26 MARCH 2010

On this day Mrs. Kay Raseroka, the Director of Library Services of the University of Botswana spoke about the challenges and opportunities for African Librarianship.

She mentioned that the challenges we faced as African Librarians are promoting the use of information, promoting the use of Information Communication Technologies, having to deal with users who have the problem of language when they have to communicate or seek information, having the problem of not knowing if the information acquired is going to be used effectively.

She mentioned the opportunities as diversification of the profession, networking and partnerships with various professions, lifelong learning of Librarians and global Librarianship.

Prof. Christine Stilwell from University of Kwa Zulu Natal talked about the way forward for Libraries in South Africa. She used the 2007 Delphi study to discuss the most pressing issues facing Librarianship.

The Participants of the Delphi Study were required to rank the top nine Library issues, the issues were Funding from government. Public access computing, Information Literacy, Social exclusion and social capital issues, Information and Knowledge commons, Role of organized profession, Education and training, ICT infrastructure and More assertive Library

The 2007 Delphi Participants ranked Information Literacy as their number priority while the 2009 ranked it is number six. Government funding was ranked number two by the 2007 Delphi Participants while the 2009 Carnegie Leadership Participants ranked it as number 0ne.

We were also asked to ranked the top seven Top issues form the 2009 Carnegie Leadership Academy Participants, in our group Modles of Public Access was ranked number one, Education and Training number two and ICT and Connectivity number three,

All the groups agreed that ICT and connectivity plays a vital role in the development of our Libraries.

This was the last day of the 2010 academy. We concluded with the presentations from different groups. Prof. Bothma and Prof. Stilwell encourage us to improve our presentation skills, we were told not to look at the Power Point Presentation when presenting, but to face the audience, and Power Point slides not too be loaded with information but only six to nine bullet points.