Where do we find professional development for librarians?

At my school, academic staff are expected to complete a minimum number of hours of professional development every year. (At the time of writing , I can't for the life of me remember how many hours this is! I think it's 20 hours a year, but I will need to confirm this...) There are many opportunities offered to staff, from external IEB workshops and user groups, to internally-arranged sessions.

Thursday afternoons are set aside for professional development for our staff, and a range of topics are offered through-out the year. So far in 2016, I have attended three sessions: a psychologist's talk on stress, a workshop on interpersonal management skills, and a study-skills workshop with Elevate.

(We also have fun sessions, such as cooking classes run by our head of Consumer Studies - always popular-  and last year's well-attended flower-arranging course!)

There are also four sessions held per term during the academic day, called Connect Groups, which are compulsory, and during which time a variety of practical workshops are held. For example, this term, the theme is setting out test and exam papers and worksheets - we're learning how to use tabs and insert pictures and use hyperlinks, among other things.

Our school really does make it easy for us to fulfill our professional development hours. And we can choose to do development that is not associated with any of this, as long as it is relevant to our position. But where do I find professional development specifically for librarians? What is out there for us? What do we need? And is development in these areas being offered to us?

There are, of course, our wonderful library conferences, but in between these, I'd like to have access to other forms of development. So at the end of last year, I put together a list of skills I wanted to develop this year and investigated how I was going to develop these - the list started out rather long, but I pared it down to be a little more realistic!

In preparing my plan, I came to realise that professional development for librarians is not necessarily handed to us on a silver platter - we need to seek it out. And furthermore, we need our schools to recognise this and any learning that we do in this regard, even if there isn't a formal session being offered or a formal qualification.

What are your plans for professional development in 2016?

Does your school recognise any informal learning that you do?