18 MARCH 2010

The topic for the day was Ethical Organization; Presenters were Prof. Deon Rossouw and Ms. Mbali Cele.

Prof. Deon Rossouw talked about Business ethics, which he defines as ethical values that determine the interaction between a company and its stakeholders.
He also talked about how you manage ethical organizations and implementing ethical standards.

The Presentation by Ms. Mbali Cele from Freedom of Expression Institute was an eye opener for most of the participants.

She talked about Freedom of Expression. She emphasized that the South African Constitution states that every person have the right to freedom of expression which includes freedom of the press and media, freedom to receive and impart information or ideas, freedom of artistic creativity and academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.

The session was a very interesting session; the participants felt that more time was needed to discus since most of them have more questions than answers.
What I have learned from the session is that we as Librarians must not deprive our users information, for example during collection development we must try to purchase Library materials for everyone, we must not be biased, not let our political affiliation, religious affiliation, cultural beliefs and race influence us.

We visited the University of Pretoria after Ms. Cele presentation. The visit to University of Pretoria was so exciting, the Director of Library Services Mr. Robert Moropa, talked to us about their strategic plan and the services they provide.
We were taken on a Library tour, University of Pretoria Library is one of the most highly technological advanced. It is one of the Institution were some of us dream of working at.

Prof. Theo Bothma, head of Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Pretoria, took us to the department and we were so impressed by the technological advanced Lecture hall they got.
He talked about the Degrees they offer and their department, and indicated that most students are no longer registering for Library Science and Information Retrieval, which include cataloging and classification have been phased out because most student don’t want to study it.

As a Librarian of the 21st Century, I can say there is no need for Cataloguing and Classification nowadays, when we purchased books the books are already classified and the old system of cataloging is no longer relevant nowadays.

The Cataloguing Librarians also download the records form OCLC and make some few amendments really there is no need for it.