Friday, February 15, 2008

Education for Information Professionals



Hi all I have just spent another fascinating week. Sunday through to Tuesday evening last week I was at Charles Sturt University School of Information Studies in beautiful Wagga Wagga, NSW. I was very lucky to be invited to sit on a Think Tank which was looking at the future of information management education at CSU. CSU is one of the few universities which offers undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD opportunities for librarians and information managers. I met up with some old friends from the information industry such as Sally Dallas from Zenith Information Management (providers of information professionals to all types of organisations), Robert McEntyre from Robert McEntyre and Associates (who I have worked with in the past developing strategic plans for library and information services), Kay Harris who for many years has been one of the key people in driving the Online Conference which is held in Sydney every 2 years, and met Mike Eisenberg from University of Washington iSchool.

I also learnt that CSU has 28 PhD candidates who are undertaking research in information management. Very impressive.
The venue was the wonderful Wine and Grape premises at CSU which is set in a vineyard with the most spectacular views.

The end of the 2 days left me very confident that CSU will develop into an iSchool like the model used in the USA.

I could not resist but take photos.



This event was topped off with a visit to Buckman Labs and dinner with Mark Koskienimi the MD for Australia and New Zealand. Buckman is famous for being one of the (if not the) first ever knowledge enabled company. Robert Buckman's book 'Building a knowledge-driven organization' is a classic in the KM field. This photo is of Mark Koskienimi MD of Buckman Labs in front of their amazing premises in Wagga Wagga, NSW.