Category Archives: CPDWL SC Members

Celebrating #InternationalVolunteersDay and Meme Contest Success By Helen Chan, IFLA CPDWL Section Chair

Celebrating Meme Contest WinnersCelebrating Volunteerism and Creativity in Librarianship

As we mark #InternationalVolunteersDay on December 5, 2023, we at the IFLA Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL) Section, along with the New Professionals Special Interest Group (NPSIG), extend our warmest regards and gratitude to our dedicated volunteers. Our volunteers are the backbone of our collective efforts, contributing to our library associations with innovative programs and invaluable resources.

A Tribute to Our Meme Contest Winners

The recently concluded Meme Contest was a resounding success, thanks to the creativity and enthusiasm of participants from around the globe. Congratulations to all who took part!

Applause for the Winners

We extend our heartiest congratulations to the top three memes that won our community’s hearts. Each winner has been awarded an eCertificate, meticulously designed by CPDWL Standing Committee Member Elena Corradini.

Here are the victors who managed to both amuse and enlighten us:


Mohamed Sherif Mahmoud (Egypt)


Hamid Sana (Pakistan)

Cat-aloging Napping my way past p.eriodical publications

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sywar Ayachi (Tunisia)

Gratitude to Our Jury and Advisors

A special thank you to our dedicated CPDWL jury members, a truly global panel that faced the challenging task of selecting the best from the best. Your discernment and commitment are greatly appreciated.

Furthermore, we thank the CPDWL advisors who participated in the voting process:

Ray Pun
Ulrike Lang
Monica Ertel
Edward Junhao Lim
Loida Garcia-Febo

Acknowledgement to Standing Committee Members and Volunteers

Our heartfelt appreciation goes to the CPDWL Standing Committee Members:

Helen Chan (Chair)
Jorun Systad (Secretary)
Joan Weeks (Information Coordinator)
Heba Ismail
Anne Reddacliff
Carmen Lei
Svetlana Gorokhova
Julia Gelfand

And a special mention to our volunteer:

Calista KY Lam

Join Us for Future Events

Your participation and contributions as IFLA volunteers empower our profession and create a vibrant community. We eagerly look forward to your involvement in the upcoming events brought to you by the IFLA’s CPDWL Section. Let’s continue to inspire and be inspired!

Thank you all once again for making a difference!

Meet Our New CPDWL Standing Committee Members

We are thrilled to introduce you to the new members of the Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL) Standing Committee. Each member brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and commitment to lifelong learning in the library profession.

Helen Chan

Helen Chan, the current Chair of the Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL), is an accomplished academic and professional in the library and information science sector. Prior to her current role, she chaired the IFLA Professional Division Committee of Division F and the Action Plan Review Committee, which introduced the widely used ‘Infinity’ platform within IFLA at WLIC 2023. Helen’s strong academic background, including over a decade teaching the Master of Science in Library and Information Management (MsLIM) program at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), enriches her role in CPDWL. Her passion for accessible information led to the creation of a new course for Bachelor of Science in Information Management (BsIM) students at HKU. Beyond academia, Helen supports teacher-librarian training in Hong Kong and participates actively in local non-profit work, holding directorship roles in an educational fund and a local secondary school board.

Joan Weeks

Joan Weeks is the Head of the Near East Section and Turkish Specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) at the Library of Congress where she supervises a staff of seven, including Arab, Persian and Armenian specialists with responsibility to acquire, process, and serve the Near East Collections. Prior to this, she was a Sr. Instruction Librarian at the Library of Congress where she designed and taught courses on the Library computer systems to staff. Joan is an elected member-at-large of the American Library Association (ALA) Council, and chairs the Near East and Southeast Asian Committee of the International Relations Committee of ALA. In IFLA, she was the Information Coordinator for the Section on Education and Training (SET), promoting programs such as the webinar series for LIS students.  She has a strong interest in library professional development instruction, making her a valuable addition to the CPDWL as the newly appointed Information Coordinator.

Julia Gelfand 

Julia Gelfand, a staunch advocate for global communication and cooperation, has been a vibrant part of the ALA’s IRRT Roundtable throughout her career. Julia’s international experience, from Europe and Asia to the Middle East and Africa, has enriched her work with IFLA for over 30 years. She’s been a pivotal part of the Science & Technology Section, the Acquisitions & Collection Development Section, and has contributed to numerous engaging programs. Now joining the professional development section, Julia looks forward to addressing the vast changes in libraries and librarianship, from technology to open movements, in innovative ways.

Tina Yang

Having worked in the library and information industry across China, Australia, and Hong Kong for nearly three decades, Tina Yang now serves as the Associate Librarian at the University of Hong Kong Libraries. In her role, Tina leads a dynamic team in providing diverse information, learning, and research services. Tina has witnessed the transformative power of technology in libraries and emphasizes the importance of mindset and capabilities in embracing this digital shift. As a library manager, Tina values continuing education and is excited to join CPDWL, where she can collaborate with passionate professionals in fostering lifelong learning in the library profession. Tina has also served in various roles within the IFLA Regional Standing Committee of Asia and Oceania.

Jorun Systad

Jorun Systad, Library Director in Sunnfjord municipality, Norway, brings her experience from IFLA’s Libraries for Children and Young Adults section to her current role. She’s particularly interested in enhancing public library services for smaller municipalities, focusing on collaboration with local organizations. Jorun has previously worked as a reading-motivator for “Foreningen!Les” and is an active member in the Norwegian Library Association and National Library’ strategic committee for 2020-2023. Her work emphasizes the need for libraries to facilitate ongoing staff development and workplace training.

Tina Gorokhova

Svetlana Gorokhova

Svetlana Gorokhova, an active participant in IFLA since 1994, firmly believes in the importance of continuous learning within the library community. She is excited to join the CPDWL in providing a seamless space for professional development across all sectors of the library community.

Anna Reddacliff

Anne Reddacliff 

Anne Reddacliff began her rewarding library career in 2001 as a volunteer. Today, she contributes to the Australian Library and Information Association’s (ALIA) Rainbow and Sustainable Libraries groups, remaining connected and inspired. With a love for writing and meeting new people, Anne is excited to bring her skills to IFLA CPDWL, expanding her influence internationally. She eagerly anticipates making new connections and contributing to the profession on a global scale.

Mingyan Li

Mingyan Li

Mingyan Li serves as the Metadata Librarian and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. With over 15 years of diverse library experience, she specializes in metadata workflows. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Bradley University, Mingyan is dedicated to advancing metadata management through innovation and accessibility.

Susan Cherono

Susan Cherono

Susan Cherono, a Librarian at the United States International University-Africa, brings over 14 years of experience in the field of Librarianship to CPDWL. With her passion for innovation and learning, she looks forward to contributing to CPDWL meetings and trainings.

Florian Forestier

Florian Forestier is in charge of social innovation and diversity politics at the French National Library and is also the project manager for the creation of the research center. He is passionate about training and development of staff skills, particularly regarding preventing discrimination and changing managerial attitudes.

Simona Marilena Bursasiu

Simona Marilena Bursasiu

Simona Marilena Bursasiu is a librarian at the Politehnica University of Timișoara, Romania, and an associate lecturer in the field of library and information sciences. As a former president of the Education and Training section of the Romanian Library Association, she is committed to providing online training for librarians around the world through CPDWL.

We welcome a group of dedicated professionals to the Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL) Standing Committee. Each individual brings a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and a commitment to ongoing professional development within the library and information sector. We eagerly anticipate the valuable contributions and fresh insights they will undoubtedly bring in the coming years.

For those interested in learning more about our new members, stay tuned for the upcoming issues of the CPDWL Newsletter. We will be featuring self-introductions from different standing committee members, offering you an in-depth look at their professional journeys, their passions within the field, and the unique perspectives that they bring to our committee.

Watch out for these enlightening features, and please join us once again in extending a warm welcome to our new members of the CPDWL!

Stay tuned and connected with CPDWL!

From Rotterdam to Lempäälä – Community bus, multi-professionalism and the library

By Jarkko Rikkilä, CPDWL SC member, Kirjastopäällikkö / Library Manager
Yhteisöpalveluiden palvelualue / Community Services

I have been a member of the IFLA CPDWL section for a couple of years now. Although IFLA’s internal working methods are only beginning to take shape for me, I have been sure of one thing since the beginning. Professional development and workplace learning are the most important themes for the library field. As customer expectations change and the complexity of the world increases, skill development is a fundamental issue in our world.

The library professional also needs multi-professional support and cooperation even more. At the IFLA WLIC conference in Rotterdam, Princess Laurentien talked about this very nicely. According to him, libraries are the opposite of loneliness. The library is a contact point to something bigger and the first connection to culture. Above all, however, the library is a link for cross-border cooperation. The future is not created from ivory towers.



While listening to the princess’ wonderful speech in Rotterdam, I thought about my own work as a library manager in Lempäälä municipality. Our municipality has 25,000 inhabitants and multi-professional cooperation is present in everyday life in many ways. In our community services, we meet employees multi-professionally every day. Library services, cultural services, sports services and youth services aim at the same thing: work that promotes well-being and health. We want our citizens to be well.

One of our interesting new concepts is called the Community Bus. The community bus is a bus that, in addition to library services, offers a place for young people, exercise guidance and cultural events. The community bus operation has started this spring and we expect success on the autumn routes. The bus is a platform, and I think it has been more important to encourage platform thinking for multiprofessional discussion.

Multiprofessional cooperation can be easier in a small or medium-sized municipality. Knowing someone else’s work teaches you a lot about your own work and increases the trust of the work community. In addition, multiprofessionalism is customer-oriented. In order to guarantee the highest possible level of services and common visibility, we must have common and shared practices and values. The bus has already attracted a lot of national interest. Maybe someday we’ll get to share thoughts about it in international arenas too!


Eight fantastic years with CPDWL

by Almuth Gastinger (CPDWL Secretary 2021–2023)

My second term as a standing committee member for CPDWL was ending in August 2023, and I would like to write about my experiences with this fantastic section and committee during the last eight years.

My first encounter with CPDWL was in 2009 when I attended its satellite meeting in Bologna. Such an incredibly well organised event, lots of interesting presentations and discussions (I presented together with my colleague Lene Bertheussen), good conversations with fellows from all over the world, and last not least delicious food and drinks. It was in Bologna I became friends with several colleagues from various countries who I still am very close to. Really one of the best conferences I have ever attended!

In 2009 I was still a member of the Information Literacy standing committee, but when my term ended in 2015, I wanted to work with CPDWL and fortunately I got elected as a standing committee member. Lucky me!

Four women seated at a table at a Chinese restaurant

Almuth (far right) having a dinner with CPDWL Officers past and present: Helen (far left), Gill, & Sandy (co-chairs 2019–2021).

One of the most interesting and rewarding experiences in this committee has been the work in the Coaching Initiative that CPDWL introduced in 2018. I have been part of its working group since then and I have learnt so much about coaching and mentoring. It was also fantastic to see participants of the annual congress being so pleased and thankful for this opportunity to get empowered and grow, and I loved collaborating with enthusiastic colleagues from CPDWL and the Management & Marketing Section.

Other most exciting but also challenging activities came along with my function as the section’s secretary during the last two years. Working as the secretary does not only mean to write meeting minutes, but one is part of the section’s officers group. That means, I worked together with our chair/co-chair Ulrike Lang and Alan Brine and information coordinator Edward Lim. All of them incredibly well-organised and outstanding professionals, so that there were of great help for me. Thanks a lot!

But there is much more to mention and to remember from those years:

Almuth (center) facilitating a Knowledge Cafe session at WLIC 2023

I loved contributing to the roundtable discussion at the Knowledge Café that CPDWL joined the Knowledge Management Section in organising. It was also great doing a podcast, helping with our webinars and organising our sessions at the WLICs, contributing to CPDWL’s newsletter and our Global Community Kitchen project, writing blog posts, and organising our “Get to Know You” Meet Ups. In addition, I loved to translate CPDWL’s poster “Guidelines for Continuing Professional Development: Principles and Best Practices” into Norwegian and to help translating coaching material into German.

Almuth standing with Ulrike (right) holding the IFLA Dynamic Unit and Impact Award certificate

The high level of professionality and the numerous inclusive activities and achievements were the foundation for CPDWL winning the IFLA Dynamic Unit and Impact Award in 2018 and again just a week ago in Rotterdam. We were and are all so incredibly proud!

I have always been interested in national and international co-operation, and I am passionate about collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide, and about strengthen libraries to provide essential services.

That means, serving IFLA as the global voice of the library and information profession and CPDWL as one of its outstanding sections has been a privilege for me and a unique personal and professional experience. Those many years have broaden my horison so much, got me new perspectives, inspired and motivated me, expanded my professional and personal networks, and given me many new ideas for my work at home. The work has made me more self-confident and has improved my English, too. My colleagues from my library in Trondheim/Norway have told me many times that they appreciate me taking knowledge and experiences I have gained back to them and our workplace. I have also published more, given more presentations, and last but not least, I have got friends all over the world.

IFLA and CPDWL have definitely changed my life, and the last eight years have been interesting, exciting, motivating, challenging, rewarding, and much more. THANK YOU!!!

What does ChatGPT think about CPDWL and the Standing Committee Members?

You may have read our a past blog post focusing on ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence tools in libraries and in this blog post, we’ll showcase how this tool describes CPDWL and its members using one word! Inspired by IFLA President-elect 2022-2023 Vicki McDonald’s podcast conversation with Dr. GIll Hallam, if we were to use ChatGPT to describe us in one word, what would it be? Dr. Heba Ismail started this idea to promote our characteristics!

We asked ChatGPT, please describe us using one word only.  Here are the results:

IFLA CPDWL Standing Committee: Leadership

Ulrike Lang: Knowledgeable

Almuth Gastinger: Dedicated

Edward Junhao Lim: Enthusiastic

Alan Brine: Experienced

Carmen Ka Man Lei: Innovative

Claudiane Weber: Passionate

Constance Lehro Koui: Motivated

Daria Beliakova: Resourceful

Elena Corradini: Diligent

Gillian Hallam: Enthusiastic

Heba Ismail: Diligent

Ivana Todorovic: Committed

Jarkko Rikkilä: Progressive

Mantra Roy: Adaptable

Mitsuhiro Oda: Scholarly

Nyakundi James Nyambane: Empowering

Rajen Munoo: Dynamic

Raymond Pun: Enthusiastic

Tina Haglund: Inspirational

IFLA: Collaborative

Congratulations to our newly elected CPDWL officers 2023 – 2025

All the best to our newly elected CPDWL officers.

Chair: Man Yi Helen Chan (China)
Secretary: Carmen Lei (China)
Information Coordinator: Joan Weeks (United States of America).

We are looking forward to your fresh ideas for new projects and continuation of existing working groups and projects. For sure you will get all needed support from the SC members and Advisory group members. The community worldwide is waiting for the future work of CPDWL section.

 

*CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION : APPORT ÉCONOMIQUE AU SEIN D’UNE ENTREPRISE* : Constance Gbeuly

Le centre de documentation est défini étant une unité couvrant des domaines précis et fournissant des informations relatives au domaine de connaissance qu’il couvre ( Nozha, 2005, p.12).

Il est également selon wikipédia, un organisme chargé de collecter, d’organiser de traiter et mettre à la disposition des utilisateurs des outils de recherche. le centre de documentation  renforce l’économie d’une entreprise.

Quant à l’information ;  elle constitue la source de développement des entreprises à travers les produits documentaires (revue de presse, dossier de synthèse, résumé..) que ces entreprises élaborent.

AUJOURD’HUI, certaines entreprises ont recours au service d’un documentaliste pour la gestion et l’organisation du flux d’information et de documents.

Quel est la nécessité d’un centre de documentation au sein d’une entreprise?

Quelle est sa participation dans la productivité de l’entreprise.

Comment le centre de documentation participe au développement économique ?

Les entreprises sont généralement subdivisées en deux grandes entités qui permettent d’atteindre les objectifs. Ce sont les opérationnels ou la production et le support ou l’administration.

La fonction administrative comme son nom l’indique est chargée d’apporter un appui administratif aux services opérationnel afin que ceux-ci se concentre sur le cœur de métier.

C’est à partir de ces deux fonctions que le documentaliste doit axer sa stratégie en matière de gestion de l’information.

Le centre de documentation se doit de connaître le besoin informationnel de ces entités. Il doit être la source et la vitrine informationnelle de l’entreprise.

L’information est l’élément intangible sur lequel se base toute structure pour se développer, pour atteindre ses objectifs et surtout pour prendre ses  décisions.

Or l’information est la matière première du documentaliste. Les informations  contenues dans les documents de quelque nature qu’ils soient,  vont être sélectionnées traitées puis diffusées.

Donc le documentaliste doit mettre en place toute une stratégie de recherche, de traitement et diffusion de l’information pour  accompagner ces différentes entités.

Le pouvoir de l’information ne se résume plus au fait de la détenir mais dans son traitement et son utilisation. Car face à une production tout azimut de d’information, le documentaliste joue un rôle capital. Il  trouve l’information utile (pertinente),  qu’il traite, qu’il valide et met à la disposition de la structure.  Il contribue ainsi à la production de connaissances validée et au développement de l’entreprise.

Par son action, il facilite la circulation de l’information, garantie la continuité des activités en cas d’indisponibilité d’un agent, il aide à la prise de décision sur base d’information fiable.

Il devient un élément constitutif de la réalisation des objectifs de l’entreprise. Mais le plus souvent les actions de ne sont pas perceptibles par les décideurs. Pour avoir plus de visibilité, le documentaliste doit par ces activités placé le centre au cœur des préoccupations de la structure. IL doit participer à la vie de l’entreprise.