Each one focuses on a different part of workplace success, and together they give you a stronger, more practical professional foundation for library work.

Polished & Prepared Part 1: Communicating Like a Pro

Strengthen your professional communication skills across patron, coworker, and supervisor interactions. You’ll learn how to communicate more clearly, listen more effectively, and adjust your approach based on audience, purpose, and context.

Polished & Prepared Part 2: Behaving Like a Pro

Demystify workplace expectations in library settings, including accountability, etiquette, collaboration, and boundaries. This course helps you navigate team dynamics and professional behavior with more clarity and confidence.

Polished & Prepared Part 3: Thinking Like a Pro

Build stronger judgment and decision-making skills on the job. You’ll focus on prioritization, adaptability, problem-solving, and more intentional ways to approach the work in front of you.

Polished & Prepared Companion Course: Workplace Success and ADHD

Explore practical, sustainable strategies for focus, organization, communication, and self-advocacy through a neurodivergent lens. This companion course centers ADHD and workplace success in library settings.

AFTER COMPLETING THIS CERTIFICATION SERIES, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO:

• Communicate more clearly and professionally across patron, coworker, and supervisor interactions
• Recognize and respond to workplace expectations with more confidence and less guesswork
• Build stronger habits around accountability, collaboration, and professional boundaries
• Prioritize tasks, solve problems, and make day-to-day decisions more strategically
• Adapt more effectively when priorities shift or workplace situations get complicated
• Use more sustainable workplace strategies for focus, organization, communication, and self-advocacy
• Approach your work with more intention, confidence, and a clearer sense of how to succeed in a library environment

You’ll leave with practical tools you can use right away, plus a stronger overall foundation for navigating the library workplace.

If you are someone who:

• Feels solid doing the work itself but wants more confidence navigating the workplace around it
• Wants clearer tools for communication, expectations, decision-making, and professional growth
• Has had moments where teamwork, feedback, priorities, or workplace norms felt harder to decode than they should
• Is looking for practical support that applies to real library work, not generic career advice
• Wants a stronger professional foundation without having to piece it together one awkward situation at a time

This certification was built for you.

This series is especially helpful for:

• New library workers who want a stronger start
• Library assistants, paraprofessionals, and frontline staff building confidence across workplace skills
• Staff in all types of libraries who want clearer strategies for communication, collaboration, and decision-making
• Employees looking for more sustainable ways to work, especially in fast-paced or public-facing environments
• Supervisors who want to support staff with a more consistent foundation across core professional skills

If you want to feel more capable, more prepared, and less like you’re figuring everything out the hard way, you will benefit from this certification series.

Kate Hall, Executive Director, Northbrook Public Library

Kate Hall is the Executive Director of the Northbrook Public Library, a Library Journal 5 Star Library, after serving as Director at the New Lenox Public Library and in various library positions in the Chicagoland area for over 20 years. Kate has been in leadership positions in state and national library groups and has served on the committee and chaired Director’s University, an intensive training for new Illinois Public Library Directors that has trained over 350 new library directors. She has co-authored two books, The Public Library Director’s Toolkit and The Public Library Director’s HR Toolkit. Kate is the recipient of the 2021 Illinois Library Association Librarian of the Year Award and in 2021 launched Illinois Libraries Present, a statewide joint programming cooperative. Most importantly, she is the devoted servant of two very demanding black cats.

Christina Fuller-Gregory, Assistant Director of Libraries, South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville

Christina Fuller-Gregory (she/her/hers) is a librarian, writer, and facilitator whose sphere of expertise centers equity, belonging, and radical empathy. A 2021 Library Journal Mover and Shaker, Christina’s work is driven by a desire to see libraries develop strategies for becoming brave and resilient organizations.

Lisa Kropp, Library Director, Lindenhurst Memorial Library

Lisa Gangemi Kropp is a dynamic library leader with a passion for building responsive, people-centered public libraries. With over 30 years of experience working a variety of jobs in public libraries and library systems, her skills include customer service, sustainability in libraries, youth services, human resources, and more. She is known for guiding organizations through thoughtful change management, aligning mission, staff, and community needs. In recognition of her impact and leadership, she was named a 2025 Library Journal Mover & Shaker, highlighting innovative work that strengthens libraries and the communities they serve. She is the Director of the Lindenhurst Memorial Library in New York.

Kate Thompson, MLIS, Owner, Kate Thompson Consulting, LLC

Kate Thompson is an advocate for neurodiversity and a seasoned speaker and coach who empowers workplaces to better support neurodivergent individuals by embracing their strengths and navigating challenges. As a member of the Iowa Olmstead Consumer Task Force, she supported the full inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of community life. Through the Iowa Family Leadership Training Institute, she advocated for policy change at the state and local level. Kate has assisted libraries in launching Accessibility Teams and surveying users to create more inclusive services and environments.

Kate has taught courses and delivered presentations on neurodiversity to a wide range of audiences, including the Public Library Association and the University of Wisconsin Information School’s continuing education department. She was a contributor to the ALA Editions book Library Programming for Autistic Children and Teens and has written for the blogs of American Libraries and the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Through her firsthand experiences as a parent and her professional work with autistic individuals, Kate has gained deep insight into the strengths and challenges faced by neurodivergent employees. Living with ADHD has further shaped her understanding of cognitive diversity and the importance of embracing different ways of thinking. In her consulting work, Kate helps organizations unlock the full potential of neurodivergent employees by designing inclusive recruitment, onboarding, and workplace practices that foster belonging.

A lot of the hardest parts of work are not the technical parts. They’re the human ones. Communicating clearly, understanding expectations, making decisions without freezing up, adapting when things change, and figuring out how to work in a way that is both effective and sustainable. Most people are expected to pick those skills up over time, usually by getting something wrong first.

That’s what this series is for. Polished & Prepared: Core Professional Skills for Library Staff brings together four online sessions that focus on the parts of work that shape how people actually function on the job. Across the series, you’ll build skills in communication, professional behavior, decision-making, collaboration, adaptability, and sustainable workplace systems, with content grounded in real library situations instead of generic workplace language.

This is designed as a practical toolkit, not a theory-heavy training. You can take the full series to build a stronger overall foundation, or use it to fill the gaps that tend to go unspoken in day-to-day work. If you register for the full series after one or more sessions have already happened, you’ll receive the recordings for those past sessions and live access to the remaining ones. That means you can still complete the certification without missing the content that came before.

SESSIONS AND PRICING

This registration is for the full certification series, which includes all 4 courses. You may purchase the series through the date of the final live or self-paced session date. For Spring sessions, if earlier sessions have already passed when you enroll, you will receive the recordings for those sessions and live access to the remaining ones.

GROUP OPTIONS

Training a team? Choose the setup that matches how you want to plan and pay:

Group course enrollment: Enroll 3+ staff in this series and save.

Bulk course credits: Prepay once, get the highest per-seat discount on every course, and assign seats later.

Unlimited annual licensing: System-wide access for a year with no per-course approvals.

Request Discounted Group Pricing

Questions? Email groupsales@libraryjournal.com.

SERIES FORMAT

This certification series includes 4 online courses designed to build skills progressively across the full program.

Each course is a 2-hour live session (Spring 2026) or a 2-module self-paced course (Fall 2026). Recordings will be available on demand for six months after each session, so you can revisit the material or catch up on any sessions you missed.

EXPECTED TIME COMMITMENT

If you complete all 4 courses in the series, it will take approximately 8 hours to complete the certification.

COURSE ACCESS

All recordings and materials included in this certification series will remain accessible for six months after each session.

CREDITS & CERTIFICATION

Complete all 4 courses in this series to earn 8 professional development hours and your Polished & Prepared: Core Professional Skills for Library Staff certification from Library Journal.

ACCESSIBILITY

All video recordings feature auto-captioning. If you require accommodations, please email course-support@libraryjournal.com upon registration and we will make our best efforts to support your needs.

SUPPORT

For technical or course-related support, please contact course-support@libraryjournal.com.