Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia: in aspect of embedded librarianship
Dr. sc. Dijana Machala National and University Library
IFLA Public Libraries Section - Interaction between library users and librarians Zagreb, 10th, March 2016
LIS education and training in Croatia
o First Library school established in 1976 at the Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb University
• Bologna process introduced in 2005 – 3+2 cycle • 650 graduate librarians until 2005
o Library professional status has been regulated by the Library Act in 1997 enabling: Proliferation of new library schools
• Library school in Osijek (1998) • Library school in Zadar (2003) • 20-30 teaching staff per LIS school • cca. 120 newly graduate librarians per year
Regulated state exam in librarianship • professional advancement in library sector for graduate librarians (senior
librarian and library adviser) • professional status for other library practitioners (library assistants)
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
2
LIS education and training in Croatia
• LIS sector: 3000 librarians and information professionals working mainly in library sector, education, telecommunications, computer sector, publishing, network industry
• Satisfactory training opportunities: • conferences provided by universities (LIDA, InFuture) • seminars provided by developed or bigger libraries (KEKS) • E-courses (AccessIT + from Rijeka Public Library) • LIS publishing supported by Croatian Library Association (Vjesnik
bibliotekara Hrvatske)
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
3
LIS education and training in Croatia
Training Center for Continuing Education for Librarians in Croatia
• National training center • Established in 2002 by Soros
Foundation • Part of the international network of
national centers for the continuing education for librarians in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
• Project partners: • National and University Library • Zagreb City Libraries • Croatian Library Association • Department for Information and
communication science at University of Zagreb
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
4
LIS education and training in Croatia
National Training Center for Continuing Education for Librarians • Non-compulsory & CEU credited lifelong learning courses for librarians • +300 hours/year • +1100 participants/year
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
5
LIS education and training in Croatia
National Training Center for Continuing Education for Librarians • Designed for all types of libraries: public, school, academic • Constant interest from heritage institutions (LAM)
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
6
LIS education and training in Croatia
National Training Center for Continuing Education for Librarians • Quality indicators: program evaluation form • highly rated by participants for quality of courses and level of achievements
of practical knowledge and skills
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
7
Major challenges in LIS education and training
o Identifying LIS competences in Croatia
o Defining a mutual ‘core’ of three LIS academic programs
o Constant efforts in research about the knowledge and skills of alumni
o Assess the needs of labor market
o Efforts in CPD program planning
o Actively participate in global information sector labor market and internationalization of LIS profession
o Support intensified personalization of librarian roles and environment and new emerging roles of library and information professionals
o Aim is to define a professional competency framework as a:
o tool to bridge the gap between field of education and field of work
o referencing model for all learning experiences in a lifelong learning process
o basis for define professional qualification standard
o tool to align national qualification framework with EQF
8
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Identifing the ‘core’ in LIS in Croatia o Research project „Lifelong learning for librarians: learning outcomes and
flexibility - CUK” supported by the Croatian National Foundation for Science and Technology in 2009.
o Aim: to research about subject-specific and generic competences of newly graduated librarians that are highly valued by both labor market, academia and librarians
o Results: propose a model of professional competency framework
o Project publication: http://www.nsk.hr/cuk/cuk.pdf
o Project followed-up research publication: “Library competences: a view on library profession development “ (Machala, 2015)
9
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Project research methodology • A holistic approach to identify LIS ‘core’ in the national LIS field by applying Tuning
methodology
• Project Tuning Educational Structures in Europe - develop reference points Instrument for identifying subject-related and generic competences
• Two online nationwide surveys were performed among library professionals and library directors , and among LIS academics at three Croatian universities
o Respondents were asked to rate 21 subject-related and 14 generic competences from the point of view of their importance for the profession.
10
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Project referent models
• To define a set of agreed subject-related and generic competences for the purpose of the questionnaire several documents were consulted:
• the IFLA SET Guidelines for professional library/information educational programs - propose core elements that should be included in an academic LIS program
• ALA's Core competences of librarianship, ALA. 2009.
• Professional knowledge and skills base (PKSB), CILIP. 2013.
• Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo), OECD.
11
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Part of findings – respondents rate
Respondents Total
Academics
University of Zagreb University of Zadar University of
Osijek
N % N % N %
16 9 56.00 4 25.00 3 19.00
Librarians
Public libraries School libraries Academic
libraries
N % N % N %
266 161 60.00 54 20.00 51 20.00
Directors
N % N % N %
113 36 31.00 55 48.00 22 21.00
12
Table 1. Stratification of respondents by university and by type of library
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Importance of subject-related competences
• All respondents agree upon the most important subject-related competences, which are identified as user-centered competences:
o Information Searching & Retrieval (4.93)
o Providing Information to Users (4.91)
o Information Resource Management (4.89) and
o Assessing Information Needs & Designing Responsive Services (4.88)
13
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Importance of subject-related competences
14
Fig. 1 . Ranking in order of importance of subject-related competences and statistical differences in opinions of all respondents
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Mutual ‘core’
Importance of generic competences
• The most important generic competences according to all respondents were:
o Elementary Computer Skills (4.83)
o Information Management Skills (4.83)
o Teamwork (4.77)
o Ethical Commitment (4.76) and
o Capacity to Learn (4.71).
15
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Importance of generic competences
16 Fig. 3. Ranking in order of importance of generic competences and statistical differences in opinions of all respondents
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Mutual ‘core’
Embedded librarianship • Project results shown that LIS competency framework in Croatia identify a mutual
‘core’ which are predominately user-oriented subject-specific competences and highly valued generic competences such as ethical values, teamwork, capacity to learn, computer and information literacy opened the path toward the awareness of embedded library services
• embedded librarian - coined by B. Dewey in 2004
• Embedded librarianship – new approach for librarians to move out of the traditional library settings and into other spaces, virtual and physical, to support the services and needs of communities in those spaces
17
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Embedded librarianship • Specialized services to specific groups (Shumaker & Talley, 2009)
• Embedded librarian:
• Build strong relationships with members of a specific information user group
• Focus on understanding their work and information needs
• Share their goals and actively contribute the achieve of these goals
• Become an integral and indispensable member of the group
Traditional vs. Embedded library services
Supportive role, delivery service – built on partnership and trust
Library centric – customer centric
Located in librarian workplace – move outside of comfort zone, in user workplace
Focused on entire population – focused on smaller user groups
Library service just-in-case – library service just-in-time
Service dependent on library skills – emphasis on domain knowledge
Service out of context – service out of desk, outside the box , in context 18
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
Conclusion
LIS field in Croatia expresses strong user-centered orientation which has been valued equally by academics, labor market and librarians.
User-oriented competences are identified as a mutual ‘core’ and form the obligatory part in the model of professional competency framework
Generic competences such as communication skills, information and computer literacy, high ethical values and capacity to learn are seen equally important as subject-specific competences.
Generic, social and interpersonal competences have strong value in user-oriented library services.
19
Machala, D. National activities in process of defining professional competency framework for librarians and information professionals in Croatia
