Building strong partnerships in Library Community through the Jay Jordan IFLA/OCLC Early Career Fellowship Program for Continuing Professional Development

Abstract

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) largely refers to the process of continuing growth of a professional within the profession. In Library and Information Science fields, there are two views on CPD- the narrow and the broad views. The narrow view posts CPD as the imparting/ acquiring of specific skills and knowledge to deal with specific new developments. It trains Information Professionals (IPs) to handle new trends. The broad view considers CPD as a much extensive process, by which IPs continuously enhance their knowledge and skills to maturity as professionals, persons, development in their work, new roles and responsibilities in a given community (Padwad and Krishna, 2011). The Jay Jordan IFLA/OCLC Early Career Fellowship Program provides early career development and continuing education for library and information science professionals from countries with developing economies. Additionally, the Fellowship Program provides advanced continuing education and exposure to a broad range of issues in information technologies, library operations and global cooperative librarianship. Further, it is jointly sponsored by the IFLA and OCLC. According to OCLC and IFLA websites (2016), up to five individuals are selected every year for participation in this intensive four week Fellowship Program based at OCLC’s headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, USA. With the 2016 class, the program has welcomed eighty (80) librarians and information science professionals from 38 countries (OCLC website, 2016)....