Given that...

• Formal training is essential
  You can't learn it all on the job, or by reading books. Formal training is a critical component in the education of a Unix system administrator. This is particulary true in most libraries where there is only one Unix administrator, and therefore no senior sysadmins to serve as mentors and teachers.
• Unix courses are available from a variety of sources
  Many, if not most colleges and universities offer some type of continuing education that includes Unix courses. They may also be offered at local vocational-technical institutes. And once you get on the mailing lists, you realize that technical training (including Unix) is offered by a variety of commercial providers.
• Vendor training is the best, but expensive
  By vendor training, I mean Sun Education courses for Solaris and IBM Learning Services for AIX. Since vendor training is only offered in selected cities, it may also entail travel expenses.
• Libraries have finite training budgets
  Not many academic libraries are so rich that they can afford unlimited training budgets. Training must compete with other organizational needs for scarce resources.

... know which training to get where

There are many flavors of Unix: Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Free BSD, Tru-64, etc. From the perspective of the casual Unix user, they all look pretty similar. But there are major differences in regards to system administration.

• Users
  A Unix user needs to be able to login via the console or telnet, ftp files, navigate through directories, create, copy, move, list, delete, and search for files, use the vi editor, etc.
• System administrators
  A Unix sysadmin needs to be able to add and delete users, install software, apply patches, format disks, backup and restore data, monitor performance, install and/or upgrade disks, memory and other components, troubleshoot hardware and software problems, etc.
  
  

It is necessary to differentiate between those two roles (and therefore the level of Unix skills needed) in order to make smart training decisions. Are you the person responsible for the system administration tasks or does the campus systems office do those things? If it is you, you should attend OS-specific sysadmin training; if not, you can get by with less expensive (and usually geographically-closer) Unix user training.

The bottom line: Spend your training dollars wisely -- get user training "on the cheap" in order to save the big bucks for vendor sysadmin training.

Some advice/strategies

• Space out the training
  If you are new to Unix sysadmin, you may need two or three weeks of training to get up to speed, but don't take those weeks back-to-back. It takes a while to absorb what you have learned, and to integrate that knowledge into your day-to-day routine.
• "Compare and contrast" the cost of training to the cost of hardware
  Especially for mid- to large-sized libraries, this is a good selling point when trying to justify an adequate training budget. The initial hardware cost for our Voyager database server was around $275,000. An annual training budget of just 2% of that hardware cost ($5500) will buy a couple weeks of Sun Ed courses.
• Bundle-in training when you purchase hardware
  Consider including training credits as part of contracts to purchase servers and other expensive hardware. (Try asking for it gratis!)
• Stress "return on investment"
  Of course, for academic libraries, ROI can't easily be expressed in dollars. But you can make clear that the training ROI is having some very critical data -- your library's Voyager database, in the hands of a competent, knowledgeable Unix system administrator.