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Award of Associateship Candidate Guidelines

Award of Associateship Candidate Guidelines

The following information is to inform candidates for the Associateship award (ALAI) about the application process, e.g., when and how to apply and what happens after your application is submitted.  If you have particular issues that are not covered here please send queries to awards@libraryassociation.ie

What is the ALAI?

The Associateship is an entry-level award, intended for early career professional librarians with a minimum two years relevant work experience.  The award recognises personal commitment to ongoing professional development, evidence of reflective learning from such activity, and engagement with the Library Association of Ireland (LAI).

Who May Apply?

Application is open to any personal member of the Library Association of Ireland who:

  • Holds an academic qualification in Library and Information Studies which is recognised by the Library Association of Ireland
  • Has at least two years relevant post-qualification experience
  • Has been a personal member for at least one year and is in good standing at the time of application
  • Has been engaged with the Association at local, regional or national level

How to apply?

You must submit a completed application form, the registration fee and a portfolio which includes the following:

  • A scan of your post-graduate library qualification award
  • Your CV
  • A list of professional development activities you have undertaken
  • A reflective statement of no more than 500 words which demonstrates your learning from such activities and how you were changed by them
  • A record of involvement in the Library Association of Ireland and other cognate bodies
  • Any other documentation you feel relevant

A good portfolio will provide sufficient evidence for the assessors to judge if the candidate has satisfied both the quantitative and qualitative requirements of the award.

Examples of professional development activities include, but are not limited to:

  • Training courses
  • Workshops
  • Seminars
  • Conferences
  • Publications
  • Academic qualifications
  • Internet-based learning such as MOOCs, online tutorials, webinars, newsgroups, email lists, blogs, other social media
  • Training received from industry suppliers, such as database providers
  • On the job learning
  • Shadowing people and job exchanges
  • Professional reading
  • Committee membership
  • Informal networking opportunities

See https://www.examples.com/business/tips-in-writing-reflective-statement.html for more on reflective statements, including some examples of how to write them.  But your own reflective statement will be unique to you, of course.

A good reflective statement will be concise yet comprehensive.  It will demonstrate that you have engaged in reflective practice as a means to continuous learning and professional development over time.  A key aspect of reflective practice is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning but that learning follows from deliberate reflection on such experience.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice for more on reflective practice generally.

What happens after you apply?

Each application is receipted by the Applications Administrator and forwarded to at least two assessors for consideration by them separately.  The assessors report their findings to the Administrator who forwards them to the Professional Standards Committee.  That Committee either recommends approval of the award to the LAI Council or contacts the candidate to seek further information.  The final decision lies with the Council.

Every effort is made to assess applications as quickly as possible but the thorough process outlined above takes time and you may have to wait 6-8 months before you learn the outcome of your application.

How is your application assessed?

The criteria for assessment are personal commitment to ongoing professional development, evidence of reflective learning from such activity and engagement with the Library Association of Ireland.  Specifically, the Association requires that candidates demonstrate that they have developed an appropriate range of competencies required for admission to Associateship.  See Outline of the Assessment Process for Candidates for more details on the assessment process.

Associate of the Library Association of Ireland application form

GDPR

  • Library Association Of Ireland: Privacy Statement
  • Collection of your personal information
  • How we use your Personal Information
  • Security of your personal information
  • Third party services
  • Updating your personal information
  • Website visitors
  • Use of Cookies
  • Changes to this statement
  • Contact Information

Library Association Of Ireland: Privacy Statement

Introduction
The Library Association of Ireland (LAI) is committed to protecting your privacy. The information you share with us means you will be able to use the services we offer. We only collect the information that is necessary to carry out our business, provide the particular service you have requested and to keep you informed. Our privacy policy gives you details on when and why we collect your personal data and how we use it.

Collection of your personal information

The amount and type of information we collect from you depends on the nature of the interaction you have with us. For example, we ask members who wish to join to complete an application form. In each case, we only gather as much information as is necessary to fulfil the service request. But in general we collect the following personal information:

  • contact information including: home or work address, telephone number, qualifications and email address
  • affiliation and role
  • bank details if appropriate.

Information about your computer hardware and software is automatically collected by the LAI. This information can include your: IP address; browser type; domain name; access times; and referring website addresses.

 

How we use your Personal Information

The information we collect and hold on you will be used in a number of ways, including:

  • to fulfil membership requests
  • to fulfil bookings for attendance at events
  • provision of a LAI service,
  • provision of information to inform you of other products or services available from LAI and its affiliates
  • process payments, e.g. fees for attendance at events, payment of invoices, etc.
  • to facilitate discussion and sharing of knowledge through discussion lists and events
  • to contact you to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered
  • when you use the LAI website.

The LAI will keep your information only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice and to fulfil our legal obligations. We will not keep more information than we need. The retention period will vary according to the purpose the data is collated.

The LAI does not sell, rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. The LAI may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party.  In addition, the LAI may share data with trusted partners to help us process payments, perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, member services or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to the LAI, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

The LAI will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on the LAI or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of the LAI; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of members of the LAI, or the public.

Security of your personal information

The LAI discloses personally-identifying information to its management committee, contractors and affiliates in order to provide services available from the LAI. Payment processing is an example of this. They will not use your data for anything other than the clearly defined purpose relating to the service that they are providing.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through LAI public message boards, this information may be collected and used by others. Note: the LAI does not read any of your private online communications.

The LAI secures your personal information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. The LAI secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, and security protocols.

Third party services

The LAI utilises third party services to assist in the delivery of some of our services, e.g. Eventbrite. When you interact with these sites you may provide information about yourself to those third parties. The LAI is not responsible for how they collect, use and share your information. We encourage you to review the privacy statements of the websites you choose to link to from the LAI, so that you can understand how these websites collect, use and share your information.

Updating your personal information

The LAI will endeavour to ensure the data we hold on you is correct and up-to-date. If you wish us to amend or remove the personal information we hold on you, please contact us by email honsec@libraryassociation.ie or write to Library Association of Ireland, c/o 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2.We will correct any inaccuracies or remove you from our databases as soon as practicable.

Website visitors

Like most websites, the LAI collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. We do this to maintain the quality of the service, to determine what LAI services are the most popular and to provide general statistics regarding use of the LAI website. The data may be gathered from our website hosts and Google Analytics.

 

Use of Cookies

The LAI website uses ‘cookies’ to help you personalise your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalise LAI pages, or register with the LAI site or services, a cookie helps the LAI to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same LAI website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the LAI features that you customised.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the LAI services or websites you visit.

Changes to this statement

The LAI will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect user feedback. The LAI encourages you to periodically review this statement to be informed of how the LAI is protecting your information.

This statement was last updated on 20th June 2018.

Contact Information

The LAI with review and update this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that the LAI has not adhered to this statement, please write the President, Library Association of Ireland, c/o 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.