ALA President Michael Gorman will be sponsoring a “Forum on Education for Librarianship” at Midwinter. From the Midwinter catalog of events:
Forum on Education for Librarianship
Friday, January 20, 2006, 1:00 -5:30 pm
Location TBD
ALA President Michael Gorman invites library practitioners, educators and students to participate in a half-day forum to explore the big issues in library education: What is the nature of the profession of librarianship and what does the 21st century librarian need to know? How do we translate this understanding of our profession into a meaningful LIS curriculum? What are the implications for ALA accreditation? Presentations on these hot topics in LIS education will be followed by participant discussion and feedback. This is your opportunity to make your voice heard on an issue of vital importance to the future of our profession.
You may register using the online registration form at https://cs.ala.org/forumoneducation. There is no fee to register for this event.
I won’t be able to attend, but I hope someone will and will mine it for issues related to academic and research librarianship that can be blogged.
This is one that should have an online – and free! – component. I know there would be some cost involved for the organization, but if you go to the form to sign up they ask if you’re a student or job-seeking MLIS grad, among other things. How many students and unemployed librarians will be going to Midwinter? or librarians working for cash-strapped public libraries? or working at one-person rural libraries? If you are without institutional support (and even with it for many of us) Midwinter is a luxury.
A lot of voices won’t be heard if it requires traveling to a conference. And those are exactly the people we need to hear from. Even some low-cost easy-access web-based threaded discussion (or a well-publicized blog?) would be better than nothing.