45 members have been granted the award of Practising Professional (PP) by LAS. The PP award certifies that the member has completed a minimum number of acceptable continuous professional development activities that indicate that he/she has attempted to keep up-to-date in professional practice.

An LAS professional member can obtain the PP award by submitting a list of professional development (PD) activities they have undertaken for the last 2 years for examination by the Professional Development Scheme (PDS) Board. These PD activities must meet the criteria specified in the PDS Guidelines. An applicant must also engage in sufficient number of these activities (each type of activity is assigned a number of points and applicants must cumulate a minimum of 1,000 points in a 2-year period before his/her application can be accepted).

More details of the scheme are given in the PDS page in the LAS website (www.las.org.sg). For the inaugural implementation for the period of Jan – Dec 2009, the period of qualification as well as the cumulated points required are halved. This is to enable applicants to obtain their PP earlier by meeting the proportionate requirements. For this first batch of PPs, their status will be valid for 2 years until end Dec 2010, whereupon they will have to be certified again in order to continue to retain their status.

The pioneer batch of 45 members comes from various institutions, including Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, National Library Board, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic and Nanyang Polytechnic. LAS members interested in the scheme can submit their applications in any quarter of the year (Jan, Apr, Jul and Oct). Invitation for application will be made by the Hon Secretary of LAS at the start of every quarter.

The PDS scheme was mooted more than 2 years ago by the National Committee of Library and Knowledge Professionals in Singapore (NCLIKPS), a joint committee formed by LAS and NLB. The scheme went through several changes as a result of discussion and feedback from members. It was finally approved by the LAS AGM in 2007 and implementation work started since then by the PDS Working Committee.  The PDS Board was appointed by LAS Council in late 2008.

The aim of the PDS scheme is to ensure that professional librarians make serious effort to continuously upgrade their skills and knowledge so that they can provide a high level of service to their users in a rapidly changing information and knowledge environment. It also provides a common framework and industry benchmark in which employers of librarians can use to assess and provide support for the professional development and training of their staff.