Bókasafnið - 01.06.2014, Síða 88

Útdráttur: Ný áskorun fyrir bókasafns- og
upplýsingafræðinga – námskeið á Netinu
Fjallað er um kosti þess að sækja námskeið og
þjálfa starfsfólk bókasafna í gegnum Netið. Litið er til
áhrifa námskeiða Opening the Book á starfshætti í
bókasöfnum, en námskeið þeirra eru ætluð fyrir bóka­
safns­ og upplýsingafræðinga og annað starfsfólk bóka­
safna. Þá er útskýrt hvers vegna bókasöfn þurfa að
breytast frá því að bregðast fyrst og fremst við fyrir­
spurnum um lesefni og hvernig mögulegt er að virkja
starfsfólk bókasafna enn frekar til að leiðbeina notend­
um við val á lesefni ﴾reader engagement﴿. Gerð er grein
fyrir kennsluaðferðum, uppbyggingu og lengd gagnvirka
námskeiðsins InterActive og þeirri hagkvæmni sem felst
í sjálfstýrðu námi. Námskeiðið byggist á persónulegum
tengslum milli nemenda og leiðbeinanda og byggir upp
alþjóðlegt tengslanet milli þeirra bókasafns­ og upplýs­
ingafræðinga sem taka námskeiðið.
Expertise at work is something that we develop over
time. Academic and professional qualifications are the
solid platform upon which many library jobs are based
but it is the day­to­day experience that helps to build our
confidence and develop our competence.
It would be instructive to make a list of all the things
that you have actually done at work this week. Your list
will probably include a lot of tasks that didn’t get covered
in your college training or post­graduate studies. You
cope with whatever surprises your day­to­day working life
throws at you while doing your best to maintain a great
service. If you’ve been in your job for a few years, you
become confident that you can manage your familiar
workload and it is sometimes hard to see any advantage
in change. Especially on Monday mornings.
The lessons we gain from day­to­day work,
however, are often small­scale and practical – they don’t
result in seeing our jobs in a new light and they don’t gi­
ve support when we need to be challenged and
stretched. This is where continuing professional
development comes in. Continuous learning will occur
in any job but if we want to practice new skills, introduce
change and experiment with new projects then continu­
ous learning needs theory, measurable outcomes,
structure and support.
The most common training opportunities are one
day workshops, meetings or conference sessions.
These are great for introducing new ideas and can be
truly inspiring. But it is difficult to maintain that initial
enthusiasm when you are back at your workplace and
other pressures crowd in. Colleagues who didn’t share
the inspirational experience may be sceptical about the
new ideas you bring back and if you try something and it
appears not to work very well, there is nowhere to go to
discuss and understand why.
Advantages of online training
At Opening the Book we have run many face­to­
face workshops for librarians in different countries but
over the last ten years we have moved to develop sub­
stantial online training programmes. When we say
online, we don’t mean a faceless computerised set of
questions with tick­boxes. All our courses mix online
learning with practical application to library work. What
Take a new challenge
with online professional development
Rachel Van Riel and Anne Downes
Rachel Van Riel and Anne Downes work at Opening the Book, the
company which founded the reader development movement and has
embedded reader­centred ideas in the UK library service. Opening the
Book supplies training, consultancy, library design and book display
furniture in the UK, North America and in many European countries.
See www.openingthebook.com