ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


164

Continuing Education

Getting Quality for the Price
An important issue in the area of continuing 

education concerns the proliferation of specialized 
short courses, institutes, preconferences, or work­
shops that have been set up just for librarians and 
slanted toward what the organizers perceive to be 
specialized needs of librarians or current topics 
that are likely to attract librarians. I am not sure 
that this is the best way to meet the continuing 
education needs of librarians.

Within reason, most of us are able to obtain re­
leased time for those continuing education activi­
ties that we wish to attend. Others have dealt 
with the problems of abuse of released time or of 
staffing when too many want to be gone at the 
same time. Those issues will not be dealt with 
here. For the individual who wants to attend con­
tinuing education activities, then, the investment 
of time is usually not difficult or burdensome. 
The investm ent of m oney, how ever, both in 
terms of course fees and any travel or lodging ex­
penses involved, can often be quite expensive. 
Some recent examples of course fees from the 
continuing education o p p o rtu n ities listing in 
C&RL News include $455 for three days, $295 for 
seven days, $200 for three days, and $150 for four 
days. Travel, food, and lodging are usually in­
volved, too, especially for those who do not live 
in large metropolitan areas.

With the financial difficulties that most libraries 
have, few administrators have the money to help 
or encourage members of the staff to attend ex­
pensive workshops or courses. And, with most of 
us receiving salaries that are less than generous, 
few librarians are able to finance the registration 
fees as well as the other expenses that would be 
incurred for even one of the more expensive 
workshops per year. The fact that travel and 
other expenses keep increasing means a consider­
able outlay even for a modestly priced workshop 
or course.

For those who have the means to attend spe­
cialized continuing education offerings, there is 
the issue of whether or not they are getting a fair 
return on their investment. Most of us have been 
to enough in-service programs, preconferences, 
workshops, or other programs to know that often 
we do not benefit enough to justify the expense 
of either time or money, let alone both.

While there is little that can be done about the 
high cost and/or expense involved in attending 
many of the continuing education programs, it is 
possible to ensure better quality by setting up an 
accreditation or approval procedure that would in 
some ways judge the proposed program before it 
was listed in ALA publications. Should a proce­

dure be formalized for assigning C EU ’s, an accre­
ditation or approval evaluation could be part of 
the process. Nevertheless, an accreditation pro­
cess would be time-consuming and difficult, even 
if tied into the granting of CEU ’s, and thus is not 
a likely solution to the problem.

A very viable alternative to the extraordinary 
expense or all too often poor quality of many con­
tinuing education program s is to take formal 
academic courses offered by colleges or universi­
ties. C ertain ly  m any of us have b een  dis­
appointed by college courses we have taken. On 
the whole, however, I have found that I have 
been much more successful in selecting academic 
courses that have met my needs and interest and 
have been worth the time and expense than I 
have been in finding good continuing education 
programs.

All too often, it seems that some of the con­
tinuing education programs are too superficial or 
too brief to really do much good. As an example, 
some of the recent rash of statistics for librarians 
courses have been so w atered down and have 
covered so few topics that little is gained from 
them. Anyone who wanted to learn some statis­
tics w ould be much b e tte r  off to take an 
academic course in statistics. While the invest­
ment of time and the work one would have to do 
is much greater, the knowledge gained would be 
much more useful.

The quality of continuing education programs 
needs to be improved so that the value derived 
from them is equal to the expense involved. Until 
that happens, I would strongly advise against 
attending many of them .—Stella Bentley.

Editors Note: Stella Bentley is reference librar­
ian, E ducation L ib ra ry , Indiana U n iversity, 
Bloomington. ■■

Western European Specialists

The Western European Specialists Section 
(WESS) will vote on the proposed bylaws of 
the section during the WESS business meet­
ing Tuesday, July 1, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 
at the New York C onference. The section 
published the proposed bylaws in the Novem­
ber issue of C&RL News (p.322-23). WESS 
members are encouraged to review the pro­
posed guidelines before the meeting.