Mirosława Majewska Quality assurance issues in pre-university library and information science education
	Educational Centre for Library, Information, and Documentation Professionals Warsaw
	This article was translated thanks to the grant received from the Open Society Institute

The contemporary society is going through three layers of transformation: the development of information society, the growth of civilisation, and the globalisation of economy. Changes in the employment structure and in the education system come as a consequence of the above processes. According to the Delors Report, education should make people learn to know, learn to do, and learn to be.^[1] This view of education throughout life means that it should meet the requirements of adult people who strive to find their place in a new social and economic reality.

There is a growing necessity for improving education, knowledge and skills, and assuring the quality of education to meet the needs of the integration process with the European Union and the requirements of the labour market. Competitiveness, productivity, and effectiveness depend on the level of human knowledge, on the quality of work, on skillfulness and innovativeness of people. The quality of professional competence depends on the relation between the educational process and the labour market. Education and work are mutually integrated. The sense, the value, and the quality of education are best verified at work. How to educate better, more comprehensively and effectively is the question of vital importance.

The Deming philosophy of quality expressed in his saying "quality is that which satisfies, and even delights, the customer" included in the theory and practice of Total Quality Management ^[2] and used in industry and services worldwide, penetrates more and more the sphere of school education. An effective and intensive management system used to increase performance is a key to success. It may be employed not only in profit organisations, but also in the institutions that attach importance to efficient work, including effective school education.

From the point of view of pedagogy, the goal of quality education is to maintain adequate educational standards, to improve them, and to provide all consumers of educational products (educational authorities, schools, students, course participants, employers) with reliable information on graduates' qualifications.^[3] This is understood to be the conformity of educational effects with the goals of education that are set by educators and educational institutions. The notion of quality in education is very ambiguous and subjective, considering the specific character of school as an organisation, the quality of accomplished goals, difficulties in measuring the effects, and the diversity of customers and participants.

Obviously, managing quality in schools cannot be equalled to managing the company. For quality issues to arise, there must be a change of opinions and attitudes. All the educators should be willing to cooperate.

Deming's vision of how a company should function provided a basis for designing different quality systems, the most successful of which was the system based on ISO 9000 standards. Institutions are obliged to comply with the demands and standards that have been placed upon them.

A school that plans to build a quality management system has to employ specific management tools, such as:

• quality planning - drawing up the quality policy which is interrelated with the mission and vision of a given school, as well as the strategic action programme, including the educational standards that determine the level of performance;
• steering the quality - current modification of the didactic process making use of the results of monitoring and quality measurement to improve effectiveness;
• improving quality - it needs all the actions undertaken by the school.^[4]

Considering the dynamic character of the quality of school activities which are understood to be the planned process of continuous improvement in all its areas, it is important that the progress is monitored: how it was in the past, what has been achieved, and how it is now.

Educational Centre for Library, Information, and Documentation Professionals (CEBID) which provides librarians with middle level education and professional improvement training in its 14 affiliates situated in provincial and municipal public libraries throughout the country, carries out an evaluation procedure of the efficiency of the educational system and determines the necessary curricula and organisational changes. The indicators for quality of performance measurement defined by CEBID are:

• defining the place of the educational institution in the library educational system (the school's vision and mission);
• adjusting educational programmes to the phenomena taking place worldwide and locally, i.e. at the library (building educational programmes);
• modernising the programme curricula to achieve the goal of programme coherence on the stage from post-secondary to higher education (setting the standards and educational requirements);
• working out the system of library education which provides for educational coherence at the intermediate, higher vocational (Bachelor's degree), and Master's level (building educational coherence);
• assessing the school's performance by graduates and the teaching staff (measuring the internal quality of education);
• probing the needs and requirements of school's customers, libraries, research institutes, NGO's (measuring the external quality of school performance).

School vision and mission

CEBID has been continuously building the school quality assurance strategy since nearly 50 years. How intermediate level education is needed is best testified by the number of graduates, about 12.000, who found employment in libraries, information centres, and other institutions concerned with books. The College of Library Science provides training for librarians who will fill various posts in different types of libraries.

Due to the variety of goals accomplished by libraries, the library collections having distinct character, the growing need for information and library services, and the rapid growth of information technology, the librarian has to fulfil new tasks and qualification requirements. In order to meet the requirements of today's world and the world standards in the field of library and information science, the Centre has continuously modified its education programmes.

With entering the 21st century, the Centre has developed new organisational and programme strategies. The school vision and mission have been redefined. Vision denotes the "point" we would like to reach, whereas mission sets the direction in which to go.

Some new courses preparing for book and document related professions were added to the educational offer of the Centre, and that is why it has changed its name from the Centre for the Continuing Education of Librarians to the Educational Centre for Library, Information and Documentation Professionals. The Statute of CEBID reads: "the Centre provides education at the intermediate vocational level, as well as further education for adults at on-site and off-site courses training for the following professions: librarian, bookseller, information worker, archivist, documentalist."^[5] The change of the name and the statute of CEBID has been justified by the fact that the changing function of the library caused by introducing modern information services has to result in the modification, and even verification, of the educational and professional improvement programmes for library staff that have been carried out so far. Narrowing the scope of educational programmes to a limited set of library science problems does not meet the needs of the 21st century library. The notion of a library is twofold. It is being perceived now as a traditional institution, and as an electronic information resource accessible through the internet at every time and place. In western European countries, library also serves as an archive specialising in the documentation of social, economic, and cultural life of the community.

Therefore, the inclusion of archival issues in the programme curricula of post-secondary vocational college that works within the framework of CEBID was made for substantial and organisational reasons. Since the state archives have been placed under the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Centre could offer new courses on information management and on issues connected with the circulation of the state administration and local government documents.

The Centre, being involved in continuing educational activities aimed at professional training of staff for the nationwide network of libraries and documentation centres, goes a long way towards protecting the national heritage, i.e. libraries and their collections, and thus it contributes towards their promotion and development.

Establishing programmes and educational standards

CEBID, providing continuing education for librarians, enjoys autonomy in drawing up , restructuring, and updating the programme curricula, whereas the institutions that form the network should fully adjust their educational programmes to the existing conditions and possibilities of training for librarians and information workers in local environments.

The programme documentation that is in force since 1993^[6] is constantly being updated and adjusted to the requirements and needs of the librarian community. The updated programme documentation for librarians published in 1999^[7] responds to the structural and substantive changes in libraries and information centres, to the educational reform, the book market challenges, and the European standards. The new shaping of the programme curricula allowed for educational coherence at higher level, and the comprehensive solutions that had been achieved gained recognition among the colleagues from the TEMPUS programme from Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands. The module education process consisting in adjusting course content to professional skills proved to be the best solution. Completing a group of modules enables one to acquire competence as a librarian. The programme documentation includes educational standards for librarians as well as standards describing the needed psychophysical features, skills, and knowledge. It also sets the appropriate requirements. In the course of theoretical and practical professional training a graduate of a two-year college of library science should have the ability to:

• interpret contemporary phenomena and understand the social communication processes of different communities and cultures;
• cooperate with librarians and scientific information centres within the framework of library and information networks and systems, also with local communities;
• interpret the issue of book and other media circulation in socio-economic categories;
• manage collections/resources both in a traditional way and with the use of cutting-edge telecommunication and information technology;
• analyse the reader behaviour and needs, give advice, influence attitudes and esthetical values;
• organise work and promotional activities, stimulate to activity, etc.

The principle "to know, understand, think and process more"^[8] presents new possibilities to librarian training.

The long period of carrying out the educational programmes in the College of Library Science allows for their sensible verification and adoption of the suggestions of library community concerning new courses and their content. Communication techniques and foreign language courses were offered during the 2001-2002 school year. It was in response to the new requirements the library staff had to meet, such as competence, communicative, managerial and organisational skills, and fluency in speaking foreign languages.

On completion of the course on communication techniques, students will have increased competence in a range of skills such as organising and delivering oral messages, selecting communication messages, building up relations between people, making and maintaining interpersonal contacts. The programme also aims to foster appropriate communication behaviour when communicating with users. The course is being taught during the third semester (10 hours). Substantive themes of the course on communication techniques are strongly correlated with those being taught during 'pedagogy with some elements of psychology' classes. The plans are that communication techniques classes are taught in a practical way, giving students a chance to present different techniques of interpersonal communication.

Adding foreign languages courses to the programme of the College of Library Science contributes significantly towards improving the competence of future librarians. The German or English courses are being run for 60 hours during the first and second semester. Thanks to the modernisation of the curriculum introduced in 2001, library students will gain competence in fostering cultural activities, managing information, and in foreign language proficiency, especially professional terminology.

The national education development strategy for the years 2001-2005 ^[9] sets the goals that concern the improvement of the level and the quality of education, such as maintaining internal cohesion and coherence of lifelong education system. Schools for librarians and information workers are a part of the nationwide educational system. The bachelor's and master's two-level educational system that has been introduced into university education called for an intensive work on the coherence between the two educational levels.

As the result of the TEMPUS JEP 12165-97 research project^[10] carried out by Warsaw University's Institute of Information Science and Bibliological Studies (IINiSB UW) in cooperation with the Educational Centre for Library, Information, and Documentation Professionals, the bachelor's (vocational) and master's degree courses were introduced, which allowed for maintaining coherence with the educational system for librarians at the secondary and post-secondary level. How the transfer of student knowledge from one school to the other, i.e. from a library school working within the framework of CEBID to IINiSB UW should look like is presented in the programme documentation drawn up by the Centre, as well as the comparability procedure of the undergraduate programme.^[11] Starting from the year 1998, the best graduates of the Centre may apply to Warsaw University's Institute of Information Science and Bibliological Studies to enroll in an intensive undergraduate course. Until June 2001, 200 students graduated from our college with a bachelor's degree.

In October this year, a group of 60 graduates of our college who had previously finished a library school operating within the framework of the Centre in the years 1986-1993 began their further studies. Those who plan to take up higher studies have to take a one-year library course for the graduates of the college that prepares for intensive undergraduate studies. This course has been successfully conducted by the Centre for over two years. On completion of this follow-up stage of their studies, the librarians have an improved knowledge of and growing skills in reference services, the organisation of work, managing the collections, and also in the field of modern technology, social communication, marketing, and public relations. They can also better identify and meet diverse needs of the local community.

A new system of librarian and information worker education is based on programme coherence on the local scale, and it operates on the basis of an agreement between Warsaw University and CEBID. The scale of coherence is being enlarged now, and it includes other higher level educational centres for librarians. Thanks to the high quality education provided by the Centre, it is possible to cooperate with the University in Białystok and the Jagiellonian University in matters connected with maintaining coherence of the whole system of librarian education.

Now the work is being carried out on the coherence mechanism of librarian education at the intermediate and higher level. However, there is an opinion that making it possible for students to take up higher studies in a shorter time should also entail some more radical system and structural changes, so that the graduates of library schools, besides acquiring practical skills and being able to work in libraries on their own, should also gain theoretical knowledge at the university in less than five years.

Measuring the quality of school work

The educational system, that is, educational institutions that act on the basis of legal acts recognise obligations and rights, decide on the methods, forms of education, professional characteristics, teaching plans, education programmes, as well as the requirements necessary to obtain appropriate qualifications. Thus, the legal standards may be used to build quality assurance system of educational and professional training institutions. CEBID, acting on the basis of the act on the system of education, and being the centre for continuing education which is subordinate to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, draws up a strategy for the quality of school work, with focus on pedagogical supervision. The Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 13th August 1999 concerning pedagogical supervision (Dz.U. nr 67 poz. 759) provides that measuring the quality of school performance should be the main form of both internal and external supervision.

Though this regulation does not use the term 'pattern' or 'standard' that given values and processes can be applied to, still it uses the term 'requirements concerning the quality of school work". The requirements that result from the school tasks should serve as benchmarks when measuring the quality of school work. They should concern:

• educational programmes;
• teachers' qualifications and skills; the teaching conditions, the kind of technical and educational equipment, as well as the organisation of the teaching process;
• student educational requirements.

The results of measurement and the observations made during systematic monitoring should be made use of when improving the quality of school work, and, as it is emphasised in the regulation, when working out the school development programme.

According to the Regulation of the Minister of National Education there is a considerable convergence with the requirements of the planned ISO 9001-2000 standard concerning the measuring of the quality of school work.^[12]

The school requirements according to the Regulation of the Minister of National Education:	The school requirements according to the ISO 9001:2000 project:
to measure the effectiveness of school performance;   to examine selected aspects of school work and to monitor the achieved quality of work;   to assess students' educational performance.	to examine the effectiveness of the quality management system;   to measure quality and monitor the school work;   to measure the quality of educational performance.

The goal of pedagogical supervision done by CEBID's managers as well as branch managers responsible for the realisation of the educational programme, is to gain experience, and thus contribute to the development of the school.

The results of supervisory actions (conclusions drawn from class inspections, observations, and from the analyses of teaching performance) as well as the resulting decisions (changes in curriculum content and in the literature, the use of teaching aids, training courses for teachers, the purchase of equipment) provide the basis for feedback which may help improve the quality of teaching.

CEBID, an institution providing education for adults, has to present a good quality educational offer to its adult customers who are more aware of their expectations and can avail themselves of the opportunity to receive professional training, to gain expert skills and a knowledge useful to future librarians.

Monitoring of the school's work, makes it possible to check whether students are satisfied with the educational offer. The analyses that have been carried out so far show that students of library schools and colleges who work in various types of libraries aim at acquiring broad professional training that would enable them to perform all the tasks of a librarian and information professional.

A library school student expresses her opinion about the skills acquired at school: "In the College of Library Science I received professional training. Processing of books, the inventories, catalogues, accession of periodicals, the publishing market, one-on-one research help for users did not pose any problem for me. I was well prepared for my job as a librarian. I was not nervous about not being able to cope with my future work.^[13]

The teaching staff coming from university institutes of library science, research and public libraries (about 170 persons) are an important link in the system of extramural university library education within the network of CEBID. The teachers have a vast theoretical and practical expertise. Thanks to the cooperation with IINiSB UW and with foreign partners from Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom within the framework of the TEMPUS project it was possible to share educational experience by attending classes and getting professional training abroad.

Teachers, after getting an insight into modern teaching technology, changed their view of the process of vocational training, as well as the organisational and technical infrastructure. In order to modernise the educational infrastructure, cutting edge IT hardware with permanent connection to the internet was installed in the College of Library Science, as well as the technical equipment, such as video cameras, an episcope. There are plans for purchasing a multimedia projector which would make it possible to use presentation in order to exchange information and experiences, and also to develop skills, and thus improve the effectiveness of teaching. Thanks to the visual character of the presentation method, it prompts and motivates the audience to careful reception. This multiple form of transmission not only makes it possible to absorb more knowledge and information, but it also arouses the audience's interest, their perceptive activity, and makes them analyse facts and draw conclusions on their own.

When measuring the effectiveness of teaching methods, a proposal is always put forward that more classes should be added to the curricula, according to the principle of 'live library', which means teaching through educational school outings and participating in different forms of cultural life. Such educational classes enable getting to know the library and other related institutions, to learn about their organisation and functionality.

Introducing alternative forms and programmes of lifelong education into the library educational system contributes to its flexibility and accessibility. One of the forms of education that may be conducive to the development and modernisation of librarian training is distance education. More and more importance is being attached to the concept of the adult student working on his own, receiving guidance from his tutor, and making use of mass media, telecommunication techniques, information technology advances (the internet, email), educational films, and other media.

The advantages of the internet as a perfect interactive medium are obvious. It helps to overcome the problem of distance, a very important factor in the educational process. Providing correspondence and extramural services by CEBID - an offer available at one's leisure in different towns, with the use of media, information and communication technologies, as well as providing the possibility of one-on-one contacts with tutors - proved to be effective and economical.

Although distance learning education is still costly (material and educational base, teacher training), in the near future the scope of this form of education will systematically widen. CEBID has already tried to organise distance learning courses. In its Łódź branch, a demonstration computer lesson was shown. It was a videoconference lesson presented during the INFOBIT 2000 Computer Fair.

The quality of education is also dependent on the provision of educational and teaching materials, such as: course books, lecture notes, conference papers, handbooks, and even demonstration video lessons. There are over 240 publications on offer from CEBID. Some of the latest ones are: Biblioteki Publiczne przed wejsciem Polski do Unii Europejskiej (Public Libraries before Poland's accession to the European Union), Edukacja bibliotekarzy 2001 (The librarians' education 2001), Dzieci a mass media (Children and mass media), Multimedia - Biblioteka - Edukacja (Multimedia - Library - Education), Biblioteki jutra (Libraries of tomorrow). CEBID's publications that are aimed at the whole library community are being distributed by the Centre and advertised in professional press, during nationwide conferences and educational fairs.

Assuring the quality of school work does not only concern the school organisation and management, but also the cooperation of school with its community and a two-way flow of information. The institutions and organisations that CEBID cooperates with are:

• the government institutions, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of National Education, that exercise supervision, give opinions, and decide on the organisation of different forms of librarian training;
• libraries that affect the functioning of CEBID both organisationally and professionally; the Centre adjusts its programmes and forms of teaching to the needs of various libraries and promotes their research results and practical experiences; CEBID is also organisationally affiliated with the network of public libraries, since its branches are located in provincial public libraries;
• library schools providing post-secondary and higher education; the cooperation is built up on professional contacts with research workers in order to share experiences, work together on new programmes and on educational coherence;
• social, self-government, and other institutions; the cooperation with the Polish Librarians' Association enables to put into practice the experiences of both institutions in the field of librarian professional training; this cooperation is focused on the needs of both the above mentioned institutions and that of the Centre.

Concluding remarks

New social, economic and technical milieu in which libraries function brings about the changes in the range and quality of information and library services they offer.^[14] This also means a greater demand for qualified librarians.

Professional competency of librarians is dependent on the quality of education. Library schools that aim at getting familiar with the philosophy of TQM and implementing the ISO standards have to involve in teaching all those who are active in the education process, i.e. the managerial staff, the students, and all the institutions engaged in education.

In view of its nationwide range of activities, CEBID is obliged to assure the quality of education through:

• probing and identifying the educational and professional development needs of persons involved in circulation of books and documents;
• devising and drawing up timetables and curricula;
• monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of vocational training programmes;
• documenting and disseminating the experiences of national and foreign institutions.

This process is aimed at meeting the needs and expectations of customers (students, teachers, educationalists, and the staff of cooperating institutions). The task is not only to equip the school graduates with the knowledge and skills enabling them to work in libraries, information centres, and other similar institutions, but also to help them develop the habits of continuing self-education and professional development.

In pursuit of its mission, CEBID helps students keep abreast of current developments in science and technology, of organisational and management developments, also in marketing and social communication, so that the students can create and promote the library in its social environment. The requirement of greater accountability for the quality of education specified by education reformers and by the community, stimulates CEBID to permanently analyse the goals and the curricula, to develop teaching practices, continuously monitor the effectiveness of teaching, and to build a perfect, flexible, open system of pre-university librarian training.

In our endeavour to achieve quality, a saying from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" may be helpful - "if you want to stay in the same place, you have to run very fast. And if you want to get somewhere else, you have to run twice as fast". If one wants to stay in the same place, it is necessary to implement a modern quality management system. And if one wants to get somewhere else, to be ahead, it is necessary to continuously improve quality; and for CEBID, it is like getting second gear.

Footnotes

[1] J. Delores: Edukacja. Jest w niej ukryty skarb. Warsaw 1998. .

[2] See.: R. Karaszewski: TQM: teoria i praktyka. Toruń, 2001.

[3] Poprawa jakości pracy szkoły. ed. by W. Kruszewski and K. Symela. Warsaw 1999.

[4] J. Dzierzgowska, S. Wlazło, Mierzenie jakości pracy szkoły. Materiały szkoleniowe TERM. see also: Systemy jakości i standardy kształcenia zawodowego ed. by H. Bednarczyk. Radom, Warsaw 1997.

[5] Regulation of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of 22 November 2000 (Dz. Urz. MKiDN nr 14) changed the Center's name to Centrum Edukacji Bibliotekarskiej, Informacyjnej i Dokumentacyjnej im. Heleny Radlińskiej, and a new CEBID's Statute was made.

[6] Dokumentacja programowa. Pomaturalne Studium Bibliotekarskie. Zawód bibliotekarz.(2501). CUKB, Warsaw 1993.

[7] Dokumentacja programowa. Pomaturalne Studium Bibliotekarskie. Zawód: Bibliotekarz. 414(01) Warsaw CUKB, 1999 was made in cooperation with IINiSB UW within the framework of the TEPMPUS JEP 12165-97 programme.

[8] See.: M. Majewska, Nowe wyzwania i możliwości bibliotekarskiej edukacji ustawicznej. [in:] Biblioteki publiczne przed wejściem Polski do Unii Europejskiej. Warsaw 1999.

[9] See: Strategia rozwoju edukacji narodowej na lata 2001-2005. Projekt. Warsaw czerwiec 2001 (typescript).

[10] Cf. The TEMPUS-PHARE JEP 12165-97 programme concerns the project: "Restrukturyzacja programu nauczania Instytutu Bibliotekoznawstwa i Informacji Naukowej Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego - stworzenie programu studiów licencjackich i magisterskich w zakresie nauki o książce i bibliotece.; date of realisation 1997-2000. Warsaw 1997, (typescript).

[11] See. Edukacja bibliotekarzy 2001. Warszawa, 1998; see also: B. Sosińska-Kalata, Zagadnienia informacji w programach szkół bibliotekarskich i dwustopniowych studiów w IINSB UW. [in:] Informacja naukowa a dydaktyka. Warsaw 1999, p. 145-158.

[12] See.: M. Koszmider, Budowanie systemu doskonalenia jakości pracy w szkole. [in:] Jakość kształcenia w perspektywie wejścia Polski do Unii Europejskiej. Płock, 2000, p. 200-208.

[13] E. Zysek, O potrzebie kształcenia na poziomie średnim. [electronic document], URL: http://www.oss.wroc.pl/biuletyn/ebib05/e-zysek.html.

[14] More on this subject see: E. Głowacka, Studium zastosowania kompleksowego zarządzania jakością (TQM) w bibliotekoznawstwie i informacji naukowej. Toruń, 2000.

Translated by Michalina Byra