Business and IL

As one of the final reports from the Lifelong Learning conference I’ll mention a talk by Lisa Pedey, who works at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne. They run a service called Express Information, which is a fee-based information service for business. As part of their efforts to meet the needs of business, they have developed a training programme. There are training sessions on topics such as Australian company information, and they also do one-to-one training “bite sized” over the phone. The training sessions are priced, and the one-to-one sessions would have the business person using a hands free phone and going through some of the same material as would be used in face-to-face training. Librarians have also attended some of the training sessions.

As well as raising awareness of sources and improvomg skills, the sessions also have the benefit of making people more aware of the resoures held by the State Library. In due course her ppt will become available on the conference website. Lisa’s paper is:
Peddey, L. (2006) “Evaluation of the lifelong learning business and statistics program at the State Library of Victoria.” In: Orr, D. et al (eds) Lifelong learning: partners, pathways and pedagogies. Rockhampton: CQU. pp257-262.
She also referenced:
Business Victoria. (2006) Express Information. Showcasing small business. 14 (Summer), 4. http://www.business.vic.gov.au/busvicwr/_assets/main/lib60128/sbnews-dec.pdf (a very short item, but it also gives an idea of some of the other services available to small business in the state)
Sensis (2005) Sensis e-business report: the online experience of small and medium enterprises. http://www.about.sensis.com.au/media/pdf/SBA-Archive/sba/tae/2005SepSensise-BusinessReport.pdf
This all brought back memories of when I was Head of the British Library Business Information Service (1988-92), though we did just did ordinary training sessions, also later on when I was doing a lot of training sessions on business information on the internet. The report from the research project I led in the latter area is on the web at Sheffield now: Allcock, S. et al (1999) Business information and the internet. http://dis.shef.ac.uk/business/final.html

Photo by Sheila Webber: Great Keppel Island Beach, June 2006.