Library Education

The American Library Association (ALA) Committee on Education is presenting a forum on Library Education. The forum will be held 1:30-3:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 23, 2009, at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver in the Colorado Convention Center in Room 702/706.

The Forum on Library Education will be dedicated to the Core competences of librarianship, as set out in a document being presented to the ALA Council for approval at the meeting.

The event continues the dialog on issues in library and information science education and identifies new issues and challenges confronting the profession. The discussion will be moderated by Michael Gorman, university librarian emeritus, California State University, Fresno, and will feature presentations on the Core competences by two LIS educators, Rick Rubin, director, Kent State University, School of Library, and Ken Haycock, director, San Jose State University, School of Library, and two practitioners, Sherrie Schmidt, university librarian, Arizona State University, and J. Linda Williams, coordinator, Library Media Services, Anne Arundel County Public Schools. There will be ample time for discussion, Q&A sessions and audience interaction.

The first Congress on Professional Education, held in 1999, recommended the establishment of a set of core competences for the profession. Various committees have worked on the competences in the years since. The Presidential Task Force on Library Education has recast the work of those committees into a document setting out the desired outcomes of an ALA-accredited master’s level education. It does not prescribe a “core curriculum” nor does it state the means by which ALA-accredited programs should achieve the prescribed outcomes. Once approved, the Core competences will be the basis for revision of ALA’s standards for accreditation that shape how ALA-accredited programs are assessed.

For updates and additional information, please visit the website at:
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/hrdr/abouthrdr/hrdrliaisoncomm/committeeoned/libraryeducationforum.cfm