Benefits of LIBEX

Exchange participants

• Gaining professional experiences and knowledge.
• The chance to experience a new environment can be a useful professional development opportunity allowing you to bring back new ideas. For librarians who have only worked in one sector, an exchange can be a good way to learn how a library in a different sector operates.
• Continuing Professional Development in the widest sense –can help widen and deepen your thinking. Explaining your own systems and services to others helps you reflect on how and why you do things back home. Sharing your experiences on your return is another way to consider more deeply your experiences.
• Developing personal and professional relationships with LIS professionals around the world.
• The personal enrichment that comes from contact with another culture, meeting new people and discovering different ways of doing things.

Employers and line managers

• Staff development. Staff may well return with new knowledge and skills which can be used to make contributions when they return. Service levels can be raised and strengthened by drawing on knowledge transfer and new expertise.
• Many employees have found the experience inspiring and returned with a renewed enthusiasm for their job and librarianship.
• Employees usually bring back wide-ranging contacts and sample materials from their visits. Contacts made are often useful for the subsequent sharing of material.
• Increased inter-library contact can also produce benefits such as information sharing, networking and standardisation.
• Employers can also benefit from inter-library co-operation and knowledge transfer by drawing on expertise to raise and strengthen service levels.
• Exchanges can be used to improve the library's image, especially if you can identify solid achievements made by your staff abroad.
• The visiting employee may well bring a different knowledge and skills set which can be used to complement local skills base e.g. by working on a specific project.
• It can be stimulating for other staff/team members to have someone new bringing a fresh perspective on the service.
• Comparing and contrasting different information services can lead to a fresh look at existing policies and procedures, thereby encouraging innovation and positive change in host organisations.