Niels Ole Pors, Director of Studies, The Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark

Introduction

The Royal School of Librarianship has changed its name to the Royal School of Library and Information Science. It is a consequence of the new status that came about in December 1997, when the school obtained full university status. You can look at it as being a kind of consolidation, or an official recognition of a long development.

The new law and status will not cause revolutions at the school, but it will certainly change some of the features a bit. I guess there will be a gradual increase in resources used for research from 22 % up to 30-35 % over a 5 year period. We will get full professors and our own PhD programme. Our degree in librarianship will be transformed into a bachelor's degree.

In this context two phenomena seem to be interesting, and maybe important. Our undergraduate curriculum has to be restructured and our continuing education will change. Reflections on these two topics will be the frame of reference for this paper.

Professional qualifications and transferable skills

There is general agreement that the society of the future � we can call it the knowledge society � is a society in which lifelong learning will hold a prominent place. It will be a learning society. Lifelong learning which can be institutionalised in CPD is a rather broad concept that relates to the need to cope with changes in the workplace as well as participating in decision-making and being actively involved in the democratic process in society.1

This has, of course, relevance for LIS institutions. They have to look at the qualifications, the skills and the knowledge they endow upon the students. Especially, the relationship between the basic education (the BSc) and CPD is relevant and interesting.

Most of the curricular debate in the latest decade has centred on the so-called transferable skills. There is now a general2, but superficial, agreement that these skills include at least the following capabilities and competencies:

• Interpersonal skills and critical ability
• User support and empowerment
• Computer and network skills
• Financial awareness
• Research qualifications
• Teamworking skills
• Management skills
• Decision � making skills

Maybe one of the most important trends will be the internationalisation of the labour market. This is of course is due to the development of the EU. At the personal level, it will be necessary to develop competencies such as confidence - that means that the curriculum must reinforce the student's capacity to solve problems and use skills in different environments. In order to achieve this, education must be problem-oriented and success-oriented.

It should be emphasised that maybe the most important attitude is one of flexibility. It points both to mental flexibility, and a career oriented flexibility. These general and personal skills must be seen in the context of what constitutes an LIS programme in relation to domain-specific competencies, qualifications and skills. It is a rather demanding task in a field where confusion about the core of our discipline seems to be a quite normal state of mind.

The curriculum

A curriculum with an emphasis solely on the theoretical side of our field will tend to produce candidates who will have a hard time in the so-called real world. A curriculum which stresses the practical side will tend to produce candidates who will have difficulties coping with derivations from what they were taught. A research-based education will - hopefully - produce candidates who are able to participate in processes of change. It must be emphasised that a research-based education also can include different hands-on skills.

Different groups (practitioners and other academics) have different standards and demands upon the LIS curriculum. This question pops up in different disguises from time to time, and the debate seems to be a bit different from continent to continent and from country to country, according to the traditional educational structures. It is evident that the inclusion of information science in the librarianship curriculum resulted in the development of some confusion about the ultimate goal and purpose, at the same time as a common core curriculum is lacking. There is no widespread acceptance of what constitutes the real knowledge base. It looks as if the emergence of information science and its inclusion into the curricula of librarianship for some are confusing.

Library education has to be academic. The purpose of advanced information and library education ought to be the furthering of knowledge in the field and the dissemination of that knowledge to future and practising professionals. It is only when it is based on knowledge, including scientific knowledge, that professionals can develop the skills that will permit them to practise independently and cope with changes. It is only because of that knowledge that practitioners can reflect on and change their work experience, and in the end acquire relevant standards of competence.

You could argue that the health of library and information work as a service profession depends on a sound and intellectually distinct knowledge and research base. Such a base, linked, as it must be to higher education, should not attempt to duplicate competency-based approaches to professional training and development. Rather, it might more effectively complement these by perhaps becoming part of a new structure of professional development incorporating academic LIS (knowledge, theory, research skills); professional qualifications (competencies, practical skills) and CPD itself (praxis, personal development).

Flexibility and accessibility are essential principles in this context. However, there will be a need for pattern, form and coherence. One of the important elements would be to consider carefully the relationship between the basic education and the CPD. There is a marked need for a formalised co-operation between stakeholders in the educational scene.

The educational strategy has to focus on teaching and learning approaches. We need a curriculum that is both knowledge based and skills based. It poses some heavy requirements for the teaching and learning climate.3

In a European context, it is interesting to note the very different educational traditions that have evolved during the decades. Broadly speaking we see a central German- inspired tradition, and a very different UK-based tradition. A short characterisation of the two different traditions shows the difference. The main points are that the German tradition emphasises education with prominence on theory, including theories of science, progression during the syllabus, comprehensiveness and a certain historical weight, especially in the humanities and the social sciences. A hidden agenda seems to be the production of the erudite scholar with a relative broad insight in many areas. The UK-based tradition emphasises the modular approach. It also emphasises the skill-oriented course structure and it is less heavy on broader theoretical topics like philosophy and theory of scientific enquiry. The hidden agenda seems to be persons who can function immediately in research, management and industry. In reality, we see very different mixtures of the two traditions. Denmark, for example, is a mixture of the two different educational schools.

The new curriculum at the RSLIS

The above mentioned reflections form part of the considerations behind the proposed curriculum and course structure at the school.

The new curriculum is based on modularisation and electives already in the second year. A short outline of the new course structure looks like this:

Year 1

In the second year the students will have the following modules

The 3rd year consists predominantly of electives. There is planned one compulsory module in design of databases and information systems.

All in all there are 18 compulsory modules and 12 elective modules

After the Bachelor degree the students can choose whether they want to study a further half year and participate in a practise oriented semester after which they will obtain the degree of Librarian. They can also choose to try their luck in the labour market, go to another educational institution, or take one of the Master degrees the school offers either alone or in co-operation with other universities.

The principles for the education are stated as being theoretical and methodological, which means that it is not the main objective to produce candidates that have all the skills as librarians did just a few years ago

Learning outcomes and assessment

The teaching principles will have to change quite a lot. We will reduce the number of class room hours by over 20 % and at the same time we will uphold what we, at the moment , regard as our rather high standard. It implies a huge work-load put upon the students as independent and self-directed learning.

We also have to take into account the different transferable skills and how we most effectively develop them. I guess it will mean a careful planning of the whole course structure in such a way that the single course also is directed towards certain personal and transferable skills in the objectives for the course.

Some courses would then stress team-work through group assignments; other courses could stress oral presentation and communication skills.

Continuing education and development of competence

During recent years, it has been recognised world wide that continuing education and the upgrading of skills is something that needs to be actively pursued. It has become a fixed item on the agenda of LIS institutions, together with the agendas of professional associations. CPD overcomes some of the limitations of the initial professional qualification and its increasing speed of obsolescence. It is perceived as maintaining the professional competence and it is perceived as something that gives a broader view of the profession, its task and concerns. At the same time, it adds to job satisfaction and security, and it is the basis for broadening the range of services the profession can offer. Continuing education is an essential collateral of a continuing career. This essential concomitant is coming of age now as a professional concern to all the LIS bodies.

There is recognised a growing need for continuing education and for continuing professional development in the profession. The situation concerning continuing education throughout Europe is much diversified.4 It clearly mirrors several different educational traditions and to a certain degree reflects the standing of librarians in society. The education of librarians and information scientists takes place at both universities and different vocational schools. In some countries librarians receive an academic degree. In other countries, they receive a special kind of Diploma. In some countries, it is possible to take a degree as a librarian at a college or a vocational school and then move on to university to take a Masters degree in Information Studies or a related topic.5 The situation is very complicated and it is nearly impossible to make comparisons.6 This much-diversified situation could be one of the main reasons for the lack of a common core in our profession and in our discipline.

In the different countries, the difficulties in coping with technological development have many causes. One central barrier may be a lack of sufficient continuing education for librarians and information professionals in work.7 In greater or lesser degree, institutions like library schools, university departments of librarianship and information science, private and professional associations have a role on the continuing educational scene. The frequency of courses is in a number of countries very low. Most often, continuing education activities seem to exist on an irregular basis. In some countries state agencies seem to play a part in developing programmes. In other countries, one institution undertakes the responsibility for the development of the activities. Finally, in the rest of the countries more than one of the institutions mentioned marks the scene.

There are serious barriers to overcome. The authors of the PLIS - study point to several barriers of which continuing education is one of the most important.8 Other barriers are insufficient political awareness, inadequate funding and attitudinal problems among the staff. Quite a lot of these are, of course, dependent on the uneven economic and political development in the different European regions. The authors emphasise that there are problems with barriers related to professional development. Skills are inadequate because of an educational system being not quite up to date at the same time as there is also a lack of continuing education and training. What is needed is a professional and far-ranging professional strategy for professional development at regional, national and European levels.

It is accepted that one way of improving standards of competence and skills and of informing others of a practical commitment to the idea, is to adopt compulsory continuing professional education as a condition of professional certification.

CPD as compulsory could be seen as alien to our profession - attacking personal and professional freedoms and decision making. It could be seen as ignoring and undervaluing the no doubt extensive informal activities such as professional reading, participation in short training courses, in-house training, discussion with colleagues and so on.

There are, of course, several problems related to the term compulsory continuing education in the profession. The word compulsory rings bells quite a lot do not want to hear. Equal opportunity is another factor. Librarians in small and remote � at least in relation to centres � do not have the same opportunities unless they engage quite a lot in IT-based continuing education. All over Europe there is a geographical pattern that indicates a very uneven development of CPD in our profession.

If CPD is not a compulsory ingredient, a much more diversified development of skills and participation will be the result. A certain kind of pressure on individuals and institutions could force a process of CPD. I would guess that one of the most effective and efficient ways to increase CPD is to make it attractive on both a personal and an institutional level.

On an institutional level it means that CPD is part of the staff development programme and that participation in CPD is a prerequisite for certain kind of job functions and advancements and promotions.

On an individual level I guess that participation in CPD will be attractive if it is a requirement for a pay-raise or for a certain kind of promotion within the institution. Voluntary CPD could pose many problems. Motivation of the LIS worker to undertake what might well be a long, recurrent and costly programme of intellectually and professionally taxing activities would have to be of a high order. Peer pressure, financial and promotional inducements by employers, and last but not least, personal satisfaction and professionalism should all contribute to a successful solution to this problem. Nevertheless, the difficulties of cost, geographical location, relevance and time for CPD, combined with inequality of opportunity may well prove demoralising and lead to low take-up rates and high drop out.

Part of the public sector in Denmark has introduced a performance-related pay system. A part of this system is that public workers, including information professionals have a differentiated and negotiated salary based on functions, qualifications and performance. The system has been recently introduced, but it is evident that the pressure for participating in CPD will increase because it is one of the ways to obtain new qualifications and competencies.

I would like to stress that CPD has to cover the totality of our field, even if we at the moment are predominantly concerned with IT and IT-related skills.

The new CPD system at the RSLIS

As a response to the problems outlined in this paper, the Royal School of Librarianship has just launched an ambitious plan establishing a whole system of continuing education activities. They are planned in close relation to the content of the basic education. Undertaking postgraduate distance learning has encouraged practising LIS professionals to continue their professional education and undertake a piece of supervised research which will enhance their skills while being of direct relevance to their professional situation.9

The basic programme will give a BSc after 3 years of study. A further half-year will, after 3.5 years of study, give a certificate as Librarian. After the BSc, it is possible for the student to choose our Masters degree course in Information Science and Information Management, or a Master's degree in Cultural Studies. It would then be possible to continue with a 3-year PhD programme.

It is a rather traditional model. In the planning of the BSc and the Masters programmes we have used the models and considerations outlined in this paper. The programme is a combination of what we think is the best from the central European tradition and the UK tradition. It is a curriculum with plenty of opportunities to specialise, to select, but it also has a certain flavour of comprehensiveness.

Some of the biggest changes will be in our continuing education. The RSLIS has an obligation to run continuing education. We are simply planning to transform the resources into 7-10 programs of CPD courses. We use the resources we earlier used running hundreds of short courses into the regular programs with a diploma status. Each of the programmes will have a workload equivalent of half a year of study. Each programme will last for 12-18 months based on distance education methods. The important thing is that the 7-10 programmes will cover the whole spectrum of our profession.

As examples, it is planned to put up programmes in areas and topics like

Youth and Children Culture
Management
Information Retrieval Theory
Media Studies
And so on.

Each programme will consist of 5 modules. They will give some credit in relation to the Master's programme, but the objectives of the CPD programmes are not quite the same. They will be oriented a bit more towards the profession and they will tend to bridge the gap between the academic orientation and the practical orientation. The programmes will be assessed.

Let us look at bit more into the details of one of these CPD programmes. It is a fact that the workload of participating in one of the programmes will be a half year. Normally the programme will run for a year or a bit more. It will, as a matter of fact, be a very demanding part time study.

Each programme will consist of 5 modules. These modules will of course be taken from our basic education, the Master's course and our post-graduate course for research librarians and subject specialists. The flavour will be a bit different because in our CPD courses the emphasis will be a bit more practical and skills-oriented, but of course not without a heavy injection of theories and methodologies.

Let us, as an example, take a programme in Management. It would probably consist of the following 5 modules and topics: Quality management and TQM, Performance measurement, The learning organisation and staff development, Organisational change, Customer needs and customer orientation.

Children and Youth Culture will be another very important CPD programme. It will include modules and topics such as mass-media consumption, production of significance and symbols, sociology of the family, children and young people's games and use of IT, children's librarianship.

A programme in Information Management would include modules and topics such as Information resource management, business information, commercial databases, database marketing, project management, document management, information and decision, strategic planning and decision making theory.

These are just examples, but the important point is the flexibility of the programmes. It will be very easy to incorporate new modules. That means that it will be possible gradually to change the different CPD programmes simply by changing single modules when the need arises. What still needs to be decided is the participant's possibility of building their own programme by putting together modules. The outcome of this will depend on the assessment system.

The interesting thing is, of course, how the market will respond to the plans, which we will implement from 1999.

Conclusion

Our national plan does not contribute to solving the rather depressing picture of CPD in Europe overall. There is need for a huge co-operative effort to upgrade librarians and information workers throughout Europe. You can see the establishment of Library Link as one among other vehicles in this process.

References

1. Brittain, M. Implications for education and training. In: Curriculum development in information science to meet the needs of the information industries in the 1990's. ed. Michael Brittain. Library and Information Report 70. The British Library, 1989, pp. 153-206.
2. Elkin, J. Educating the future professional. Relay, 43, 1995, p.8-
3. O�Connor, D. and Mulvaney, J.P. - LIS faculty research and expectations of the academic culture versus the needs of the practitioner. Journal of Education for Librarianship,37, 4, 1996. pp. 306-316.
4. Johnson, I.M. - Editorial: Peering into the mist and struggling through it - the education and training of the future information professional.. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 29, 1, 1997. pp. 3-9
5. Williams, D. and Farmer, J. � Future needs and skills. In Renewing the education and training of librarians and information professionals. ed. Peter Muranyi. Szombathely. 1997
6. Fang, Josephine Riss, Stueart, Robert D. and Tuamsuk, Kulthida (eds.) - World guide to library, archive and information science education. K.G. Saur, Munich. 1995.
7. Schr�der, Thomas A. (ed.) - Information Science in Europe: A Study guide. Amsterdam. 1994.
8. van der Starre, Jan H.E. - Information technology content of initial professional education and training for librarianship in the European Community. Study prepared for the Commission of the European Community by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Amsterdam. November 1990.
9. Pors, N.O. and Schreiber, Trine - Librarian Training in Information and communication technologies: A Typology of Needs and Deliverables. Prolib/Train 10278. Copenhagen, December 1996

Further reading

Public Libraries and The Information Society. Study on behalf of the European Commission - DGXIII/4. Prolib/PLIS 10340. By Jens Thorhauge, Gitte Larsen, Hans-Peter Thun & Hanne Albrechtsen. 1996

Batt, Chris - Telematics Developments in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom, p. 12. In: The country report of UK from the study "Public Libraries in the Information Society: A Study for the European Commission�s Libraries Programme" (1996, in progress). Ref. EU PROLIB PLIS 10340.

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