PNLA Quarterly, Vol. 63 No.4 Summer 1999
From the President
In May of 1998 I spent several very pleasant and productive days attending the annual conference of the Montana Library Association held that year in Missoula. During the course of my time there, I noticed in their conference program a statement concerning attendees being able to obtain continuing education credit for conference attendance. Since continuing education for librarians is a subject that had recently been discussed by the Washington State legislature and librarians in the state, I was more than vaguely interested. While Washington has not yet become a state that requires continuing education credits of its librarians after graduation, the rapid change our profession is undergoing at this time seems to underscore the need for some additional training.At the fall '97 Board meeting of PNLA, when we began discussing the various changes that needed to be made to our organization, we chose continuing education as one of the areas on which we wished to focus. After the adoption of the action plan last Aug. at the annual meeting in Sun Valley, the Board felt that the first step in implementing this part of the plan was to contact the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Washington. I met with Director Dr. Mike Eisenberg, and Susan Turner of the UW Extension. At this meeting I discovered that they too had become interested in this subject and had conducted a survey of the profession in the Pacific Northwest to determine the need for continuing education.
As a result of the dovetailing of our joint interests, an advisory board of representatives from a wide variety of libraries was formed. I was appointed a member of the Advisory Board. The board met to discuss what continuing education needs there were and how best to meet them. The result is that several certificate programs are in the planning stages, designed to meet the needs expressed by practitioners in the field. This is hopefully the first step in a continuing dialog between PNLA and the library field in the region to assist the profession in maintaining its professional expertise in these times of rapid and far-reaching change. The board hopes that some mechanism may be established in the future to make continuing education workshops a routine part of the annual conference. There may even be some mechanism to establish academic credit if enough members want it. We solicit your input for needs in this area.
At this time, too, we are looking forward to August 11-13 and our annual conference in Calgary. I hope many of you are planning on attending, as the program really does have something for everyone. Karen Labuik, first vice-president/president-elect of PNLA, and her committee have worked long and hard to insure that all attendees' needs are met and that we all have fun too! Conference attendance is another way to further your education in our profession. The many varied sessions will allow you to learn something new, share something with colleagues from other parts of our beautiful region and learn and grow. With a hearty YAHOO, it's on to Calgary !!