| Editorial:
On the road to nowhere
The fuel crisis is over—for now. It was the pace at
which the whole demonstration was conducted which took everybody by surprise and communication
technologies were at the centre of it all. The mobile phone and e-mail were cited by commentators as the tools
which enabled co-ordinated and rapid responses from protesters. The protesters themselves weren’t
harnessed into action by a monolithic union. They were mostly self-employed individuals.
The protest encapsulated how the world of work is
changing. There are many more self-employed people now, and even if you don’t fall into this category there is
an increasing emphasis on managing your own career in terms of a portfolio of skills which can be offered to a
number of employers over the course of a working life, as Sheila Pantry points out in this issue.
So there’s the emphasis on the individual, on the
responsibility that a person has for their career, their skills-set and the choices they make. But at the same
time, I found the protest also highlighted how interdependent we all are and if one link is cut then it can
ripple through and affect, not just the obvious interdependencies, but highlight the fragility of what is
termed ‘everyday life’.
In our own profession the interdependence of
activities and sectors has been recognised and is being driven by government policy.
Resource: the Council for
Museums, Archives and Libraries has been running for some months and looks to shape new ways of cross-sector
working and delivery of services. At the same time, organisations need to prove their worth, to market
themselves, compete for resources and bid for funding.
I used to think that Britain was on the ‘road to
nowhere’—that the emphasis on the individual had gone too far and this had crossed over into government policy
shaped on imposing competition, particularly in the public sector, and on creating a ‘bidding culture’. I now think
there is space for the individual and society, for competition and co-operation—each needs to be recognised
with equal weight. Libraries can work together and join with other sectors for mutual benefit of themselves and
their communities. They can also compete with each other for resources and strive to be the best.
I think this is the territory that the Career
Development Group occupies. It recognises the needs of the individual to develop
their career, to take
ownership of their development in terms of skills and personal
direction, whilst reta ining a strong sense of the society in
which individual members operate and the real
difference they can make to that
society by being informed
and active citizens and striving to
achieve the goals they’ve set.
Andrew Hampson
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