Consultation on Revised National Occupational Standards
Consultation on revised National Occupational Standards
Libraries, Archives, Records Management
Holiday Inn Theatreland, Glasgow
24th May 2007
The consultation in Glasgow led by Peter Ramsden, was the last of a series of six across the country offered by Lifelong Learning UK, the organisation responsible for developing service and procedural standards for different occupational groups. Peter began the day by explaining why new combined standards are required for those working in libraries, archives and records management and how we could help his team to advance.
The first challenge issued to the attendees, who represented all sectors concerned, was to consider the name for the suite of standards under discussion - National Occupational Standards for Information Management with the footer For those working in libraries, archives and records and information management. This generated no comment beyond the acknowledgement that the individual terms mean different things to different groups.
A brief discussion followed on how the standards could be applied by organisations before we tackled the “meat” of the day. The proposals presented to the consultation events comprised seven generic skills (project management, CPD, communication etc) supporting six groups of standards. A leader was selected to represent each group while attendees circulated at 20 minute intervals.
A: Information strategy and planning
Responsibilities and activities associated with the development of information and knowledge strategies and policies that determine the direction and implementation of library, information, records and archive management services.
Proposed Standards:
A1 Understanding the organisation, its operational context and external environment
A2 Developing information, records and archive strategy
A3 Implementing information, records and archive strategy
A4 Assessing delivery performance, value and impact
B: Governance and ethics
The development and delivery of information, records, library and archive policies, programmes and services which meet and respect relevant legislative, regulatory and professional standards and which are provided within the employer’s framework of values, policies and procedures.
B1 Understanding information legislation
B2 Providing advice on information governance and records management issues
B3 Understanding and applying professional codes of conduct, governance principles, and ethics
B4 Understanding and applying your employer’s values, policies and procedures
B5 Ensuring compliance with information legislation
B6 Protecting information resources
C: Creating and acquiring resources
Responsibilities and activities that enable the identification, selection and acquisition of published information; support the creation of information; or acquire internally produced information resources for corporate use.
C1 Creating and publishing information resources (eg guides, web authoring)
C2 Digitisation of information materials
C3 Information supply management
C4 Identifying and selecting internal information resources
C5 Purchasing and procuring published information resources
D: Organising and managing resources
Responsibilities and activities concerned with identifying, developing and maintaining the infrastructure and tools that enable resources to be managed and exploited effectively.
D1 Information and records lifecycle management
D2 Preservation and conservation
D3 Information architecture
D4 Describing information content and structure
D5 Website and portal development
D6 Information quality management
E: Facilitating independent access to resources
Encouraging users and potential users to want to use information resources and ensuring that they are equipped with the skills and knowledge to do so easily and in an informed way.
E1 User engagement and reader development
E2 Maintaining a supportive environment for users
E3 User Advocacy
E4 Information Literacy
E5 User education and skills transfer
E6 Supporting learning
E7 Providing authorised access to records
F: Providing mediated services
Responsibilities and activities associated with the provision of services that deliver information, documents and material to users to meet specific requirements and requests.
F1 Providing loans of information materials
F2 Providing enquiry and research services
F3 Retrieving, analysing, evaluating and interpreting information
F4 Providing current awareness services
F5 Providing support for identified communities
F6 Data mining
F7 Knowledge capture
On the day, we had the chance to contribute to 4 of the groups so you can imagine that the buffet lunch was then very welcome. The group leaders then presented the main conclusions from the discussions, which I’ve summarised.
A: “Strategies” would be more appropriate, “evaluate” should replace “assessing” and the focus should include leadership and the research, evaluate and review process. One question left open was - should this section be considered “generic”?
B: An individual’s responsibility to keep abreast of legislation, the valuing of good practice and the influential role “information” staff play in their organisation should be acknowledged along with awareness of potential conflict between employers’ procedures and professional codes of conduct.
C: The title should encompass “selecting and evaluating”, “corporate” and “internal” are restrictive and a collection policy should be encouraged. Archive staff requested the removal of C2 to maintain topicality.
D: Repackaging should be included, D4 and D5 merged and web-related wording amended to maintain topicality. The needs of stakeholders should be acknowledged.
E: “Reader” should be removed from E1 and “user” from E3 to encourage inclusiveness, E4 should be merged with E5 and E6 and the use of various communication methods should be encouraged according to user preference.
F: There was consensus of opinion that “mediated” should be replaced by “value-added” or a similar more meaningful term and that acknowledgement should be given to recreational reading and research and development activities.
This feedback also mentioned suggestions for the glossary to accompany the standards (record, information resource, stakeholder etc) and reactions to the generic skills - all agreed that “IT user” should be dropped from the list as it is dated and increasingly meaningless.
The last task of the day was to consider, albeit briefly, the roles to be incorporated into the revised standards, which are provisionally strategic, manager, practitioner, operational. Three were accepted but the group preferred “specialist” to “practitioner”. The team were reminded that more than one role applies to most staff some of the time and all apply to those who work alone.
I found the day worthwhile and look forward to seeing the end results which will be published on the UK standards website http://www.ukstandards.org probably next year.
Margo Stewart
Assistant Librarian,
University of Paisley
University Campus Ayr
Beech Grove Ayr KA8 0SR
Tel. 01292 886382
email: margo.stewart@paisley.ac.uk