We [often] hear comments regarding professional development and Chartership with the Library Association like:

· It's not worth having
· I don't need it to work in commercial organisations
· Its only for information professionals in the academic and public sectors
· I've been successful without it
· What is the point?

Her talk addressed Chartership in general and her belief in the need to charter, how it operates at Linklaters & Alliance, their innovative continuing professional development programme and her role as mentor for other information professionals in London wishing to charter.

So why charter? Whatever sector you are in chartering is supporting the code of professional conduct of the Library Association. It also gives individuals the personal satisfaction of achieving the qualification and helps them to assess their development. It can help with promotion and career opportunities especially if people wish to move to or from different sectors. It provides a sense of professional pride, involvement and awareness of the profession and of course academic credits to attach to your name.

Jacky introduced the support for Chartership of staff at Linklaters & Alliance for a number of reasons. Firstly to raise the profile of the department within the organisation and with the lawyers who now see the team as a quality group of professional staff. The staff have now become more valuable to the organisation. Candidates follow route B process. Monthly meetings are held to motivate and advise staff with their professional development reports. Jacky acts as a mentor for her team, one of the main roles being to set deadlines for work to be completed. This was the key element of her role that individuals felt they needed to keep on track with their reports. An added benefit of the report is that it can be used within Linklaters & Alliance for the annual appraisal as it becomes a record of an analysis of individual training needs, a preparation of objectives for the future and an evaluation of progress.

Attached to the Chartership programme Jacky has initiated a continuing professional development (CPD) programme. Again this has helped to raise the profile of individuals and the department. It helps put staff in the driving seat of their careers, gives them control, job satisfaction and a sense of professionalism. The CPD programme operates on a similar basis to the lawyer CPD programme where certain activities both internal and external have CPD points attached to them. Each information professional keeps a record of training and development activities and counts CPD points. This again is a valuable process in analysing and recording professional development to support Chartership and also the department and firm.

Finally Jacky spoke about her mentoring role for information professionals wishing to charter in commercial organisations in London. Linklaters & Alliance are [actively] involved [in Chartership and CPD], and Jacky's message for the evening was to also be involved as individuals and to take control. That's how change and improvement can and will occur.