Professional Development for Academic Librarians

Building on the work of the earlier PERI programme, INASP worked with national library consortia and equivalent bodies to build quality training programmes to enable librarians to manage access to information and support researchers. This project was part of the Strengthening Research & Knowledge Systems programme. 

INASP provided a combination of training and skills support, mentoring and advice, delivered through face-to-face workshops, online courses, communities of practice, peer visits and regional learning events.

Professional Development training courses encompassed both face-to-face and online workshops, supported by communities of practice, and with individuals expected to develop action plans to put the skills and knowledge into practice in their day-to-day work. 

Materials were developed as toolkits, allowing more flexibility in course delivery by enabling facilitators to tailor content to partners’ needs. Courses focused particularly on three areas: 

1. Marketing & Advocacy

INASP’s marketing and advocacy courses were designed to enhance a consortium’s capacity to demonstrate its value to external stakeholders and grow its membership base. 

Courses developed, and delivered included:

Library Marketing and Advocacy: Prepares participants to develop a strategic approach to marketing the library or advocating for support.

Marketing and promotion of electronic resources: Introduces participants to a range of accessible strategies to actively market and promote their e-resource collections. Focuses on understanding and engaging users and matching e-resources more closely to their specific needs and interests.  

2. Monitoring and evaluation of electronic resource use (MEERU):  

Making decisions around subscriptions require an understanding of usage patterns.  INASP’s monitoring and evaluation online course enables librarians to measure and understand the usage of e-resources they have purchased and ensure they are getting value for money. 

3. Licensing and negotiations

Copyright and Licensing: INASP’s online course in copyright and licensing, enables librarians to understand and explain publishers’ licensing terms, and in doing so to better understand what they are negotiating for and what their rights are. 

Licensing and Negotiations: To build support networks INASP offers a course in licensing and negotiations at a regional level, which has, enabled consortia to grow their pool of negotiators. A training of trainers component was included so participants could extend the training to other colleagues. 

 

Achievements

Over 2400 librarians and information professionals in 19 countries were trained in different aspects of digital library management. Just under half were women.