OCLC wins nearly $300,000 federal grant to reshape library-worker credentials

Dublin-based OCLC’s WebJunction program has won $299,807 in federal funding to spend the next two years making library job skills easier to identify and, eventually, easier for workers to demonstrate. Led through OCLC’s headquarters at 6565 Kilgour Place, the project puts a Dublin knowledge-sector employer at the center of building a national workforce tool for current and prospective library workers.

OCLC announced Sept. 10, 2026, that the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the 24-month grant to WebJunction. Workers cannot earn the proposed credentials today; designing them is part of the work the grant will fund.

Updating the skills guide

The project centers on WebJunction’s Competency Index for the Library Field, which helps library staff identify the knowledge and skills needed for their work.

The existing index covers library management, technology, and personal and interpersonal skills. OCLC plans to update that framework and map the proposed credentials to it, connecting the skills expected in library jobs with a clearer way for workers to demonstrate them.

WebJunction first published the cross-role framework in June 2009, covering library workers’ knowledge, skills and attitudes. A federally funded update followed in February 2014 and produced the version the new project will revise.

The new work also will draw on Library Foundational Training, an earlier WebJunction workforce project announced by OCLC in September 2023.

Rural libraries at the table

OCLC and its partners will begin by studying existing library competencies and credentials and how public libraries use them. The review will pay particular attention to small and rural libraries, where staffing and training needs can differ from those of larger systems.

WebJunction will work with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies and representatives from seven state libraries.

The Association for Rural and Small Libraries brings a focus on advocacy and professional development for rural and small libraries. The Chief Officers of State Library Agencies brings the perspective of officials responsible for statewide library development across the country.

Along with the seven state-library partners, those groups will give OCLC input from the national, state and rural-library levels as it updates the framework and designs the credentials.

What workers can use

Once developed, the updated framework and its credentials will be available free through the WebJunction website. WebJunction is OCLC’s free online learning program for library staff and is open to libraries of any size, type or location.

For a library employee or job applicant in Franklin or Delaware county, there is a firm line between what is available now and what the grant is meant to produce. The existing Competency Index can be used today to identify the knowledge and skills expected across library work. No new credential can yet be earned.

Over the next 24 months, OCLC and its partners will study the field, update the framework and build credentials tied to it. The project’s direct audience is the workforce; for families who rely on public libraries across central Ohio, its connection runs through the people who staff those libraries.

The work begins with the guide already online. What OCLC has been funded to add from Dublin is the piece workers do not have today: an updated national framework with free credentials tied directly to the skills it defines.