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1. Succession planning and the ageing workforce: an overview
The "greying" of the library and information sector (LIS) has become an important area of attention over the last few decades as the retirement of large sections of the current workforce looms. Since the term first started appearing in the industry lexicon in the late 1980s the literature has increasingly begun to recognize the distinct shifts in workforce demographics, and the impacts these trends present ([3] Berry, 1986; [26] Wilder, 1995; [22] St Lifer, 2000; [9] Hutley and Solomons, 2004).
Certainly these trends are felt in Australia, with a comprehensive 2006 profile of the national LIS industry reporting that 49.9 per cent of librarians were over the age of 46, and 16.1 per cent of that cohort over the age of 56, while 31.7 per cent - close to one third - reported plans to retire by 2015 ([7] Hallam, 2007, pp. 25-9). While there is evidence to suggest that the global economic downturn has seen a delay in the retirement plans of older workers, the insulative effect is not likely to be long-lasting; rather, it simply delays the inevitable onset of retirement among a large and experienced segment of the library workforce ([13] Mercer, 2009; [14] O'Loughlin et al. , 2010).
Despite a growing recognition of the impending impacts of the ageing workforce, there is a tendency in some of the literature to focus simply on the retention of older workers as a remedy to the loss of organizational knowledge ([1] Arthur, 1998; [21] Steffen and Lietzau, 2009); like a reliance on the Global Financial Crisis to ease retirement impacts, this is largely a delay tactic and one which has the potential to increase the retirement burden as new librarians leave the profession in disillusionment at the lack of opportunities for employment or development ([11] Louis, 1980; [8] Holt and Strock, 2005; [2] Benn and Moore, 2009).
The last decade in particular has seen the emergence of a more comprehensive and sustainable shift towards succession planning, with workforce planning methodologies featuring as one of the key tools in ensuring continuity and regeneration in library workforces during this time of intense demographic change ([27] Whitmell, 2004; [12] McCarthy, 2005; [7] Hallam, 2007; [10] Knight, 2007; [23]...