Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal August 2006 Volume 4(4)

President’s perspective

Use it or lose it

The current situation, which includes a ‘review’ of CILIP in Scotland, should make us all reflect on the importance and value of being an information professional. One of the distinguishing features of being a professional is a commitment to continuing professional development. This is primarily a personal responsibility but one in which our employers and managers also have an enabling part to play. And it is where a professional body such as CILIP can play such a critical role.

It’s particularly unfortunate that our professional body is going through such trauma at a financial level when it is starting to add so much value with the work on the revalidation process. Unless retired – technically or in spirit! - we should all be thinking about actively engaging in the re-validation process.

We must make the revalidation process work not only for ourselves, but also for the profession. The profession will die if we cannot continue to add value, and demonstrate how we add value. Periodic review and development of our professional skills is central to this process.
As a profession we should be actively demonstrating to the wider world that we have a high quality process/infrastructure for qualification and skills development. If we do not participate in the revalidation process, and do not encourage and support others to do so, one of the central pillars of our professional life will be significantly undermined.

Recently, I gave a talk to the Career Development Group and it struck me just how important the activities of this Group are and how important it is that we take a strategic view of professional development.

When assessing and reflecting on our individual training requirements it is important not only to consider ‘technical’ areas of skills development allied to the work of the librarian / information professional. I believe that we must also consider developing other skills sets that will help us to be more effective and influential within our own organisations and take on the challenging and emerging roles that will develop in the future.

I see the relevance in developing formal managerial qualifications becoming more important for able and ambitious professionals, especially but not only, if we are seeking advancement into middle and higher-level management positions. How many of us have applied for posts with
significant managerial responsibility with only the underpinning of rudimentary management theory as an element of our library course, supplemented by the odd seminar that we managed to get to over the last couple of years?

Our development must be far more structured to be
effective and to be convincing. It must prepare us for emerging issues. For example, given the importance of developing people in the workplace and managing other aspects of human resources, there is much merit in considering qualifications in HR such as those offered by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development as well as developing coaching and other people/motivation skills. Financial and legal skills are also becoming more valuable for the information professional.

Increasingly, the future for many of us will be to move away from the traditional library environment, using our skills in related areas. We’ve seen this happening for many years in the higher education sector with convergence with IT and media services and in the public library sector with cultural and recreational services. In a previous column I’ve talked about using our technical expertise in the corporate information area within our organisations. If librarians are to lead rather than contribute in these areas when the inevitable restructuring takes place, they must be able to demonstrate management capability. A record of relevant continuing professional development is critical in this context.

Service managers also have a role here – serious thought must be given to succession planning, encouraging and facilitating our ambitious and able staff to undertake professional development to equip them to compete for managerial roles. Arguably, this is the most important legacy any successful professional can leave – a cadre of younger professionals ready to take the profession forward. Certainly, I have been particularly fortunate in this respect – Jean Hubbard at Kirkcaldy Technical College and Neil Craven here at Abertay both acting as mentors to me.

So, if we are to develop a pool of suitably qualified professionals capable of competing for senior posts to ensure the profession has a lead role in the future, continuing professional development is a must. It’s down to the individual in the first place to make and take the opportunities on offer, but for maximum effect it has to be supported by the individual’s manager.

The value of our professional qualification and associated set of standards should never be taken for granted in
giving this professional development the underpinning it requires. And that’s a very good reason for not taking our professional organisation for granted.
Ivor Lloyd

Information Scotland Vol. 4(4) August 2006

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.