In 2010, CARL issued a publication Core Competencies for 21st Century CARL Librarians with the aim of providing an overview of the skills and attributes being sought by to help support the goals and strategic initiatives of Canadian research libraries in the 21st Century. This competencies profile also provided a guide that could help librarians working in CARL libraries manage their careers, set meaningful professional development goals and align those goals with the missions of their respective organizations and can acts as a means to identify strengths and gaps in personal competencies.
The findings in this report spurred the development of various professional development opportunities CARL created to support its workforce.
This paper will provide an overview of the activities CARL has undertaken over the last 7 years to provide professional development opportunities such as the Librarians’ Research Institute, management and preservation of government documents, managing institutional repositories, the Canadian Library Assessment Workshop, and data management through the Portage initiative to name a few.
In addition to the processes, it will explore what worked and what did not and provide a forum for participants to discuss how these initiatives could be applied within their own context, whether at a departmental level or as a national or regional initiative. It will also discuss some local and national projects that were launched from the experience gained through these various initiatives.
