"Professional Development in Developing Countries"
Zari Kamarei Speakers: Umran Kandemir, Winston Atkins, Kim Duckett Umran Kandemir talked about professional development of librarians in Turkey. She gave a brief history of Turkish librarianship in the past century and where they are today. As in the U.S. and elsewhere, there have been many changes due to the impact of the global information network. She said that things in the profession are just changing so rapidly, literally from day to day, that one can define modern librarians as players in a continuously running guessing game, certain that nothing will stay where it was even a day or two before. In Koç University's Suna Kiraç Library, the keywords are "creativity," "dynamism," "innovation," and "flexibility." The biggest challenge facing librarians today is defining ourselves in ways that convey to our superiors as well as our users that we are specialists in financial management, information management, knowledge management, operations management, marketing, resource procurement and contract negotiation, technology utilization, training, and service delivery. In other words, the job tasks and skill requirements of the modern librarian are identical to those of the professional employees of every successful firm in the worldwide service industry sector.
Winston Atkins talked about his experience when he trained in Cuba. In this presentation Winston reviewed three training sessions he undertook with staff of Casa de las Americas, a leading cultural institution in Cuba. He described a visit to Casa's library, how they balanced their preservation needs against resources to which they would have access, and developed a training session for one of their staff members to undertake during a visit to the United States.
Kim Duckett talked about two aspects of professional development in developing areas of South Africa. First the professional training needs of people running school libraries in rural, impoverished schools – teacher librarians, principals, and student assistants. Second, she explained professional development from the perspective of development of librarians and other volunteers who work with the people in these developing libraries. She also showed pictures of libraries before and after volunteers had worked in these areas.
For more information including some of the presentations, see http://www.sla.org/division/dpam/conferences/2003/developing/developing.html.
zkamarei@email.unc.edu
Sponsor: Elsevier
