Monday, October 01, 2007

The Information Professional: Do we have a culture of learning?

Last Wednesday night (The 26th of September), I headed down to Melbourne for the State Library of Victoria's next talk in the Outside the Box series. Here are my notes (far too much effort to properly transcibe!):

Damian Lodge, CSU Lecturer, and Board member of ALIA
  • discussed his PHD (in Universities)
  • leadership, technology, staff motivation, staff development
  • supporting staff, funding them and giving them work time to write conference papers etc.

Many Manning, from SLAV

  • they have selected topics for groups to pick from and help get speakers (this could be good for regional groups of ALIA)
  • gain PD from formal and non-formal activities, like reading journals
  • schools pressed for $
  • mainly offered PD to librarians and teacher librarians but have now moved to assistants, LT's, audio technician's etc.
  • credibility - putting yourself out there, giving a presentation

Craig Anderson, Director of RMIT Libraries

  • going to different events (or sector events) to broaden your view
  • first aid, OH&S, fire safety (standard training)
  • open program (whole uni - 100 sessions), things like IT, excel etc.
  • on site training (databases, ILMS)
  • external training (conferences, other events)
  • full time staff development trainer
  • doing the learning 23 things
  • who's responsible? management or staff?

We also discussed the ALIA PD scheme.

  • selling the scheme to both employers and employees
  • making it compulsory? but if so numbers would drop
  • major problem. they are aiming for 10% involvement

Comments (from the crowd!)

  • people don't know what they don't know!
  • the need to discuss change and informing others by having 'strategic conversations'.
  • some people just go to work for the $ - they aren't interested in PD
  • regional PD - the distance!
  • you need to upskill for internal promotion, or an external job
  • I would take 3 years of a star, than 10 years of a dud!

It was a really interesting talk, however we discussed that people were preaching to the converted!! All those interested in PD were there already! How do you get the others interested?

No comments: