Empowering Sustainable Professional Development: IFLA SCITECH’s webinars and their impact on global knowledge sharing

Abstract

In the autumn of 2021, IFLA’s Science and Technology Library Section (SCITECH) members set themselves a goal of making their conference content, usually a program and an offsite training, accessible to all library professionals around the world whether or not they are able to travel to the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) each year. To achieve this goal, SCITECH formed a Professional Development Subcommittee and charged that group with developing webinars delivered in real-time via Zoom and asynchronously via YouTube. To date the Subcommittee has hosted six webinars, and created six videos, reaching more than a thousand people around the world. Additionally, the Subcommittee recently received funding to translate their webinars into other IFLA languages. SCITECH shares this successful model, along with lessons learned, in the hopes that other organizations replicate it and grow the sustainable professional development content available to everyone.