I have always looked on chartership as evidence of a commitment to
continuing professional development on the part of the individual and would
always encourage newly qualified librarians and those who have qualified at
some stage but not chartered to go ahead with it. In my view it marks out
those who are want to make librarianship a career and are willing to give
back something into the profession, from those who simply want a job working
in a library. Undergoing the period of supervised training makes sure that
candidates have access to a range of job experiences, while putting together
the professional development report establishes a habit of reflection on
practice and of routinely evaluating the impact of what we are doing - both
qualities that I would like to see more of in practising librarians.
I'm sorry that Dominic's experiences have given him such a negative view of
the process.
Pearl Valentine
Chief Librarian
North Eastern education & Library Board
-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Broadhurst [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 07 August 2002 16:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Chartership
I personally think that the current Chartership is pretty much a
waste of time and does not really carry much weight in the
profession. And this is from something who underwent the Route
A in the old LA almost 10 years ago. Perhaps if this has changed
significantly someoneone could let me know, but doesn't it still
involve the writing of a PDR.
I agree with the notion that having chartered status is a sign of a
professional body and its member and other professions whose
mechansim have to undertake various examinations etc such as
accountants, lawyers, etc have such a mechanism. Unfortunately
if we are being brutally honest and whilst this is regrettable, we
still
lag somewhat behind these professions not least in equivalent
salaries and status(barring a few areas of our profession). Our
chartership procedure does little to change this and is also
certainly not a guaranteed sign of an individuals professional
knowledge or competence.
Finally I think Chartership is also used by some employers to
deliberately keep employment costs down and use it as a bar to
staff salary advancement. It seems paying a desultory £13-14,000
for a graduate (often postgraduate) professional is not enough!
Make them jump through a more hoops till paying them a decent
wage seems to be the order of the day
Dominic Broadhurst
> I think that we all need to remember that to obtain Chartership is
not the
> same as educational qualifications. In order to obtain Chartered
status
> (MCLIP) we have to do quite an amount of work and effort to bring
ourselves
> up to a higher professional status. Chartership must be earned
above and
> beyond educational and on the job training. The fact that our
professional
> organization promotes Chartership by telling employers that
Chartered
> members are "professional qualified applicants" is a very good
thing.
>
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