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Workshops and Professional Development
by Larissa Gordon
Public opinion to the contrary, librarianship is a fairly complex profession. Change is a constant, and librarians must adapt in order to stay ahead of the game. One great way you can stay on top of the changing library profession while enhancing your existing skills and knowledge is by attending professional development workshops.
Professional development workshops are offered on almost any topic imaginable, so you should be able to find one that interests you. In addition to teaching you new skills, these are a great way to enhance your resume, and can provide an opportunity to network with colleagues. Attending a workshop can also help you renew your commitment to librarianship when the rigors of the daily grind are getting you down.
Attending a workshop does not mean that you have to empty your own pockets or beg your employer for the chance to fly halfway across the country to attend a session at a large library association's annual conference. (If you can attend one of these, more power to you! Be sure to wear sensible shoes.) There are many more easily accessible avenues open to you that will deliver the same results - and you won't even risk losing your baggage on the flight home.
Local Associations And Library Consortia
Many of you may be members of ALA, but are you also a member of your state library association? How about a local chapter of a national library association? Do you receive regular e-mails or updates from the consortium your library belongs to? If not, what are you waiting for?
Local library organizations and regional consortia are the one of the best ways to gain professional development experience. These organizations hold training sessions, offer workshops, host programs, and generally provide their members with a whole host of professional development opportunities. These organizations do usually charge a fee to attend their programs - few things in life are free, after all. However, this fee is often nominal, and certainly is far less than the cost of traveling to a national conference. Members of a consortium or association can also attend workshops at a reduced price, which helps make these opportunities even more affordable.
Local workshops and programs also allow busy librarians access to professional development opportunities, without a huge time commitment. You will likely only be gone from work for a half day, or a day at most. Finally, these workshops allow you to network and make valuable connections with other librarians who live and work in the same area, connections you more easily be able to maintain and make use of later on.
If you are new to the profession and unsure how to find out about groups in your area, ask your library director, a coworker, or another established local librarian. These people should know what is out there and to what organizations their own library belongs. To find out about professional development opportunities offered by these groups, join their e-mail lists, sign up to receive their newsletters, and check out their web sites. Many of these groups also actively look for sites to host workshops. So, if you are truly motivated, try talking to the powers-that-be and working to bring a program of interest right to your workplace.
Online Workshops
If you don't have the time to attend a workshop in person, you can participate in virtual workshops online. These workshops, some of which can be completed in only an hour, make use of course management software that creates a similar learning environment to what you might experience in person. Course management software allows you to simultaneously do such things as view a PowerPoint presentation, hear a spoken lecture, and ask questions of the presenters, all from the comfort of your home or office computer.
American Libraries magazine publishes a quarterly guide to continuing education, which includes online learning opportunities offered by different ALA divisions. In addition to ALA, some library consortia and library vendors also offer online learning opportunities. Use the same strategies to find out about these exciting online opportunities.
Finding Funding
Many library directors have a budget set aside for professional development. Talk to your library director to see what is in your library's budget. When asking to attend a workshop, be sure to point out how your attendance will benefit your library and help you to better reach your goals. Also, remember to take notes and share the information you learned with your colleagues when the workshop is done.
Associations, Consortia, and Organizations
The best way to find out about the associations, consortia, or organizations in your area which offer professional development opportunities is to ask an established librarian. However, you can get started with these links to the web pages of several regional and national organizations. Look on each site for a section on professional development, education, or planned events.
AMIGOS (A southwestern U.S. library consortium): http://www.amigos.org
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL): http://www.ala.org/ACRL/
NELINET (A New England library consortium): http://www.nelinet.net
OCLC: http://www.oclc.org
PALINET (A Mid-Atlantic library consortium): http://www.palinet.org
Public Library Association (PLA): http://www.pla.org/ala/pla/pla.htm
Reference and User Services Association (RUSA): http://www.ala.org/RUSA/
SirsiDynix Institute: http://www.dynix.com/institute/
SOLINET (A Southeastern U.S. library consortium): http://ww.solinet.net
The Teaching, Learning, & Technology Group (TLT Group): http://www.tltgroup.org
Larissa Gordon is the librarian at Wilmington College's Dover Site Library Center. You can contact her at larissa.a.gordon@wilmcoll.edu.