And with that, the professional program draws to a close!

Last evening, Nolda Romer-Kenepa and Lew Bellardo concluded the professional program of CITRA 2009.  Both expressed their gratitude to our Maltese hosts, their satisfaction with the level of quality in all who presented or chaired sessions, and their confidence in the future of archival profession.  When asked if this CITRA had met her expectations, Nolda responded with a resounding yes: “It exceeded my expectations.  Everything went very well, and I give my compliments to the Maltese organization team, the Secretariat in Paris, and to Didier Grange.”

This year marked a change in CITRA with the introduction of parallel sessions, which was found to be successful and will be continued at the next CITRA meeting in Oslo.

The following themes were compiled by the CITRA working group from feedback given by each session chair.  These are the conclusions from the professional program of CITRA 2009:

1. The CITRA participants are enthusiastic about international and regional collaboration on training and education development. Speakers and participants mentioned the following areas of potential collaboration:
   • Internships and exchanges
   • Shared on-line resources
   • Mentoring programmes
   • Collaborative research
2. Recruiting staff from under-represented communities and backgrounds is becoming more challenging as the entry level qualifications become more exacting, therefore there should be more flexibility in the options for entering the profession.
3. Distance learning, which is of good quality and co-exists with more traditional learning models, offers great opportunities to developing countries as well as to individuals.
4. There are enormous challenges facing 21^st century educators and trainers, for example the need to equip students to:
   • cope with the fast pace of change in the general working environment as well as in the technology we all use as tools in our work
   • operate in a digital environment, managing electronic records at the same time as maintaining the historical perspective
   • understand business processes
   • develop the interpersonal skills necessary to advocate and promote their programmes and work
   • play a role in capturing oral traditions
   • and to manage their own professional development as educators, particularly in using digital tools for their teaching.
5. There is a clearly discernable feedback cycle of educators, professional associations and employers/organisations which operates through formal accreditation processes or more informal networks and impacts both initial education and continuing training and professional development. The cycle results in the constant review and update of the education and training curricula.
6. The inter-relationship between research and teaching programmes is vital in sustaining recordkeeping education in university environments. It is also necessary for archives to foster research and development projects, making use of any partnership opportunities (with universities and/or industry)

Stay tuned to the ICA website for a further conclusions and recommendations from CITRA 2009.