Nearly 6,000 people have registered to use Lynda.com — LinkedIn’s training website with thousands of videos — through the Greater Victoria Public Library.
Since the partnership launched in June 2017, what have the people of the Capital Regional District been trying to teach themselves?
Rachel Rogers, a senior librarian in GVPL’s collections and technical services department, looked up the top completed courses watched by GVPL cardholders, not just videos started and stopped but “who actually was interested enough to follow it right through. It was quite interesting because it was very broad,” she said.
In the past year and a half, cardholders have watched 15,523 hours of videos on Lynda.com, completing 3,055 courses.
“It’s one of our more popular digital resources,” Rogers said. “Resources like Lynda and our other digital collections are really important because they really allow us to be open 24/7. They can be used anytime, anywhere. They’re available for users at the time that is convenient for them.”
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Top 10 complete courses by GVPL users are:
1. Programming Foundations: Fundamentals
2. Photography: First Steps
3. Graphic Design Careers: First Steps
4. Guy Kawasaki on Entrepreneurship
5. Project Management Simplified
6. Web Development Foundations: Full-Stack vs Front-End
7. Introduction to Photography
8. UX Design: 1 Overview
9. Time Management Fundamentals
10. Agile Project Management Principles
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Lynda.com is usually accessible through a paid membership as an individual or with a business, but with a free GVPL membership, the website and its thousands of videos are also free.
“We had been hearing a lot from our users about how much they would be interested in having a subscription, so that became a priority for us. One of GVPL’s key priorities — we have a couple — is ‘inspiring lifelong learning’ and for ‘bridging the digital divide.’ Lynda fits right in with that because it’s not just tech courses, they also have courses on music and photography and a broad range that hopefully, most people can find something that will be of interest to them,” Rogers said.
Anyone with a GVPL library card can use the service, the number on their card becomes their username. Their four-digit pin becomes the password.
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