Transcript Document

ALIA Keynote:
All Too Hard?
Moving on from the Education and Workforce
Summit
Derek Whitehead
Swinburne University of Technology
Outline
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Qualifications
Discontinuous change
The Library workforce now
The Summit
Summit outcomes
Where next?
Qualifications in two Senses
1) I am a library employer – about 85 ongoing/contract
staff and about 25-30 casuals employed seasonally
2) I work in the higher education sector – 4142 sector
library staff, down 20% in the past decade
3) Member of the ALIA Board from 2007-2009 and
president 2008-2009
4) Involved with the ALIA Education and Workforce
Summit in March 2008
5) Not a spokesperson for ALIA
Discontinuous Change
• 89% of students use search engines to begin a
search and 2% use a library web site
• 93% are satisfied with this
• “Books” are the library brand, but . . .
• “When the broad digital availability of books erodes
the comparative advantage of large research
collections, where will the library’s comparative
advantage lie?” (Derek Law)
• Most students now have two communication devices
– a phone (98%) and a laptop (about 70-80%).
Scary future
• “But the vast majority of books ever written are not
accessible to anyone except the most tenacious
researchers at premier academic libraries. Books
written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary
black hole.” Sergey Brin, October 2009
• What’s wrong with this statement?
• Google Books includes over 10 million digitised
books, “A Library to Last Forever.”
• Kennan study showed 32.5% of library job advts
require ALIA accreditation, down from 74% in 1974.
Discontinuous Change
Traditional library Web 2.0 World
Cataloguing
Automated metdata, del.icio.us
Classification
Folksonomies, the semantic web, keywords
Acquisitions
E-bay, Paypal, Amazon, Abebooks, ebooks
Reference
Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia
Search
Google, Google Scholar, more
Information literacy
Intuitive, “smart” software
Collections
Youtube, Flickr, repositories, open access,
Amazon, pay for access
Library collection
World Wide Web, digital collections
Library
Study space, information commons,
cafeteria
Discontinuous Change
In a time of discontinuous change surely workforce
issues are different. How?
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Nimble wprkforce readily able to adjust to new roles
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High levels of generic skills like adaptability, fluency,
customer focus, technology affinity
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Responsive, alert and integrated education and
professional development infrastructure
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High level of commitment to professional standards
and values
Are we like that?
Library Workforce Now
Library Workforce Now
Library Workforce Now
• We have always been concerned about the library
workforce and taken some responsibility for it.
• The LAA Board of Examiners up to 1974
• Current entry provisions for 30-40 years
• Development of higher education for librarians and
paraprofessional education for library technicians in
the 1970s
• ALIA / LAA Board of Education from 1974-2001
• Strategic Review of ALIA in 1997
• Current structure from 2000
Library Workforce Now
• LISEKA = Library and Information Science Education
for the Knowledge Age – ran 2001-2003
• These were the issues:
• Entry qualification
• ALIA and professional standards
• The need for a CPD program
• The binary path(s) to practice
• What we mean by professional
• Pathways to professional status
• Core knowledge, skills and attributes
• These are still the issues
Library Workforce Now
• ALIA Education Reference Group – ran 2004-2005
and revised our policy statements:
• ALIA’s role in education of library and
information professionals (2005)
• Courses in library and information management
(2005)
• Employer roles and responsibilities (1986,
amended 2006)
• Library and information sector: core knowledge,
skills and attributes (1998, amended 2005)
• Professional development … (2005)
• We have enough statements for now.
Library Workforce Now
More recent developments
• Standing Committee on Education and Professional
Development – created a few years ago
• The NeXus Project from 2007 onwards – run by
A/Professor Gill Hallam
• Development of the CPD program this decade
• Meetings of library technician educators since 2006
• Workforce projects in LATN, Victorian public libraries,
school libraries
• Education and Workforce Summit in March 2008
The 2008 Summit
• Held on 30 March 2008 in Melbourne
• With these two broad objectives:
• Secure agreement on an action plan. We
identified five issues in particular.
• Agree in broad terms on changes to policy
which have been discussed but put aside.
• See http://www.alia.org.au/education/summit08/
The 2008 Summit
The 2007 National Advisory Congress held in Sept-Oct
2007 had raised many issues. Twelve.
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Generational issues
Being a profession
Qualifications and accreditation
New graduates
Skill sets
Attracting and retaining new recruits
What do employers want? What can they give?
Marketing and image issues
Training and development
Role of ALIA in education & workforce issues
Workforce data
Workforce summit
The 2008 Summit
Four issues had been left over from previous exercises
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Review the course recognition processes for
professional and paraprofessional courses
Examine mechanisms for admission to professional
membership of ALIA through widened eligibility
Re-integrate the binary technician and professional
paths to practice into a single framework.
Work with educational institutions, qualifications
authorities and employers to provide “clear and feasible
pathways for future non-professional participants in the
LIS workforce who seek to attain professional status.”
Summit Outcomes
In May 2008 the Board set out eight Summit outcomes
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Defining who we are – library & information profession
Skills shortages and competencies in demand by
employers
Forum of higher education educators
Educators and employers getting together.
Stronger relationships with other information
associations.
Enhancing ALIA course recognition or accreditation
Recruitment strategies
Continuing professional development
Summit Outcomes
Who would do it all?
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ALIA and its members, led by the Education and PD
Standing Committee
Library employers
Library educators
Library and information professional entities outside
ALIA
Expert knowledge, research and data in the workforce
planning area
Summit Outcomes
Progress Reports
• “Progress so far” in July 2008 and March 2009
• Provided input to the NAC in late 2008
• http://www.alia.org.au/governance/nac/2008 and
there was a briefing document
• The remainder of this presentation is an account
of where we have got to with the 8 issues over the
past year, and where we might go
Where Next?
1 Methods of enhancing recruitment, or, how
to attract the brightest and the best
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Victorian recruitment and careers working
party – how to make it national?
More careers fairs, promotion, more work
experience, good practice manual, staffing
Involving all library / information players
The issues are resources and message. What
is the message?
In a time of change, the message is more
difficult and more important. What are we
selling?
Where Next?
2 The need to define the library and
information profession
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Helen Partridge (ALIA Board) is convening a
working party on this.
The issue loops back to recruitment and more
widely, marketing.
Is our core knowledge and skills policy the
right statement for a world of discontinuous
change?
Where Next?
2 The need to define the library and
information profession
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How do we distinguish ourselves from other
“information professionals”?
The iForum discussion series refers to “the
information disciplines” – what are they?
Maureen Henniger cites managing digital
resources as a notable absence.
How to make core skills dynamic? Can we?
What is the balance between values, generic
skills, and professional knowledge?
Where Next?
3 Forum of higher education educators
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Educators need to get together on a common
approach to these questions.
Ten higher education institutions
Six provide undergraduate degrees, 9 provide
postgraduate degrees, 2 are seeking
recognition
Graduate enrolment up from 1425 to 1539
from 2001-2005, undergrad decline from 1209
to 811
Where Next?
3 Forum of higher education educators
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There is now a lively forum, initially convened by
Damian Lodge (then a member of the Board)
And an annual meeting of organisations educating
library technicians.
Mari Davis has also convened an I-FORUM to
explore issues relating to the iSchools movement
If we are serious about coherent answers to
educational issues, we need coherence in
educational provision.
Educators must be a bridge between education
and our profession, straddling two worlds.
Where Next?
4 Educators and employers getting together
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Educators need to get together with
employers to work on a common approach.
There is no ALIA consultative body
Local bodies like course advisory committees
exist.
Keys to successful courses
(a) educators & employers working together
(b) Responsiveness of course content to
changes in libraries
(c) Involvement of practitioners
Where Next?
5 Continuing professional development
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Major push on this by ALIA
NAC in 2008 was Staying Smart in as
Complicated World – discussion papers
ALIA has taken over the CAVAL public
training program
Member survey was divided on “compulsory”
New PD newsletter listing opportunities
Or do we want to move to something like the
LIANZA approach
Where Next?
6 Defining and addressing current and future
skills shortages / what employers want
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What do employers want in the way of skills?
We have some evidence from the 2007 and
2008 NACs
They said things like adaptability, customer
focus, marketing and promotion, influencing
skills – all generic skills
The NeXus study will help
Employers need to talk to educators
Where Next?
7 Enhancing ALIA course recognition
processes
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There is a review of the course recognition
processes is well under way.
HE Course recognition day 22 January 2010
LT national meeting on 23-24 October
2009 visits to all of the 17 TAFE courses plus
some HE – CDU, UniSA, RMIT, Curtin,
Canberra (December), UTas (Feb 2010)
How does discontinuous change affect our
education?
Where Next?
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Enhancing ALIA course recognition
processes
The five issues on the wiki are
• ALIA core skills and knowledge
• From course recognition to accreditation.
• Review of the content of the course
recognition questionnaire – now revised
• Reviewing every five years instead of seven.
• Course length – inconsistencies in the length
of courses. Recognition of prior learning.
How will they be resolved?
Where Next?
8 Stronger relationships with other
information associations
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ALIA is developing this as a strategy.
No body can deal with this individually, and it
relates to all of the seven areas above
Workforce for the future
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Clearer about who we are and a rethink for
the present times.
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All on board with a common strategy
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Stronger focus on recruitment of the right
people
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Education of library workers more together
than it is now.
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Education which is nimble, flexible and
responsive to workforce requirements
Workforce for the future
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Professional education a lifelong commitment,
not just a oncer
5 In education, a focus on the best people,
generic skills and imparting core professional
knowledge
6 Accreditation with bite – maintaining
standards.
As you can see, it is about new thinking,
coherence and unity – all a big ask.
The scary vision of the future is the filter through
which workforce thinking should run
Acknowledgements
Derek Law, “Academic digital libraries of the future: an
environment scan”, in New Review of Academic
Librarianship, 15(1) 53-67
Sergey Brin, “A Library to Last Forever”, The New York Times,
October 9, 2009
Maureen Henniger, Peak Bodies Forum – May 22, 2009. Item 4:
LIS Education: ALIA Course Recognition Review –
Challenges facing the profession in the 21st century. May
2009.
MA Kennan, P Willard and CS Wilson, “What do they want? A
study of changing employer expectations of information
professionals”, in AARL 37(1) 17-37
Thank you
Derek Whitehead
Director, Information Resources and
University Copyright Officer
Swinburne University of Technology
[email protected]