Jesse Ephraim wrote:
> I have had the same experience over my 5 years as a librarian. It's one
> of my biggest pet peeves. A person in a professional position of any
> kind should expect to have to do a certain amount of self-directed
> learning so that their skills remain current.
>
>
>
However, it wouldn't hurt if our profession provided more learning
opportunities and more direction for self-learners. Many other
professions have well-developed continuing education programs (e.g.
teachers, medical professionals). I feel like we have no guidance from
our professional organization, guidance for exactly what has been
discussed here: what skills do today's librarians need? This shouldn't
be left to a casual mailing list discussion, but should be a major ALA
project. Instead, on the ALA site I find "ACTION GOAL: By 2005, ALA will
be a leader in continuing education for librarians and library personnel"
And, guess what, the goal wasn't met. I know it wasn't met because one
of the goals is:
/"ALA will use computer/communications technologies effectively to
provide a variety of continuing education programs for members."/
and we KNOW that's not happening.
If people knew what they should be learning and had opportunities to
learn, I think we'd had a better profession. Give people a sense of
direction and a way to measure their accomplishments, and they'll go
much further.
Since no one can know everything about the profession, how about
developing "tracks" that people can follow: management, technology,
collection curation, etc. Each of these tracks could have specific
learning goals, a set of readings (published by ALA for its revenue
goals), regional courses. At ALA conferences (which ALA considers to be
its major contribution to continuing education) have training based on
these tracks (not just a bunch of random programs decided on 18 months
before). And tie promotions to continuing education achievements.
It seems to me to be a no-brainer.
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Fri Sep 12 2008 - 10:44:09 EDT