Education and Training Section
Annual Report
2005
Submitted by:
Terry L. Weech
Chair of IFLA Education and Training Section
January 5, 2006.
The Education and Training Section had both successes and frustrating challenges in 2005. The successes include the election of 14 new members to the Section’s Standing Committee and the appointment of a new editor for the newsletter of the Section, the SET Bulletin. For a listing of all members of the Education and Training Standing Committee, see http://www.ifla.org/VII/s23/scmem-set.htm.
Another success is the appointment of Ms. Petra Hauke as the Newsletter Editor for the Section. Petra is from the Institute for Library Science at Humboldt University, Berlin, and a member of the Section’s Standing Committee. She replaces our long standing Newsletter editor, John Harvey. The first issue of the SET Bulleting under Petra Hauke’s editorship will be issued in January of 2006.
The Education and Training Section's workshop program in Oslo, which was jointly sponsored with the Library Theory and Research Section, was a great success. The only problem was the number of participants. Over 100 turned up and the planning had estimated around 60. The Section also participated in the Division VII program about Recruitment and Careers. Niels Ole Pors, Secretary of the Education and Training Section chaired the Divisional program. In total, more than 55 extended abstracts were sent and the papers selected are of a high quality.
The E – learning discussion group, which is co-sponsored by Education and Training, had a very successful session in Oslo with attendance of nearly 100 participants. Plans are to request for renewal of the discussion group.
In 2005 we expanded the translations of our membership brochures from three languages, (English, French and Spanish), to German, Russian and Korean and all six of these are available on the Section’s website for downloading. Many thanks to Petra Hauke, our new Newsletter Editor, for coordinating the translations of these membership brochures into these other languages.
Anna Maria Tammaro’s 2004 IFLA research grant to investigate "The Quality Assessment of LIS Education." was completed in December of 2005. A summary of her findings will appear in the January, 2006 SET Bulletin. The full report is being edited for possible publication in 2006.
Terry L. Weech and Niels Ole Pors received a research grant in 2005 to study the various patterns of education for digital librarianship. The study is proceeding on schedule and the results will be presented at the 2006 IFLA conference in Seoul, Korea.
One of the projects I hope the Section can pursue in 2006 is the revision of the Section’s statement of Scope so it does not conflict with the recently established Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL) Section. CPDWL grew from an discussion group that was associated with Education and Training. Our Scope statement has not been revised since this discussion group left us and became an independent Section in IFLA and as it was noted by members of CPDWL at the Oslo meetings of the Standing Committee, there are areas of overlap in the scope statements of the two sections that need to be clarified.
On the less than successful side of our activities is the effort to revise The World Guide to Library, Archive, and Information Science Education. Despite the efforts Susan Lazinger and Niels Ole Pors as co-chairs of an Advisory Committee on the World Guide revision project and the efforts of Judith Field (Wayne State University, USA), a former Standing Committee member, to continue the project, it was reported in Oslo that little progress has been made on the revision effort. As a result of the difficulties of moving forward on the project, the Advisory Committee suggested that a review of alternative ways of gathering information for the revision be explored and a pilot be undertaken to determine the feasibility of obtaining the information from data on the internet or by email. The exploration of these alternatives will be completed early in 2006 and by the conference in Seoul, Korea, a decision will be made as to the feasibility of continuing the project or abandoning it.
