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Article Excerpt
This paper looks at the challenges presented for the Australian Library and Information Association by its role as the professional association responsible for ensuring the quality of Australian library technician graduates. There is a particular focus on the issue of course recognition, where the Association's role is complicated by the need to work alongside the national quality assurance processes that have been established by the relevant technical education authorities. The paper describes the history of course recognition in Australia; examines the relationship between course recognition and other quality measures; and describes the process the Association has undertaken recently to ensure appropriate professional scrutiny in a changing environment of accountability.
Introduction
In their study of standards of LIS education across the world, Dalton and Levinson (2000) identified three models that aim to establish and maintain the standards for LIS education: governmental monitoring; formalised LIS accreditation/approval processes; and individual course/departmental standards. The processes in place in the United Kingdom, through the Chartered Institute of Library and information Professionals (CILIP), in the United States through the American Library Association (ALA), and in Australia, through the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), are examples of the second model of formalised LIS accreditation/recognition processes, although each is distinctive (Hallam, Partridge & McAIlister, 2004).
In Australia, ALIA acts as the standards body for the library and information profession, which includes responsibility for the recognition of LIS courses leading to a library and information studies qualification. The recognised courses can be offered by universities or by Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), with the latter consisting principally of colleges of Technical and Further Education (TAFE). The course recognition process is directly linked to membership of ALIA, with the categories of Associate membership, which requires members to hold an ALIA-recognised LIS qualification at undergraduate or graduate levels; and Library Technician membership, with members holding an ALIA-recognised library technician qualification.
While formal education programs for librarians in Australia were introduced in 1944, when a qualifying examination became established for entry into the profession, the first course for paraprofessional staff was commenced only in 1970. This library technician course was developed in response to the changing dynamics of the workforce and a shortage of professional librarians, with a curriculum that focused on vocational, practical skills as opposed to the more theoretical body-of-knowledge covered in librarianship courses. Under the education standards process, ALIA stands in an unusual situation, recognising not only the professional courses offered by universities, but also eighteen courses that lead to library technician qualifications.
This paper discusses the challenges facing ALIA in recognising courses that constitute part of a national training package, but are delivered at the local level by individual RTOs. It is a circumstance which results in multiple forms and levels of accountability and quality assurance, with different processes put in place by the national body responsible for educational quality (AQTF); the state-based education authorities; the individual RTOs operating both within and outside the TAFE framework; and ALIA as the professional association representing the relevant industry.
The recognition of library technician courses has been before ALIA as a significant issue since 2006. At a time when a number of the RTOs were reaching the end of their existing period of recognition, the Association, through its Education Reference Group (later the Education and Workplace Learning Standing Committee), began working to revise the course recognition process in order to optimise its effectiveness and efficiency. As far as possible, this needed to be achieved in a way that took account of the multiple forms of accountability required of the RTOs while also ensuring the needs and interests of the Association and the technician educators were being met.
Historical review of formal recognition of library technician courses
In order to understand the current context for ALIA's recognition of library technician qualifications it is necessary to briefly review past developments.
Discussions regarding the need for formal library technician training took place throughout the 1960s, and the first course for technicians was established at Box Hill Girls' Technical College (Victoria) in 1970. Victoria was the focus of early development and within several years courses had also been established at Prahran and Footscray Technical Colleges, before spreading to other states in the mid 1970s. These early Victorian courses were managed by the Library Courses (Vocational) Standing Committee reporting to the State Council for Technical Education (Pivec, 1975), and courses in other states were developed and managed by similar authorities.
There was soon concern, however, that the separate development of courses within each state would result in inconsistencies in terms of their curriculum and quality. As Edward Flowers noted, by the mid 1970s:
Concern was being felt at the undesirable divergences which had developed between library technician courses established in different states, divergences which made it difficult to secure reciprocal acceptance of library technician qualifications between the states, so impeding library technician mobility, and the achievement of satisfactory Australia-wide salary scales and working conditions. (Flowers, 1979, p.371)
Pressure began to build for the then Library Association of Australia (LAA) to take a role in overseeing these courses, largely with a view to ensuring a degree of standardisation between states. In a 1975 overview of the early developments in technicians' education Catherine Pivec expressed a hope that the LAA would '... produce for the first time guidelines for standards for courses etc, leading to possible accreditation of courses Australia-wide, so that parity of qualifications interstate will be achieved' (Pivec, 1975, p.53).
It was with a view to achieving some standardisation between courses that the Library Courses (Vocational) Standing Committee convened a national workshop in Melbourne in 1976. An outcome of this meeting was the preparation of the Guidelines for the Education of Library Technicians (Library Courses, 1976), a first attempt at ensuring a basic degree...
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