Impact : Journal of the Career Development Group

Editorial: Managing the change challenge

This issue focuses on library and information studies students and the issues that affect them, as well as rounding up the reports from the Career Development Group sessions at this year’s UmbrelLA conference in July.

Change is a theme that runs throughout.

Anne Partridge and Gordon Geekie address the future of the profession that students and graduate trainees are taking the first step into, and the changing information society that it will serve. Most students, however, will have very practical changes on their minds, such as getting that degree and getting that first job. Corrin Weir talks about her ‘big adventure’ as an Information Management student and her trip to the US on a student placement. Getting a kick start into an information career is Katherine Newlands, who tells us how being a graduate trainee worked for her. The articles by Lawraine Wood and Sheena Gamble provide practical advice and tips for the first stage of a professional career : finding the right job in the right place at the right time. And Anthony Brewerton asks us to believe that presentations aren’t really so scary after all!

Something that has not changed over the last few months and years is the concern of librarians and information workers about the low pay and perceived low status of their profession. Impact has been following this concern, and the two letters in this issue highlight some of the views of Career Development Group members. For a reply from the Library Association on these questions, have a look at the Pay and Status online debate via the LA web site http://www.la-hq.org.uk/hot_news/pands.html. You can respond to this debate up to the end of September. In this online debate, Bob McKee refers to a ‘democratic deficit’ with many committee offices filled without election and a low turn-out when there are elections.

Active professional involvement gives your views a voice within the future of your profession. That’s why you mustn’t flick past the Annual Election notice in this issue, or dismiss it out of hand as not for you. If not you, who else? Don’t let the opportunity to make your voice heard pass by. The Election notice also uses a new name for Library Association, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, which I am told is now official. I suspect the acronym ChiLIP is a change all of us will take some time to get used to.