Reinventing Libraries

Reinventing Libraries: Sharing by 3 Speakers from the Library Services Network (for Europe)

Part 1 : Partnership as an Aggregator in Reinventing the Libraries
by Heddi Mortesen, Director, Danish Bibliographic Centre

Part 2 : Five Steps to Better Services for Better Libraries
by Dr Jorg Meyer, CEO, ekz.bibliotheksservice GmbH Reutlingen

Part 3 : Trends and Development in the Netherlands Library
by Henk Das, CEO, NBD/Biblion

Date : 17 March 2009 (Tuesday)

Time : 4.00pm - 6.00pm

Venue : National Library Building Multi Purpose Room, Basement 1, Central Public Library, National Library Building


It is interesting to hear from Librarians and Library Vendors sharing their experience in running library services or providing library services in three European countries (Danmark, Germany and The Netherlands) with a different scales.

With more and more basic library tasks/functions being run or provided by external commercial bodies, librarians in the library will be the buyer or purchaser of the external services. I think librarians now need a different set of skills as they are not required to do the jobs, but need to know how to assess and evaluate jobs done by commercial bodies or vendors.

The professional librarians who are managing the library now will need more management skills in addition to professional knowledge.

The indepth understanding of basic library operations (Acquisition, Cataloguing, Reference Service and Indexing etc) may not the core of Librarianship. Librarians nowadays do not need to know how to catalogue a book themselves, nevertheless, they need to know how to evaluate the digital catalogue and MARC record created by the vendors.

Would that means that professional librarian will be less in demands?

The positive answer is if you have professional qualification, you need not work in Library, you can work for Library Vendors/Suppliers. I see the trend in Singapore library world as some of the librarians are already moving toward that ends.

So for those who like to catalogue books, for example, you need not be a cataloguer in the library, you can be a cataloguer in a Library supply company!


LAS Professional Development Scheme points: 46

(Only applicable to librarians who are participants of the scheme)