The Australian Library Journal
You can't mainline attitude
[Editorial] John Levett
We recently had the pleasure of involvement in a seminar in Adelaide called 'Surviving the rising tide' organised by eight savvy and committed colleagues and designed to allow practitioners to explore the kinds of skills they needed to adapt to the
presently volatile technological and organisational environment. It was a good day, with excellent speakers who showed how well they, and their organisations, were stemming the tide. The seventy or so people present, including a substantial cohort of
students sponsored by the University of South Australia, engaged with the speakers, and as the day evolved, two undercurrents developed with a common theme. The practitioners were concerned about how their own first professional qualification could be
built on so as to provide the skills they felt they needed in order to cope [and to a lesser extent about the increasingly blurred and overlapping boundaries between their work and that of the library technician]. The students, although much closer to
their FPQ (First Professional Qualification), had similar misgivings about the extent to which the courses they were presently engaged in would equip them to survive when they went out into the world. These quite understandable concerns were
coloured by the attitudes of those expressing them: anxiety; concern; resentment; optimism; pessimism. Many thought that they had not been well prepared by their studies, often undertaken a long time ago, when, as one practitioner said, the IBM Selectric
was the pinnacle of technological development: they did not argue that the unforeseeable should have been taught, but they were [with hindsight] concerned that they had not been trained to cope with change. They had been brought up on DC 14, and the slow
mutations of the AACR, and little that their lecturers had ever taught them was relevant today; this led to some discussion, in which the students engaged, about what the base curriculum should contain, and it was thought that to teach only content
was of little use. What was needed above all, they thought, was the inculcation of the skills and attitudes which would enable them to make sense of any future situation and adapt themselves to its demands. What they wanted, in short, was some of what the
speakers had demonstrated: adaptability, the capacity to evolve themselves and their professional portfolio so as to cope and to navigate successfully in uncharted waters. For the educators, this poses serious dilemmas, which do not appear to have
been well resolved, at least in the opinion of the 1995 crop of postgraduate library and information studies students [surveyed by the Graduate Careers Council and reported on in the 1998 Good universities guide to postgraduate and career upgrade
courses and services]. They thought that the 'teaching quality', the 'appropriate workload' and the 'overall satisfaction' experienced in their studies was only worth a one-star rating compared to the five-star ratings accorded by other members of
their cohort who had studied agriculture, religion and theology, para-legal studies or the humanities and social sciences. It may be that these issues will be addressed by ALIA's Board of Education; it may be that the educators themselves will wish to
consider them in the light of the poor ratings accorded. Perhaps the camel of the FPQ at both under- and post-graduate levels is already grievously overloaded with irrelevant baggage, and that in the light of the comments reported above, some of it might
be discarded in favour of a curriculum which allows its graduates to evolve and adapt more effectively. It may also be time to re-acknowledge that the FPQ [in any field] is essentially a license to learn, rather than the sum of relevant learning itself,
and to structure courses accordingly. Whatever the answers to these questions, our colleagues in Adelaide thought that they had much to learn, and badly needed someone to learn it from; it was also clear that many [not all] employers needed to re-assess
their attitudes, which could best be described as lean and mean, to professional development, and to give more moral and practical encouragement to staff discombobulated by the rapid evolutions of technology, and the volatility of the workplace. They did
not think the educators were providing it - or at least, not in the ways that they thought they needed, nor did they think ALIA itself could do it, at least not on a national scale. They were aware of the implications of the recognition of prior learning,
and in general did not require a full-on accredited course in their areas of need; but they did want relevant courses ranging from half a day to ten weeks duration on such diverse topics as web-page construction, strategic planning; the preparation
of a personal professional development plan; the valuation of services; demand management; time management; priority setting; supervision; attitude formation and shaping. A formidable list [and these are only a selection], and even with the best
will and intention, only a small part of the topics nominated [assuming that there was an agency willing and able to offer them, and that enrolments would be sufficient to support each program] could be offered in any one year, even in an environment so
well stocked with potential mentors and so well endowed with institutions as Adelaide is. In smaller, less rich environments, it would be even more difficult. So where does the responsibility lie? With the individual? With the institutions? With the
educators? With the professional body? Our view is that it lies primarily with the individual, in that no other is as precisely aware of individual and specific needs. We would add this requirement of individual responsibility for professional development
to the standard lists of those characteristics which distinguish the professional from other levels of occupation, and having done so, we should perhaps acknowledge that in the first instance, the course leading to the FPQ should establish the locus of
this responsibility, and then show how it might be fulfilled over the perhaps thirty or so years of a professional career. This would require the inculcation, by whatever means, of an attitude on the part of the individual, a willingness to accept
this responsibility, an awareness of how it might be met, and some understanding of what might be done to mobilise the forces necessary, and the resources that would be required. The eight organisers of the seminar to which we alluded earlier had
accepted the responsibility for themselves, and for others, and had mobilised the forces necessary to meet it; in doing so they learned a great deal about themselves, their colleagues and their context, and perhaps unintentionally, they have created the
financial and attitudinal platform necessary for the body of professionals in Adelaide to embark on the programs of professional development which they have so vigorously identified as necessary. We wish our colleagues there every success, and invite
comment from our readers on the topic of continuing professional development, and how it might be effectively provided.
In this issue: Alan Bundy shows how Australia's university libraries have developed a sophisticated approach to strategic planning and client-focused performance and its measurement, often ahead of their parent institutions; Caroline Cherrett
informs us that partnering between suppliers and libraries is a process, not an event, a journey, not a destination. Jenny Cram asserts that 'Valuation of a library's collection(s) delivers a number of practical benefits if undertaken as an essential part
of the library's performance measurement'. Kym Diprose looks at the ways in which information is valued in corporate contexts and concludes that there are difficulties reconciling the gaps that exist between the true cost of providing information and user
judgements as to its value. David Jones looks at contemporary public library architecture and argues that we need to design or redesign buildings in ways which allow for adaptation to successive generations of information technology; Brian Randall
discusses some of the issues attendant upon the effective management of collections which contain indigenous materials and asks: 'How can a non-Indigenous librarian effectively assess requests to view, copy or otherwise deal with cultural material when it
may be inappropriate for that librarian to even view the material in the first place?' Margaret Small reports on the outcomes of an ALIA study tour and on the role of libraries in virtual universities, and warns that a '...danger exists that virtual
universities will expect students to rely on electronic resources available through the Internet and on material delivered to students to meet their information needs...' Gary Gorman, our reviews editor, has once again delivered a generous quota of
evaluations of contemporary professional literature, thanks to ALJ's cohort of dedicated and energetic reviewers.
And all in all, it has been a very satisfying year. We are especially pleased with those first-time authors: professionals, students, library technicians and others who have contributed copy, and encourage all of our readers to do so; where articles
are of an appropriate complexity, we send them out for review. Others are published if they prima facie meet the Journal's standards, and if there is space. I could wish for more correspondence, however: how far does an editor have to trail his coat
before some-one jumps on it, I wonder?
We wish our subscribers, readers and contributors a stimulating and exciting 1998, and record our appreciation of the contribution of the very professional team who see the Journal into print in the ALIA National Office: Ivan Trundle, Emma Davis-Bell,
Robert Umphelby, Sharon Cunningham and the Membership Services team. I would also like to thank our reviewers and our referees for their invaluable contributions. I acknowledge the constructive advice and encouragement of the Publishing Policy Committee,
and record my debt to Virginia Walsh for her sustained encouragement and support over the last two years.
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