Greetings colleagues!
As chair of the Committee on Education, I am bringing to your attention the completed draft of revised
ALA Core Competences (ALACCs). This is the first update to the ALACCs since 2009.
There is no formal action Council needs to take at this time, rather, COE is looking for member input on this draft. We are gathering member feedback on the draft and will come back at LibLearnX or or Annual 2022 to request a Council vote to adopt the final version of the revised ALACCs. The first opportunity to provide feedback is
Sunday, June 27th, 1:30-2:30pm, but we have multiple other
feedback webinars planned, and we have a
feedback survey where we encourage you to provide your thoughts.
About the Draft 2021 ALA Core Competences
The ALA Core Competences (ALACCs) reflect basic knowledge gained through LIS education, job on-boarding, and ongoing professional development early in a library career. It is essential that library professionals working throughout their careers in school, academic, public, special, and governmental libraries be life-long learners to acquire specialized and advanced knowledge beyond those specified in this Core Competences document.
This is the first iteration of the ALACCs which intentionally incorporates the concepts of social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion both throughout the competences and in a separate competence. Social justice in the library context includes the knowledge and skills necessary for library professionals to create and support library collections, services, personnel, facilities, and programs that foster equitable access to and participation of all people to use the library and its resources. Embedding social justice throughout the competences demonstrates that it is not a siloed activity, while having a separate social justice competence also recognizes that it contains unique attributes over and above the other competences. We refer to ALA's already developed definitions for equity, diversity and inclusion.
The ALACCs are specific to individual library professionals, whereas the ALA Accreditation Standards specifically address LIS schools and programs that confer masters degrees. Other standards that are related to the ALACCs and ALA Accreditation Standards include IFLA Guidelines,AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians, and other organizations' knowledge and competency standards.
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts about this new draft!
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[Karen] [Downing]
[Education Librarian]
[University of Michigan]
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