ABSTRACT
The number of people employed in the library and information services (LIS) sector in Australia was estimated in 2006 at 28,000, of whom 13,000 (46 per cent) were librarians, 5,000 (18 per cent) library technicians, 7,000 (25 per cent) library assistants, and 3,000 (11 per cent) archivists or allied professionals (Hallam 2007a). The number of students and recent graduates in LIS is better quantified. Hallam, using data supplied annually to the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) by Australian LIS schools during the course recognition requirements that ALIA uses as part of its quality assurance of education programmes, indicates that in 2005 there were around 1,550 students enrolled in LIS and Teacher Librarianship graduate programmes and about 950 students enrolled in undergraduate programmes (Hallam 2006, 5). All of these groups comprise a potential market for professional development (PD) courses in LIS – of current clients in the case of employees already working in the industry, and of future clients in the case of currently enrolled students not yet working in the industry. They will be seeking to acquire or update information and communications technology skills, behavioural skills such as communication, teamwork and interpersonal proficiencies (Marion et al. 2005; Kennan, Willard and Wilson 2006), and information organization skills such as cataloguing and metadata (Willard, Wilson and Cole 2003). Increasingly too, management and leadership competencies are being sought by LIS professionals and their organizations. In addition, they may have special learning needs as older students, with almost 70 per cent of all Australian librarians in the 35–54 age group (a significantly higher percentage than the 46 per cent which is the average in this age bracket across all occupations in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2005)).
