ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Continuing Education—VIII

Academic librarians seeking continuing professional education have many options from which to choose: formal course work in a degree or nondegree program at an academic institution, participation in professional association conferences, attendance at institutes and workshops or individually designed self-study programs. Academic librarians in New Mexico now have another choice, the Job Enrichment Continuing Education Program of the New Mexico Library Association.

One year ago, in an attempt to support continuing education for experienced librarians, the 600-member New Mexico Library Association (NMLA) funded a Job Enrichment Continuing Education Program. It is a program designed to help librarians update their skills and broaden their experience by working in another library within the state or region. The individual librarian designs a work experience at another institution that will be of value to oneself at that particular point in one’s career and will enhance one’s professional skills. No exchange with another librarian is required since this is designed as an enrichment rather than an exchange program.

The association awards $200 grants to help defray travel and living expenses to librarians who meet the following guidelines:

1. The librarian must have a minimum of three years of experience in a professional position in a New Mexico library and be a member of NMLA.
2. The librarian must submit a description of one’s present position and of the proposed enrichment position and a statement of the objectives of the enrichment experience, together with a request for financial assistance.
3. The librarian must arrange the job enrichment position for a period of not less than ten working days and must submit written commitment from the host library to provide the enrichment opportunity.
4. The librarian’s employer must approve professional leave with pay for the period of the enrichment program. (This is an important criteria.)
5. The librarian is expected to submit an evaluation report to the employer and to the NMLA Library Education Committee at the conclusion of the program.

In the first year of the program two of the first grants were awarded to academic librarians. A reference librarian whose new assignment in special collections included administration of the library’s map collection spent two weeks in the map department of a large university library in a neighboring state, working with their nationally recognized department head. A science bibliographer spent ten days at the technical library of a national laboratory updating her knowledge in the field of technical report literature, working with reference staff who manage and service a technical report collection numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Academic librarians are benefiting by continuing their education in a practical way, suited to their individual goals and objectives. Employers are using the program to complement their own staff development programs, and host librarians are finding the teaching experience a stimulating one. By providing the financial support, the New Mexico Library Association believes it is contributing in a small but important way to the continued development of the professional resources in the state and to the library profession in general.—Sandra S. Coleman, Head, Reference Department, University of New Mexico General Library.