About the Program

To help meet the needs of ongoing continuing education for West Virginia library staff so they may provide professional library service, the West Virginia Library Commission is developing a three-level Public Librarian Certification Program (PLCP) comprised of online courses, archived webinars, workshops, and special institutes.

Library personnel who do not have formal training in library science should start with the Basic Certification track, which includes introductory coursework in these core areas: Fundamentals of Librarianship, Collection Development, Organization of Materials, Management, Programming & Services, and Technology.

Intermediate Certification will build on the work done at the basic level. It allows the participant to explore topic areas in more depth by choosing electives in each subject area. Intermediate Certification requires an additional 16 courses over the Basic Level completed over one year.

Advanced Certification requires completion of 16 additional courses over the Intermediate Level.  An extra year is given for the completion of the Advanced level requirements.

(Intermediate and Advanced Certification tracks are forthcoming.)

Courses will be added and removed based on the timeliness of the information presented. If you have taken an online course, webinar, or workshop that you feel will benefit others, please recommend it at surveymonkey.com.

Questions?

If you have any questions about a course or your certification progress, please email the Library Commission directly.

• For questions about credit, certificates, certificate mailings, etc. please contact wvlcref@wv.gov.
• For questions about specific tutorials, graded activities, problems with the Niche Academy site, etc., please contact Amanda Proper or wvlcref@wv.gov.
• Do not use the ? button on Niche Academy except to ask technological questions about the Niche Academy website. Questions submitted using that button go directly to the Niche Academy company's tech support. We will not receive them unless they forward them to us, and they cannot answer questions about tutorials, certification progress, graded activities, etc.

To Register

At this time, only Basic Certification is available for registration.

To register and begin the program, click on the the "Registration and Requirements" tab above.