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 December 2006 Volume 4(6)

Future of the profession: Aiming Higher

Ways to give your career wings

Jill Evans looks at activities that can enrich your career.

A succession planning event took place recently, organised by the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL). ‘Filling the Empty Chair’ attracted an audience from Higher Education (HE) and local authorities throughout the UK. The event grew out of discussions amongst SCURL Directors of Library Services in HE, who felt that there was a dearth of succession planning activity within our libraries and information services. The event aimed to address the areas of planning your library’s future, planning your digital future, leadership management opportunities and how to address the practical aspects of preparing to move from middle management to a senior post.

We were invited by Jon Purcell, Director of Library Services at St Andrews University, to consider and compare the succession planning strategies of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Manager of the English Football Team and draw conclusions on the success of their choices or incumbents!

Simon Bains, Digital Library Manager of the National Library of Scotland, explored the skills required of him as a manager and contrasted those which were taught to him at the Library ‘School’ which he attended. His area of responsibility requires project management knowledge and skills, which the NLS has supplied as a training opportunity. Sheila Corrall, Head of Department and Professor of Librarianship and Information Management at Sheffield University, gave an illuminating presentation on the various types of planning, the trends and developments, and managing the processes.

The CILIPS Continuing Professional Development programme is currently under discussion and interested partners were invited to participate in a meeting in early December. Various groups, such as LIBNET, the Librarians Network from the Further Education Sector, and SCURL met to create a programme for you for 2007. If you wish to share suggestions for areas of training please contact me I will convey them to the Planning Team.

I feel that perhaps our profession in Scotland needs an equivalent of an MBA in Librarianship and Information Management thus placing change management, influencing and negotiating skills, firmly at the heart of our portfolio of skills. This would allow us to be equipped to manage the constant changes in the arena of libraries and information services. I would also wish to suggest that using the funding from our subscriptions to CILIP would be better invested in supporting our colleagues and the development of the courses offered at for example, the Robert Gordon University Department of Information Management and Strathclyde University Information and Library Studies course at the Graduate School of Informatics, than replacing domestic equipment at CILIP’s London Headquarters.

The CILIP Chartership and the ACLIP programmes do provide a significant contribution to CPD for those staff currently employed and in post. The costs of the courses are generally met by the employees’ institution. The Chartership programme in the National Library of Scotland is organised by a Senior Curator in Foreign Collections, while a senior member of staff within Science supervises the responsibility of the ACLIP programme. These commitments and responsibilities are replicated in other libraries. Senior managers share their knowledge and expertise to ensure colleagues and visiting library staff have an opportunity to learn, first-hand, of different areas within a library’s organisation.

Other training opportunities abound in local professional groups, where experience is gained from chairing a group, organising a year’s programme of events and securing venues for the events. Sector groups such as the Scottish Health Information Network (SHINE) recently requested assistance for their group – these are opportunities to further your experience outwith your employment. SCURL and the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) have produced a useful checklist for event holding – contact me for a copy.

Perhaps you are interested in a different aspect of libraries and wish to investigate it further without leaving your current post. Have you considered volunteering within a different sector or organisation? I volunteered to work on an archive, a completely new area for me. The organisation was very eager for help – so this was a good starting point! I have an interest in the remote Island of St Kilda which is owned and managed by the National Trust For Scotland. The Island was evacuated in 1930 and the St Kilda Club asked for volunteers to catalogue and collate the collection of letters, articles, books, diaries found within a tin chest. I volunteered and began, under guidance, to itemise books, newspaper articles, and, more recently theses, postcards and maps depicting the history of St Kilda. The experience was rewarding and challenging – and a steep learning curve. However, it offered insight into a different sector sharing the same organisational needs as libraries and information services.

Our profession is evolving, bringing many opportunities for learning new skills. It is heartening that the CILIPS CPD portfolio of training courses and our two Scottish ‘library schools’ recognise the needs for change with courses designed to equip our present and future colleagues with the skill set demanded of a dynamic profession. Jill Evans is SCURL Service Development Manager.

Information Scotland Vol. 4(6) December 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.