ALIA West

September 2002

Education for the future of the profession

On the 23rd July the Academic and Research Libraries group held a panel discussion titled "Education for the future of the profession".

Our guest speakers included:

Belinda Tiffen: Belinda is currently studying a Graduate Diploma of Library and Information Studies at Curtin University of Technology, and has a PhD in Literature from the University of New England.

Paul Genoni: Paul is a lecturer in the school of Media and Information at Curtin University of Technology. He has been involved in the ALIA mentoring program, and is familiar with the issues that face new graduates.

Karen Anderson: Karen is currently co-ordinating the Master of Information Services at Edith Cowan University which encompasses three streams: Information Science, Teacher-librarianship and Archives and Records. She also teaches in the Library Technician course. Karen's primary interest at present is in archives and records, but she is particularly interested in professional education, particularly the delivery to distance students and in designing authentic assessment.

Imogen Garner: Imogen is the Associate Librarian of the University of Western Australia. Imogen is a representative for the LISEKA group (Library and Information Science Education for the Knowledge Age).

Belinda Tiffen
I am a student in the Graduate Diploma course, and the accounts of my studies are both personal and anecdotal, and reflect discussions that students and myself have had over coffees. The Graduate Diploma course comprises of eight units to be studied over two semesters, or the equivalent of one years full time study. The course contains units in traditional library services such as cataloguing and reference work, with an equal focus on technology, its use, and the impact information technology has upon the profession. In terms of a student's point of view, most of the problems that occurred with the course were due to technology. We have had problems with access to computer facilities at times (not lack of facilities, but facilities not functioning correctly). The library student needs above ordinary access to computing facilities. We need access to online databases, Kinetica, and other technologies, and we need to see them working. It has been disappointing for all concerned when we have had problems with technology.

A main issue with the course is the base level of knowledge students need with computers. Should there be a pre-requisite knowledge with computers, or an assumed level of experience with computers? Due to the diversity of backgrounds amongst students, there is a corresponding wide range of expertise with computers. The University of Queensland has a pre-requisite of one semester of tertiary computing studies. There are a substantial number of mature age students in the course, and some have not received much exposure to computers. All these matters have had an influence on our learning.

Another issue with technology has been WebCT, which hasn't been a highlight of the course. There has been confusion over who it's intended for, but this has been sorted out this semester. WebCT has been used mainly to post lecture notes and discussion postings for external students. This has not been an innovative way of exploiting this kind of technology, and is especially disappointing given that WebCT and similar software is the platform used to deliver online information literacy programs by libraries.

Just as advancements in information technology continue to pose challenges to librarians, it also creates both difficulties and possibilities for library instructors and students based around issues of information literacy, accessibility of computing facilities (both hardware and software), and connectivity.

Paul Genoni
Several issues seem to keep coming up concerning library education when I speak to members of the profession. These discussions often commence with the theme of 'what's wrong with library education'. The issue keeps on getting revisited, so it is obviously of great importance to the profession.

One of the main problems that becomes apparent in these discussions is that there is a misunderstanding of what life is like in universities these days. This may not be the case with most people attending tonight's panel discussion, many of whom work in universities or similar environments and have a close understanding of the pressures under which academic staff work and under which the higher education sector generally operates. In needs to be noted, however, that in the last 10 years there has been an enormous change in higher education, which is mainly driven by government policy and in particular funding. This is inevitably having an impact on the quality of education. Areas such as library education are perhaps under more pressure than most, due to the drive for larger academic units which are placing the 'squeeze' on those smaller units which have survived on their capacity to provide highly focussed professional education.

The School of Library and Information Studies has gone under enormous changes in this period of time. Ten years ago library and information studies at Curtin was conducted in an independent school with autonomous control of its own budget, premises, and in particular curriculum. This is no longer the case. Since that time there has been re-structuring of many academic departments and divisions within the university. In the last decade the School of Library and Information Studies has changed from being an independent School of Information and Library Studies, to a part of a School of Social Sciences, to an independent department, to a teaching area within a School of Media and Information. By the end of this year information and library studies will be part of another: as yet unknown: academic arrangement.

These changes have been extraordinarily time-consuming due to engagements with other academics and management on campus. This inevitably detracts from the primary reason for being there: teaching, although under the circumstances I believe we have remained very much focussed on delivering high quality outcomes to our students. We have, however, been required to make some compromises in order to ensure our future at Curtin. These compromises have been approached with the attitude that even if they required us to suffer some 'losses' they were nonetheless necessary in order to maintain viable information and library studies courses at Curtin University. Evidence suggests that similar process have been undergone at other Australian universities teaching in these disciplines. I would also make the point that some of the 'forced' changes have also had benefits, while others have been compromises and decisions we would not have taken left entirely to our own devices.

A closely related issue that commonly arises in discussions is the content of our courses. Questions are often asked as to why some particular aspect of librarianship is not apparent in our units or courses. Often the answer is "no we don't teach that", or perhaps more often, "we'd could teach that but we have decided not to". Obviously there is limited space within the curriculum, and all courses could be expanded to include 'more'. We have made a conscious decision to remain focussed on 'education' rather than 'training', and although there are many practical skills components to our courses, we believe that our fundamental role is to focus on the principles underpinning our professional disciplines. Much of the pressure we get is for very specific skills training, which is often of limited applicability in the workplace. We maintain that these skills are often best acquired by some form of continuing professional development undertaken after completion of the first qualifying degree. This issue is made more complicated because of the range of possible job choices for graduates. There is no single profession of librarianship, each job requires different skills, but they all draw on a generic body of knowledge. We concentrate on imparting that generic body of knowledge, but that does mean we disappoint employers who want particular skills for their particular work environment.

It should also be noted that the last ten years has seen a shift in student 'demographics'. Whereas our student body used to be primarily undergraduate librarianship students, compared with the one-year graduate diploma students. My estimate would be that we used to have 3 to 1 in favour of undergraduate students. The balance of student numbers has now shifted very much in favour of graduate diploma students. This means we don't always have the luxury of including detailed skills development into what is essentially an abbreviated course.

I think the issue of education versus continuing professional development is very relevant to this evening's discussion. I believe that a misunderstanding of the role to be played by each was apparent in the LISEKA document. Fundamentally, what has been identified by LISEKA is a problem of the lack of continuing professional development for our profession, but the discussion paper attempted to address these problems by looking at issues of education and accreditation of individuals. At present there are insufficient options available for CPD: made worse by the demise of AIMA: and individuals do sometimes rightly look to the universities to offer CPD opportunities. I believe that there is more universities could do in this regard, and working in conjunction with professional bodies such as ALIA is a way forward. This does not mean, however, that the profession should countenance a shift away from university based education, or consider in any way a move away from ALIA recognised courses at our universities as being the basic means of gaining professional membership of the Association.

Karen Anderson
Some of my discussion will be quite familiar, because I agree quite strongly with many points raised by Paul. There is a base level of knowledge in the profession that is quite important, and the LISEKA document seems to be emphasising CPD whilst ignoring the base level of knowledge in library and information education.

In terms of Library and Information Science at ECU, what are we teaching? Some things never change; there is a core of philosophy and base level of professional knowledge. We teach about library systems, acquisitions, reference services and we also teach about library technologies. We try to address the issue of broadening our students' views by encouraging electives, but at the same time draw on strengths within the School wherever we can. In the School of Computer and Information Science we don't assume anything other than the Internet skills of the general community for students entering the course and develop general computing skills in tandem with coursework. In terms of education issues in the profession, we try to encourage the information literacy unit that is part of the teacher-librarianship course as an elective for students of librarianship. As part of the library courses, we also look at managing metadata both for information discovery and record keeping. In the Information Services Management unit we work on an in-tray of problems for students to solve, just like in the outside world. Other possibilities for elective studies are the cultural heritage and record keeping issues. There are lots of options in electives, but the course structure is quite controlled.

In terms of designing our courses, we are trying to be as realistic as possible. We have worked with instructional designers in the school to identify student attributes: professional knowledge that draws on competencies, communication skills. We aim for authentic assessment, one example being the in-tray of problems. In one of our record keeping units we had students writing XML document description. We have also had students analyse documents, such as the ECU Library circulation policy. For this exercise students provide a critique and workflow analysis. We try to make the assessments realistic, focussing on what graduates will actually do in the workplace. We do not have endless essays as part of our course assessment, but they do have their place in the course.

In answering the topic of discussion, what is important for the future of the profession, I believe it is very important to encourage a research culture in the profession. At ECU we have developed an honours program for undergraduate students of library studies. The graduate diploma students have the option of obtaining a masters by coursework by studying three extra units which include research methods and research projects.

We also need to try to encourage the profession into higher research, namely PhDs and masters by research, although government policy is making it harder to get into research degrees. Another area of concern for encouraging research is that most commencing students are mature age. Late entry means further studies and research are left even later in careers, because the work force seems more encouraging. Soon the minimum requirement for university lecturers will be a PhD. It may become difficult to recruit new educators for the profession if there are few professionals with PhDs. There needs to be more career incentives for further study.

These are some of the issues that should be thought about for the future of the profession.

Imogen Garner
Library and Information Science Education for the Knowledge Age (LISEKA) was set up 12 months ago as a working group of ALIA, to look at developing a career long educational framework and approach to professional development. Members of the Project Working Group (PWG) consisted of some educators including Mairead Browne and Don Schauder and practitioners including Alison O'Connor, Naida Tattersall and Imogen Garner and the Executive Director of ALIA, Jennefer Nicholson which helped balance opinions amongst the Group. The PWG has consulted with many stakeholder groups, and the culmination was the discussion paper seeking stakeholder comments by the end of May. The PWG received responses from groups and individuals.

After considering responses to the discussion document, it appears that the members want to preserve the 'status quo' as the starting point to the profession based on formal professional qualifications that have international standing and continuation of the ALIA course recognition processes. This feedback will be submitted to the ALIA Board of Directors in the PWG report for further investigation of these issues. (Note that the Board of Education no longer exists).

ALIA members want to see professional recognition based on both a formal program of study and sustained professional development as is common in other professions. There is the need for career long education and professional development. The question is how is the profession going to do this? Entry level professionals need to have more than a Bachelor's degree; they need a practical experience component. This could be either work experience and/or a practical skills component. A theme that emerged from the responses is that recent graduates lack the skills to perform in the workplace. There is also a feeling amongst the profession that entry level studies cannot carry you through you whole career. Members want KSAs (knowledge, skills and attributes) in place at entry level and then to build on these throughout a professional career to provide a continuum of learning so that KSAs would be different for different levels and career stages, such as "this is what we expect when you graduate; this is where you should be in five years" and so forth. The benchmarks should describe what knowledge and skills people have at various points in time. Cost and access issues with CPD caused some anxiety, particularly among rural communities. The question was also raised, should CPD be mandatory or voluntary?

CASL and CAUL did not put in a response to the discussion document. These represent large numbers of potential employers, so their lack of response was quite disappointing. If these groups are not recognising the need for career long professional development, where is the push for the individual to recognise its importance?

The PWG received quite a lot of responses about specialisation within librarianship. Some librarians want professional development opportunities to develop their capacities within a framework of specialisation. Professionals wanted some type of specialisation in different areas of librarianship within their educational qualifications -where niche areas in the profession could be recognised. Some people want broad knowledge, but some want experience such as rare books experience, law library experience, and so on. There are probably ways to encourage specialisations, and the various ALIA groups could help with that.

An issue raised by members of the profession was that librarians and technicians are often seen as two parallel streams in the profession. Feedback suggested that the "never the twain shall meet" attitude for CPD between these groups needs to be reviewed. There needed to be less distinction between the various paths people took at the start of their professional careers, and more of a continuum of development.

The PWG received much interesting feedback and strong themes emerged concerning LISEKA. We wish to thank the people and groups that responded to the discussion paper. Their advice and feedback will be forwarded to the ALIA Board of Directors for consideration in the PWG's report.

The LISEKA document can be accessed from http://www.alia.org.au/education/liseka/
A summary of the document can also be found in the May 2002 issue (Volume 23) of inCite.

Transcript by Paige Luff
Edited by Belinda Tiffen, Paul Genoni, Karen Anderson and Imogen Garner.