ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Continuing Education XII

Many people think of continuing education as an umbrella term for all types of formal or informal training and development programs, activities, courses, workshops, etc., that academic librarians may attend in the hope of making themselves better qualified, more satisfied, and perhaps even more secure in their professional roles.

Thus, continuing education means different things to different people. To all, however, it should signify a two-way street, where the traffic going one way is made up of employers, educators, and associations that are cognizant of the needs of their constituencies and are offering the means to fulfill these needs, and in the opposite direction it consists of individuals who have been made aware of and are accepting these opportunities for further growth.

A relatively new challenge for academic librarians is the phenomenon of formal bibliographic instruction, which requires a knowledge of assessing needs, interviewing, planning, advertising, and selling and the ability to teach library skills to students and faculty.

In order for the academic librarian to wear this new hat with its band reading “Teacher” in the bibliographic-instruction library classroom, continuing education must come to the rescue and equip the new teacher with the arts that are lacking.

However, continuing education should not be considered as a panacea for all of our dilemmas. It should not be thought of as a bandwagon for all to hop on, but, from all of us, it should deserve better than lip service.

Continuing education is as important to the grass roots academic librarians as it is to their supervisors, department heads, and top administrators; it crosses all strata of academic librarianship.

Fortunately, many librarians, library schools, library associations, and library consortia subscribe to the concept of lifelong learning (or, if yoíi will, continuing education) and have made great strides in various ways to offer instruction to all who seek to keep up with the times, but there is still a long way to go for the coming of age of this concept.—Timothea F. McDonald, College Library, Suffolk University.

Editors Note: Timothea F. McDonald is a member of the ACRL Bibliographic Instruction Sections Continuing Education Committee, a part- time reference librarian in the College Library at Suffolk University, and is a doctoral candidate in continuing education in the Department of Community College and Continuing Education, School of Education, Boston University.■■