National Library Associations
Active involvement in professional activities is important for personal development. This can be a challenge in developing countries, where library associations are fairly new and paid-up membership is often low: financial resources are limited in consequence. Information professionals want something tangible in return for their subscriptions, and INASP support is aimed to assist cash-strapped national library associations to bring out newsletters and put on continuing education workshops. One aim of the programme is to raise the profile of the association and thereby help it to gain more support and professional participation in the
long-term.
A number of associations had newsletters or journals already, but financial constraints made production irregular. With assistance from INASP, editors and editorial committees have worked hard to remedy the situation. Starting with the Botswana and Kenya Library Associations in 2001, financial support was given towards bringing out two issues of a newsletter each year. With effect from 2002, the programme was extended to Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The assistance continued in 2003.
Botswana and Kenya received financial support for continuing education workshops in 2002. The Botswana workshop was on Proactive Librarianship: Marketing and Public Relations. The Kenya workshop was on Strategic Management. Both topics were in response to needs identified within the Strategic Plans prepared by the national public library services with the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Participation was not restricted to public library staff, however.
Three associations received financial support for continuing education workshops 2003. The Tanzania Library Association put on a workshop (15 to 18 July) intended to orientate long-serving library staff to Information and Communications Technology. While newly-qualified librarians will have ICT expertise, their longer-serving colleagues often do not. The need for locally-relevant hands-on training is immense.
The Uganda Library Association's topic was Readership Development (14 to 16 July). Given the need to develop the reading habit this is a crucial area. The Zambia Library Association concentrated on Strategies for Marketing Library Services (25 to 28 August). This workshop was co-financed by the Zambia Social Investment Fund (ZAMSIF).
Participants gain specific new skills that can be put into practice immediately. Their colleagues and library users benefit. The reports from all three workshops have been extremely positive.
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