For the second consecutive year, IFLA Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning and IFLA New Professionals Special Interest Group are partnering with the American Library Association to present a series of free quarterly webinars on issues of interest to new librarians, library associations and library schools, library-decision makers, and all library workers. This is a great opportunity for membership participation via new worldwide online programming.
Following our tradition of excellence, this year our keynote speakers for each of our quarterly sessions come from different regions of the world. They include IFLA Incoming President, Sinikka Sipilä, and the President of the Library Association of Singapore, Gene Tan. Below, the date and time of the next webinar. Save the date!
April 16, 2013
9:00 a.m. CDT
10:00 a.m. EDT
4:00 p.m. CET
10:00 p.m. Singapore
Keynote by Sinikka Sipilä, IFLA President Elect and Secretary General of the Finnish Library Association. Keynote topics: Strong libraries for equal and innovative societies, advocacy, how IFLA works and how to join.
Susanne Riedel, former President of the German Library Association for Library Professionals, Head of Support Team Publication Services at the Electronic Services Department, Bielefeld University. Topics include professional development, intergenerational librarianship, mentoring, librarians and change.
Kate Byrne, Outreach Team Leader, University of New South Wales and Program Coordinator of International Librarians Network, Australia.
The #newlibgc webinars are archived, therefore you can join them, ask questions and participate in conversations with international colleagues live, or you can listen to them later, anywhere at any time, such as the January webinar with Keynote by Gene Tan, President of the Library Association of Singapore and Director of the National Library of Singapore.
Questions and requests for information:
Loida Garcia-Febo
Series Coordinator loidagarciafebo@gmail.com
Loida Garcia-Febo and Robin Kear share their Keynote for Strategies for Library Associations: Include New Professionals now!, a program presented by IFLA Management of Library Associations Section and the New Professionals SIG at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Helsinki this past August 2012. The paper is here and the Power Point presentation is here.
The World Library and Information Congress in Helsinki is approaching with big steps. High times to give you more details on conference session 95 in the morning of 13 Aug, entitled “Strategies for library associations: include new professionals now!” and jointly organized by NPSIG and the Management of Library Associations Section. First, here is some background on the intention of the session from the Call for Papers:
In these days library associations are under pressure. Faced with multiple challenges, tight budgets and a lack of new members represent, above all, the most urgent warning signs that call for transformation. It seems vital to revisit the associations’ message to their (non)members and to think about their roles and responsibilities within an ever-changing LIS profession and the larger society. But are library associations sufficiently equipped to respond to these challenges?
One thing is for sure: In the strategy of strengthening library associations more attention must be paid to attract and facilitate New Professionals. They are a true force for change. Can you imagine your library association as inspiring, surprising, empowering? Not yet? Then it is high time to include New Professionals! How else will you know what your changing field of professionals demands?
We are very excited about a good number of speakers from all around the world who are going to talk about experiences in their own countries, present models to support new librarians, and provide insights into the identity of new professionals and the library profession at large. You can be looking forward to new as well as established professionals approaching the topic from different angles.
Moreover, the session will allow for the audience to get actively involved. Between the presentations, all participants are invited to take part in table discussions built around the four areas of interest from the Call for Papers (more details will be provided during the session):
Outreach to members and non-members
Professional communication inside and outside of library associations
Leadership as a New Professionals issue
The flow of professions
At each table, one new and one established professional are supposed to supervise the discussion and report back to the audience afterwards. In the end of the session, a panel formed out of some of the speakers and table supervisors will provide further feedback and lead to a plenary discussion.
The input of both new and established professionals is most welcome and very important to make this session a success. All participants will be able to learn from the best practices presented, reflect the status quo in their own countries, and get in touch with many other colleagues. Take this chance and join us on Monday morning! Please let us know in advance (via comments or email), if you are up for supervising one of the table discussions. This will be an even better opportunity for you to get actively involved with the topic and the participants. For all of you who are planning to attend: We have created a Facebook event for the session.
NPSIG Convenor Sebastian was part of the MLAS panel at the first BSLA mini-congress that took place in Berlin from February 23 – 24 2012 and shared best practices and strategies for recruitment and succession planning in library associations.
Support the creation of a group for and by New Professionals.
Provide enough time and space for them to organize themselves effectively and to try things out.
Include new librarians in important bodies of your association and in decision-making processes.
→ actively shaping the future of your association!
At the first-ever IFLA BSLA mini-congress in Berlin Germany February 23-24 2012, representatives of IFLA BSLA country projects from Botswana, Cameroon, Lebanon, Lithuania, Nepal, Peru and Ukraine shared their success stories, and solutions to challenges that cut across borders. Strategies to engage with politicians, stakeholders, and to sustain associations into the future were discussed by all association representatives and their trainers.
What an amazing BOBCATSSS 2012 conference! The organizing teams from Amsterdam, Groningen, and Stuttgart worked very professionally and turned this anniversary edition into one of the best that we had so far! Also, the beautiful city of Amsterdam set a marvelous scene for the gathering of over 400 New Professionals from all over the world.
To get started, we introduced the audience to the work of NPSIG, its open infrastructure that makes participation quite easy, and its position within a huge international association like IFLA. We also presented the various online and on-site activities of the group and highlighted the benefits of getting involved internationally…
Aim of the workshop
workshop introduction video
presentation slides
One of the main goals of the workshop was to make the participants think about their role and position in the LIS field as New Professionals. For this purpose, we divided the audience into six groups and asked them to identify and discuss:
the Top 5 of unique strengths of New Professionals,
a list of possible weaknesses of New Professionals,
the Top 5 of the most important areas in LIS that New Professionals need to be good at.
group work
After 45 minutes of intense brainstorming and discussions, every group had successfully accomplished the task and came up with a creative visualization of their findings which they boldly presented to their peers.
Results of the workshop
Hands on with group 1
group 1 presentation video
results group 1
The strong tree of group 2
group 2 presentation video
results group 2
Star Trekking with group 3
group 3 presentation video
results group 3
The world is round with group 4
group 4 presentation video
results group 4
Cycling for New Professionals with group 5
group 5 presentation video
results group 5
A cloudy day for group 6
group 6 presentation video
results group 6
Synopsis
Based on the raw data we condensed some interesting overall insights and surprising revelations. First of all, here is an overview on the strenghts, weaknesses, and LIS areas that appeared most often in all six groups.
unique strengths:
up-to-date knowledge (5x)
enthusiasm (5x)
flexibility (4x)
openness (3x)
understanding user perspectives / people skill / user centered (3x)
weaknesses:
lack of experience (5x)
lack of trust / courage (3x)
arrogance (2x)
Side note: One of the groups identified a lack of financing, time, and influence as three weaknesses of New Professionals. Depending on each other, these factors indeed constitute ongoing serious issues for lots of people in their early careers. For NPSIG one answer to this challenge lies in video coverage, online conferences and webinars. On the other hand, you cannot retain the major benefits of conferences, namely networking and face-to-face interaction, when going online. For this reason, it is as important to lobby for the needs of New Professionals and to support all efforts and existing initiatives that help enable access to conferences as early in your career and easy as possible!
important areas in LIS:
networking / collaboration (6x)
technology / ICT (5x)
marketing / PR (4x)
dealing with users / psychology (4x)
information literacy (3x)
management (3x)
innovation (3x)
Three observations:
The vast majority of categories does not belong to a discipline-specific knowledge. Instead, they rather highlight generic capabilities such as management, marketing, collaboration etc. What is the reason for this choice of the workshop participants? Partly, you could refer to the huge pressure on libraries due to the economic crisis. Faced with budget cuts and huge financial pressure, the well-being of your library depends on efficient management of the resources, creative marketing campaigns, collaboration with other institutions etc. The fact that our group of New Professionals came up with these kinds of categories, might also be prove for their educational background. In recent years, concepts of marketing, management etc. play a more and more important role in the coursework of many BA / MA programs in LIS. So it would only feel reasonable for students and new graduates to handle these areas as important parts of LIS.
It also appeared a lot of the fields above are so broad that we cannot put them under one definite area. When talking about promotion, for example, is it about highlighting the library services in particular or the library profession as a whole? In a multinational group like our workshop participants, everyone has slightly different views here, shaped by his or her educational and cultural background.
A surprise might be that social media was mentioned just two times, digital services even only once. Does this mean these two fields play no significant role in the eyes of the workshop participants? Probably it only shows the very opposite: Digital services and even more social media constitute an integral part of lots of New Professionals in their professional and private life. Therefore, there might be a tendency of taking them for granted. Btw: Of course, one could also argue that technology / ICT as second winning category very well includes social media and digital services.
General observations
Taking a step back, here are some general observations across the three categories that caught our attention:
All groups decided to go for a visualization of their findings. Especially the tree (group 2) and the bicycle (group 5) very nicely show the close intertwining and dependence between the strengths, weaknesses, and the important LIS areas. The tree needs strong roots (LIS areas) to grow and to bloom (unique strengths). The bycicle only runs with two wheels – you don’t only have to know your strengths but also be aware of your weaknesses to keep moving (succeeding) and avoid the risk of falling.
Strengths and weaknesses are not mutually exclusive. In fact, most of them have an ambivalent nature. Some groups found that “courage” was a specific strength of New Professionals, whereas others listed “lack of courage” or “being afraid of proposing your ideas” as one weakness. The same goes with “multitasking” versus “information overload” / “distraction from…”. We also overheard discussions of groups which had hard times to decide whether a lack of experience and being idealistic rather belong to strengths or weaknesses of New Professionals.
The two winning categories for strengths and weaknesses are mutually dependent somehow: As a New Professional you are probably lacking experience in the field. On the other hand, your rich up-to-date knowledge makes you very valuable for the working force.
Of course, the above group findings cannot simply be generalized. However, they represent a very interesting snapshot of perceptions and experiences of a multinational group of new librarians in early 2012. Moreover, a lot of the findings of the workshop participants do impressively fit with outcomes of similar events we organized in recent years (see the results at Bobcatsss 2010 and 2011, for example)!
The Future
Finally, you are all invited to share your individual views on this topic! Based on your experience, do you agree or disagree with some of the statements above? Is there something to add to the list of strengths, weaknesses, and important LIS areas? What do you think about the workshop concept? We are looking forward to hearing from you and to going on with the discussion!
Dr. Alex Byrne, New South Wales State Librarian and Chief Executive of the State Library NSW in Australia. IFLA President 2005-2007. Highlighting the topics: LIS school curriculum, gained skills and degrees vs. “the reality” at work. Bridging the gap between theory and practice. How to deal with generational differences at work?
Janice Lachance, J.D., CEO of the Special Libraries Association. Featuring a model of a library association’s work with new professionals in various regions of the globe.
JP Porcaro, Head of Library Acquisitions and Technological Discovery at New Jersey City University. Co-founder of ALA Think Tank, and originator of the Make It Happen philosophy for librarians. Featuring a group by and for librarians.
Future webinars
Come back to this page and stay tuned for announcements of future webinars. Speakers featured in upcoming webinars include:
Kay Raseroka, IFLA President 2003-2005
Maureen Sullivan, ALA President Elect
Barbara Ford, Director, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, ALA President 1997-1998
Jukka Pennanen and Mace Ojala, Cycling for Libraries
Rachel Bickley, LIS New Professionals Network
The series explore useful topics to help new professionals at various stages of their career, including:
LIS school curriculum, gained skills and degrees vs. “the reality” at work. Bridging the gap between theory and practice. How to deal with generational differences at work?
Mentoring and best practices including pros and cons of different approaches like peer-to-peer, and classical mentor-mentee relationships.
How to develop leadership skills as a new professional: programs, mentoring, learning by doing. Working abroad, leaving your home country.
Continuing Professional Development for new professionals, how to stay up to date from the very start even if conditions at work (funding/permission to attend conferences, support with writing articles, etc.) are not the best.
The webinars will be recorded and made available at a later date.
Questions and requests for information:
Loida Garcia-Febo
Coordinator of the series
loidagarciafebo@gmail.com
Keynote by Sinikka Sipilä, IFLA President Elect and Secretary General of the Finnish Library Association. Keynote topics: Strong libraries for equal and innovative societies, advocacy, how IFLA works and how to join.
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