Library Technicians and their Teachers Gather in Melbourne
I have recently attended the second annual ALIA Library Technician Educators’ Forum, held in Melbourne on Monday. About 25 people from TAFEs around Australia got together, and the whole thing was organised and run by Professor Gill Hallam (QUT) and Dr Paul Genoni (Curtin).
There are in fact 16 TAFE locations and one private provider, in every state and territory, where you can study to become a library technician. There were a little over 2000 enrolments in library technician courses in 2005, down from 3000 in 1995. My role at the event was definitely to observe - I went in knowing very little about library technicians’ education, and came out knowing slightly more. There are lots of things to know, and lots of concerns amongst those who teach.
The forum was held in the week of the Library Technicians Conference, which is now in full swing in Melbourne, at the Grand Hyatt and, last night, at the Melbourne Aquarium. The Conference concludes today (Friday), and so far my participation has been limited to registering, and attending the dinner. The dinner was great - the fish watching us eat certainly contributed to the ambience, and several hundred people had a lot of fun.
Naturally, all of this will feed into the Library Workforce Summit on 28 March next year.