Day 4

15th March 2010 (Monday)

In today’s session, presenter was Mr J Tsebe (NLSA). He spoke about all the progress that is taking place in the Library & Information Sector and also the role of the National Library in this scenario. After John Tsebe’s presentation, Rachel More took the stage and she talked about the role of LIASA in the library and information sector and the successes that the organization has achieved under her chairmanship. She also explained that LIASA has send a motion to parliament so that LIASA should be recognized as a statutory body so that all the staff who are working in the library sector should be encouraged to register with and in future one of the criteria’s to be appointed in the library & information sector, LIASA membership will be a requirement. After tea-break, Prof Achie Dick gave us wonderful lecture on the role of the librarians and the library in terms of social responsibility. This has clearly opened my eyes in the way libraries are not given proper respect by the communities they served as recently during the unrest in relation to service delivery, libraries become victims as some of them were burned down. As libraries are part of us as librarians, this clearly shows lack of knowledge from our communities to see libraries as their friends and strong tool they can use to get knowledge from. After the lecture by Prof Dick, Prof Theo Bothma gave a presentation on the next generation librarians. We were given tasks to complete in our groups to look at how libraries currently look, how we would like us to look, how do we think we will look in future.

What have I learned for the day

During this session, I have learned the National Council of Library and Information Services and its role in providing guidelines to the sector,different legislations and the transformation charter. The presentation provided by Prof Dick, I learned that as librarians, we need to be vocal in protecting the library sector and this can only happen if we took our social responsibility task and provide our communities with skills to empower them about the role and function of libraries in communities and how important is a library in the community as this is a tool they can use to equip themselves with knowledge they can acquire by using the library to read and conduct research. Prof Bothma’s presentation gave us knowledge that as librarians, we need to conduct an introspection of our profession and always be proactive about events that are taking place in the information sector. We don’t need to be intimidated by technology and our user’s needs but we need to be proactive and always be a step ahead and always operate in the future. With Pamoja, what I learned is that this is an experiential activity that reaches across the borders of language, culture and class to connect individuals, and in the case of this institute, to connect librarians from different sectors (Public & Academic)