Continuing education of librarians in Croatia: problems and prospects

Prior to the recent establishment of the Training Centre for Continuing Education of Librarians, training of librarians in Croatia had been organized sporadically by several organizations in the field. For the majority of librarians, however, professional education could have easily ended with diploma, because there has been no legal obligation to attend any form of further education. The first attempt to establish a consistent pattern of continuing education for librarians in the whole country was made when four major organizations in the library field, the National and University Library, Zagreb City Libraries, Croatian Library Association and Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy, signed an agreement on the establishment of the Training Centre. The programme of the Centre was successfully launched in February 2002. However, further activities of the Centre might become seriously hampered by the lack of legal provision for continuing education that makes it difficult for librarians to obtain leave, lack of funding allocated in library budgets for the education, and the impossibility of relating professional development to professional promotion.