On Friday, 29 March 2019, over 50 library and information professionals attended a workshop jointly hosted by the Library Association of Singapore and Singapore Management University. The workshop, entitled Your career: the now, the new, the next: mapping your future professional pathways, aimed to provide mid-career professionals with a forum to reflect on their career journey and to explore strategies for personal growth.
The IFLA Guidelines for Continuing Professional Development: Principles and Best Practices represented the framework for the workshop. These Guidelines highlight the roles that all stakeholders play in ensuring a strong future for library and information services: individual learners, employer, library associations, LIS educators and training providers. Following an environmental scan of initiatives dealing with the need for upskilling in libraries presented by the workshop leader, Gill Hallam*, a facilitated panel discussion allowed the voices of employers, library associations, educators and trainers to be heard.
The panel included Gulcin Cribb, University Librarian at Singapore Management University, Bethany Wilkes, College Librarian with Yale-National University of Singapore Library, Samantha Ang, President of the Singapore Library Association, and Associate Professor Chris Khoo, an academic with Nanyang Technological University. The panel members shared their ideas about the importance and value of professional development, arguing that individual librarians needed to align themselves with the strategic directions of the parent organisation.
This set the scene for the interactive table discussions which allowed the participants to think about where they fitted into the rapidly changing workplace, to visualise where they wanted to go in the future, and to identify some practical strategies which would help them get there.
Photo credit: Rajen Munoo, SMU Library
Feedback from participants after the workshop was very positive: they said they felt more confident about taking responsibility for their professional learning to seek out informal PD opportunities like webinars and mentoring, encouraged by their awareness of the intrinsic support from their employers. The Library Association of Singapore was encouraged to lead the way in offering ongoing PD activities to their members.
*Gill Hallam is currently Co-Chair of the CPDWL Standing Committee
