Benefits of Internal Professional Development for Academic Librarians

Abstract

While often overlooked, there are many benefits of in-house professional development programs for academic librarians. This is especially true as the roles of academic librarians continue to evolve and change. This chapter argues that internal professional development not only helps academic librarians share their varied skills, tools, and practices with institutional colleagues, but also improves employee morale, collegiality, and organizational culture. Additionally, by structuring an internal professional development program using a peer-learning model, librarians gain a sense of community while seeing value in each librarian's individual knowledge. Also, peer learning can be a mechanism for institutional knowledge management and the transfer of institutional memory through intergenerational and cross job function learning. In addition to exploring the evolving nature of the academic librarian and the importance of professional development as peer learning in the context of the local institution, this chapter will describe in detail one university library's internal professional development program for librarians.

Supporting the best: Professional development in academic libraries

“…Librarians are invited to present a thirty-minute session on a topic they believe would be useful to their colleagues. The benefits of this program are that it builds collegiality, facilitates the acquisition of new skills, and helps the participating librarians learn about one another's area of expertise (Tomlinson, 2014). Goosney, Smith and Gordon (2014) is "to facilitate high quality teaching and to provide the opportunity for librarians to strengthen their instructional practice through observation, supportive dialogue, and reflection" (p. 3).…”

In‐house peer supported literature search training: a public health perspective

“…This resulted in colleagues working with those whom they knew less well, thus helping to improve morale and collegiality. 3 Both the trainers and the trainees were geographically dispersed, so Skype was used to deliver the training. This saved both time and effort in terms of travel and costs.…”

“…To contribute to team building across KLS, mentors were paired with mentees who they did not normally work with on a day to day basis. This resulted in colleagues working with those whom they knew less well, thus helping to improve morale and collegiality …”

“…The purpose of the PHE literature searching course was not to teach search skills per se, but rather to build on existing skills and share the expertise and know‐how necessary to deliver a literature searching service that meets the evidence and research needs of PHE staff. According to Thomlinson (p1538) , ‘sharing knowledge across the library community through peer teaching and learning can better assist patrons through increased knowledge and increased referral’.…”

“…This allowed them to acknowledge where each individual had performed well which helped build their confidence, but also helped to address the specific challenges they had encountered during the training. Tomlinson suggests that this model of peer learning can provide a sense of community as well as highlighting the value of the individual's knowledge.…”