Continuing Education for Librarians: A Conscious Effort

By S. Smith

(Part 2 of 2)

Continuing education comes in many formats, both formal and informal, including university classes, webinars, conference attendance, memberships in professional associations and reading. The gamut runs from tweets to academic journals and in between is a wide variety of methods for introducing new skills, updating and improving older skills, and learning completely new methods of technology. From free information to expensive databases, librarians devote many hours of both work and personal time to enhancing our technological know-how. Every time Microsoft releases an upgrade and our library purchases it we have to learn it. Every time a method of social networking becomes popular we have to learn it if we are to keep up with our patrons' needs. Every time a new issue of a journal lands in our mailboxes, online and off, we have to try to find the time to read it. Keeping up with the wealth of technological information available keeps us quite busy but our jobs demand it and our patrons deserve it.

Many hours are devoted weekly to reading material that is either required to maintain professional standards of work or perhaps a librarian wants to gain knowledge in an area in which he feels his skills may be lagging. While the costs of journals read through databases are included in library budgets there also are many free forms of continuing education available on the internet. The ALA, the New York Public Library and many other libraries, and hordes of librarians themselves have Twitter accounts or multiple accounts. There is a proliferation of librarian bloggers and a few minutes spent in the judicious selection of several well-written blogs can provide access to technical information from our co-workers at no charge! Besides formal learning for work we are learning and improving social networking skills at the same time.

Information is available online including Publisher's Weekly (2010) which has numerous daily and weekly free newsletters and Library Journal which has a very informative website (2010). Webinars are certainly a modern approach to continuing education and the wide variety available includes several that have recently been offered free to Wayne State library students.

Affiliations with professional organizations such as the American Library Association and its many divisions can also provide a treasure of continuing education information. American Libraries, the magazine of the ALA, is included in the purchase of a $33.00 per year student membership but regular membership costs are significantly higher and inclusion of several division memberships such as the Reader and User Services Association can cost hundreds of dollars per year. Regular columns on technology are pertinent to our studies and our future professions as well. Columns in other publications provide technological updates including reviews of textbooks, services, and software.

The costs of membership in professional associations may be borne by the individual librarian or library student, as is the purchase of non-required reading material that he is interested in for personal growth related to work. The cost of attendance at conferences may or not be reimbursable by one's place of employment and the value of attendance must be analyzed carefully, particularly if the cost is personal. The ALA Midwinter conference is $165 in advance and $190 onsite (American Libraries, Oct 2010) just for registration. Events have fees ranging from $45 to $380 and transportation, hotel, and food costs must be factored in as well. For a library to send one or more employees to a conference the question of who will fill in for those hours must be addressed as well. The cost of non-attendance may be higher, in the long run, due to missed opportunities to learn about recent library technology and get feedback from other librarians as to what they like, what works, what needs work, and what they want to see in the future.

In summary, continuing education must be a conscious effort on the part of all librarians to not only maintain personal and professional standards of work but, especially in our current economy, to be prepared for work restructuring and possible work relocation. With budget cuts affecting almost every library the cost of the lack of continuing education is both monetary and risky.

"To be a librarian is to be a lifelong, continuous learner" (Kovacs, 2010). As librarians we embrace this fact and strive to improve ourselves in every way possible. The costs of doing so is expensive in dollars and requires an investment of time in ourselves. It is a worthy investment.

List of Blogs, Tweets, and Other Information-Technological or Helpful to Library Students

http://www.libraryjournal.com/

http://www.publishersweekly.com

http://howtosurvivelibraryschool.blogspot.com/ (Full disclosure-Suzy Smith's blog)

http://unlibrarian.com/ (Halsted Bernard's blog)

http://www.davidleeking.com/ (An excellent source of library technological information in blog form)

ALCTS Continuing Ed-@ALCTS-CE "News from the Continuing Education Committee of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association"

ALCTS Continuing Ed-@libraryofcongress

ALCTS Continuing Ed-@alaconnect-"Announcements and help for ALA's collaborative / professional networking site for the library community".

These are just a very small percentage of the links to technological information to help you as a student and in your professional work as librarians.

References

ALA. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/

American Libraries. (2010, Oct.). p 11. ALA Midwinter Meeting Advance Registration & Housing Information.

Kovacs, D. (2010). The virtual reference handbook. p 68. London: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.

Library Journal. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/

Publisher's Weekly. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/home/index.html

Librarians without Libraries?!

by L. Young

(A brief look at where the profession is heading)

Book digitization and digital media is changing the way libraries work. Much like the internet changed many retailers' business models, the internet and proliferation of digital information is forcing libraries to consolidate and change how they "do business." As Eric Hellman explained in a recent post on his blog Go-To-Hellman:

"book digitization and the shift to e-books … will completely change the way most people use libraries.

* * *

Public libraries will need to adapt their physical plants to accommodate this changed usage pattern. Stacks will become more warehouse-like; public spaces will have fewer books and more coffee. Patrons will demand larger collections, but will accept less physical access to print. Home delivery of library materials will become much more common.

* * *

All of these trends will put pressure on libraries to work together on shared services, and ultimately to merge. Larger libraries will be more effective at delivering both print books and e-books, and patrons will care less about where the print books are stored when they're not being lent. Smaller libraries will find it difficult to support the technical and operational expertise needed to run the public library of 2020. (Hellman, 2010).

While this trend of library consolidation is easy to see, the question that I would like answered is: What is going to happen to all the librarians?!

A rather bleak view, expressed by poster "Jennifer" in response to Hellman's Blog, is: "One result of [library consolidation] will be a need for far fewer professional librarians and (possibly) more library assistants. Here's hoping the profession gets ahead of this coming reality and boosts the assistants pay scale as fast and as far as they can since the future is one of many professional librarians living out their careers as assistants." (Hellman, 2010). Another view expressed by Barbara Quint, a writer for Searcher Magazine, anticipates that some library professionals will thrive while others are probably doomed (Quint, 2010) ("Fewer, Better Libraries run by Fewer, Better Librarians"). Other scholars believe that many of today's librarians will have to re-invent themselves to become "Cybrarians" - i.e., specialists at finding information on the internet, see Rau and Babo, 2001 (collecting sources), and still others believe that librarians, even in the traditional sense will still be needed and relevant tomorrow:

Intelligent agents may eventually "think" like librarians do today. (Rao and Babo, 2001).

Codification and classification of [] information to facilitate easy location is best done now as well as in the foreseeable future by librarians. The familiarization with new gadgets and methodology of locating information for vast majority of population requires guides and librarians can easily fit into this role with training. The leveraging of the available information to suit the needs of clientele is also best done by the librarians. (Rao and Babo, 2001).

While I hope this latter prognosis is correct, with all of the changes that seem to be occurring in this profession, I am beginning to wonder what the future of librarianship actually is.

References

Hellman, E. (2010, Jan. 3). 2020: Fewer librarians, more locations. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/2020-fewer-libraries-more-locations.html

Quint, B. (2010, Feb.). The great divide. Searcher Magazine. Vol. 12, No. 2. Retrieved from http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/feb04/voice.shtml

Rao, K.N. and Babu, K.H. (2001). Role of librarian in internet and world wide web environment. Information Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 27.