VALA2016 Roundtable 2: Professional Development

Wednesday 10 February 2016

1445 – 1550 Room: Plenary Hall 3

Facilitator: Hugh Rundle

Panellists:

  • Judy Brooker, Director of Learning, ALIA
  • Dr Mary Carroll, Course Director, Charles Sturt University
  • Brad King, Principal Consultant – Information Management, Kinetic Recruitment
  • Christine Mackenzie, CEO, Yarra Plenty Regional Library
  • Karen Seligman, VALA2015 Student Award Recipient
  • Kris Wehipeihana, President, LIANZA

Topic: Are librarians ready for an “Ideas Boom”?

Challenges:

  • Larger institutions are increasingly moving to trainee models – is there a role for library schools to deliver a skilled workforce in the future?
  • How do we attract, skill, and provide career paths for tech-savvy librarians?
  • Professional Registration is available for librarians in the UK and New Zealand. With library job requirements changing rapidly, is professional registration a useful way to keep librarians up to date, or an anachronism that will hold the profession back?
  • We are a service industry and need a service mentality.  Can anyone ’hide in the backroom’ in 2016?
  • How do we bring current library staff along in a fast-moving, fast-changing environment?
  • Professional development and lifelong learning – whose responsibility is it?
  • Is a “library technician” still relevant?

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala16 #rt2

View the video of the presentation on the VALA2016 GigTV channel here:

Delegate Q&A:

Do you have a burning question for the Professional Development Roundtable? VALA2016 Delegates have been emailed invitations to lodge their single, most significant question – in 20 words or less – prior to conference. The most popular questions will be posed to the panel and discussed during the Roundtable session.

(NB. Please understand that it will not be possible to address every question, but we will use our best endeavours to embed common themes and issues.)