ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Continuing Education Career Goals—Achieved through Continuing Education

One is tempted to brand “continuing education” a fad because a number of institutions and organizations are now rushing—or being pushed—to embrace the concept. Needless to say, this has come none too early for the library profession and for each of us as individual academic librarians.

ALA has begun, just as have other organizations, to assume a leadership role in continuing education. A Council resolution passed in January calls for the creation of a comprehensive ALA plan for continuing education. It will be interesting to see what the plan will be and how it will be implemented.

We academic librarians, like other professionals, should be careful, however, that in a frenzied rush to update credentials, to acquire new skills, and to gain new knowledge, we do not simply take any continuing education offering we can get our hands on, just for the sake of participating in continuing education. If we do, we will be disappointed, and the concept of continuing education will suffer.

We must determine, through individual career goal analysis and commitment, the kind of program we each need to fulfill our individual goals. This is an often overlooked but vital step in the whole lifelong learning process. It is only after such self-analysis that the individual will be able to capitalize on the many offerings in increasingly varied formats—including self-directed study (reading, correspondence courses, etc.), teleconferencing, or other programs, in both traditional and nontraditional formats. In other words, all activities undertaken as a part of a career development program should be goal-oriented. Although many of us may participate in continuing education in its broadest definition, only a few ever manage to concentrate on and direct our activities and energies toward that career goal. I must stress again that most of us have participated in haphazard or sporadic education rather than a continuous or ongoing one. Instead of simply having a group of isolated, unplanned, and unintegrated learning experiences, we must move to the point where we can experience sequential modules of learning that will have a continuous and cumulative impact on our individual career development. When this has been achieved, then we can truly fulfill our continuing education obligations.—Robert D. Stueart.

Editor’s Note: Robert D. Stueart is dean, Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College. He is a member of ALA Council’s Standing Committee on Library Education and a member of the Planning Committee for the recently held ALA Continuing Education Forum. ■■

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