Online training platform for library professionals : ANKOS Academy

Abstract

In Turkey, librarianship education is given at academic institutions offering 4 year undergraduate programs. There are no regular professional training program leading to certification for people working in library and information services. Therefore, workers employed in information services in Turkey are complaining about the lack of such professional training programs. Graduate programs leading to advanced academic degrees such as MA and PhD, are not suited for the needs of professionals in their daily activities as those degrees are used for entering the academic life or for supporting the academic background of professionals towards managerial positions. ANKOS Academy group has started its activities in 2015 in order to offer continuous training programs for information services professionals. The programs aim to enable the professionals to advance their abilities for a better positioning in today’s pierce competition environment at national and international level. ANKOS Academy has the following objectives for professionals: - enhancing application oriented skills, - focusing on professional specialization, transforming competencies into action. ANKOS Academy has developed several training programs to suit the needs of today’s changing librarianship environment. Those trainings are decided to be offered online via virtual classrooms. After examination of available platforms, GoToMeeting has been selected as the medium of delivery due to its advantages in terms of performance. “Selection and Management of Electronic Resources” and “Open Access and DSpace” are the two trainings developed by the ANKOS Academy group with support of the instructors of the courses. Those trainings are offered between 17 November 2015 and 8 December 2015 for the first time. For a selected group of participants, two parallel sessions are conducted by four instructors. The training is offered to 21 library professionals from 21 different academic libraries free of charge. This initial offering aimed to be an experiment in order to observe weak points for possible improvements. A survey has been applied to the participants after the training to evaluate the effectiveness of the training programs. In this paper, the phases of planning, development, and delivery of ANKOS Academy trainings will be examined in detail. Achievements of the trainings will be evaluated including the survey data. The results indicate that participants have benefited extensively from the trainings where the details will be explained in the paper. Based on the success of the initial trainings, ANKOS Academy has conducted a survey to determine the potential participants of future trainings. Future plans of ANKOS Academy will also be included in the paper.