Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
Even though we had few new topics submissions, we had an interesting discussion about an oath for librarians. Thanks to Troy Johnson for making this suggestion. Perhaps it requires greater treatment over a week or so.
Let's continue with our final formal topic for 1998 entitled "What is a Librarian? A Discussion of Changing Roles in the Library." Jeanne Armstrong and Judith Segal will serve as guest editors.
Jeanne Armstrong is an assistant professor and one of four librarians serving Western Washington University's College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a BA in English from the University of Dayton, an MLS from Rosary College, and a Ph.D. in comparative cultural and literary studies from the University of Arizona. Armstrong's previous employment includes the Chicago Public Library, the University of Arizona, and Seattle Central Community College.
Judith Segal is university librarian and professor of library science at Western Washington University. She holds a BA in English from Brooklyn College, an MA in contemporary Jewish studies from Brandeis University, and an MLS and DLS from Columbia University. Segal's previous employment includes public, school, medical, and academic reference librarianship and the directorship of the libraries of the Hunter College School of Social Work and Hollins College.
Please welcome our guest editors and join the discussion.
Judith Segal
University Librarian
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA 98225-9103
Co-editors: Jeanne Armstrong and Judith Segal
Among the only professionals named for the building in which they work, librarians have a long history of image issues which directly affect their professional esteem, role perception and, particularly, acceptance as peers and equals to the professorate in academia. There are anecdotes of student pagers being addressed as librarians, of academic department faculty questioning the expertise of librarians to select materials or offer instruction in research methodology, and several studies of contentious struggles for academic librarians' efforts to attain or retain faculty status and/or rank.
In recent times, these concerns are compounded as librarians encounter new technological responsibilities and the necessity of sharing jobs with paraprofessionals. Due to the rapidity and complexity of changes in information technology as well as to financial exigencies, there is a growing number of traditional library tasks performed by library employees who do not have a graduate library degree. These personnel, generally under professional guidance, are taking positions behind the reference desk, in professional and original cataloging, the management of operating systems and in administration and supervision, to name just a few.
As proof of the increase of these concerns is the dedication of the winter 1998 issue of Library Trends, edited by Sue Easun, to "The Roles of Professionals, Paraprofessionals and Nonprofessionals: a View from the Academy," and we recommend the articles it contains and its sequel continuing the discussion.
At Western Washington University, our home institution, there are currently 15 librarians (and an additional three searches in progress) and some 40 classified staff. Five reference staff specialists, three catalogers, four area services supervisors (interlibrary loan, circulation, stacks management and acquisitions) and the Assistant to the University Librarian do not hold library degrees. They all do excellent jobs, are highly respected, and, in so doing, inspire us to initiate this discussion. To which end, we compiled several questions that we would like to see aired although readers do not need to limit their responses to them alone. We welcome descriptions of the scenarios with which you are familiar. Now we would like to open this matter to collegial exchange with two questions. Others will be suggested as the discussion continues:
Paul B. Wiener
Special Services Librarian
SUNY at Stony Brook
pwiener@ccmail.sunysb.edu
This topic always depresses me, not only the discussion of it but that it's raised at all.
I have no good advice or opinions on the matter. No one becomes a librarian expecting high wages, high status, much affection or gratitude. I'm not one who believes paraprofessionals are equals, though they can be and sometimes are. It is librarians and their sponsors who have given away the goods, by putting students, clerks, secretaries, and nonprofessionals in positions of authority and prominence. Usually it's done for reasons of financial and practical exigency -- if it cost too much for a doctor to do the operation, by all means get the nurse. Sometimes the nurse knows what she's doing, but if she doesn't, the doctor and the hospital still get blamed and sued. Nor do I believe in job descriptions. If anything they tell us what we're supposed to do, not what we're NOT supposed to do. Paraprofessionals play an important part in beaurocratic power games -- they do what professionals consider it beneath their dignity to do, and librarians sometimes comes under fire for doing tasks that are "beneath" them.
To me a librarian is someone who loves working in libraries, who is dedicated to the work and tries to master and excel in it, and who does what is necessary to keep his or her service, collection, and workplace running well.
Larry R. Oberg
University Librarian
Willamette University
Salem, Oregon
loberg@willamette.edu
It is distressing that postings on the topic of "who is a librarian" have been so severely limited. This is an important issue, deserving of our careful attention. My comments below are rather long. If they are of interest to you, you may wish to print them out for ease of reading.
Efforts to separate the professional wheat from the clerical chaff date back at least to the Williamson Report of 1923. This early review of training for library service challenged librarians to distinguish unambiguously between professional and "non-professional" tasks. Williamson's caveat was in fact heeded. In 1927 the ALA released a report entitled, "A Proposed Classification and Compensation Plan for Library Positions," a document that marked the beginning of a long series of efforts to separate library tasks into two discrete streams.
By 1970, the ALA Council had approved the "Library Education and Personnel Utilization" document -- generally referred to as LEPU. Still in effect today, LEPU was revised only a year or two ago. This document proposes formal educational requirements for all library staff and three distinct levels of employment for support personnel: library associates, library technical assistants, and clerks.
It is clear, however, that the task list approach to task assignment -- an idealistic effort to create one unambiguous list of tasks appropriate to librarians and another appropriate to support staff -- does not work well in a period of rapid technological change. It is equally clear that the efforts of the ALA to create unambiguous staffing categories have failed to gain any significant degree of acceptance at the grass roots level.
It is an article of faith today that support personnel perform many of the tasks once performed more-or-less exclusively by librarians. It is equally clear that support staff are assuming a range of high-level tasks newly created by the infusion of the electronic technologies. This dramatic redistribution of the library workload has created a distinctly new category of library employee, the paraprofessional.
Yet the context in which these changes have been discussed has been limited. To suggest that this phenomenon results simply from static or declining budgets, an administrative need for efficiency, the assumption of faculty status by librarians, or the contraction of higher education generally -- reasons often cited -- begs the question. These and other reasons have indeed contributed, but it is the infusion of electronic technology that has been played the greater role.
A transformative force, technology has all but eliminated our need to perform by hand the repetitive tasks that characterized librarianship over the past century. (Many of you will remember when "clerks" filed catalog cards above the tray rod, thus allowing "librarians" to check their accuracy before dropping the cards into their final resting place.) Today, clerks have been morphed into paraprofessionals and the work of all staff upgraded and intellectualized. Positions of great responsibility and authority have migrated to support staff whose importance and numbers, it is generally agreed, will only continue to increase.
Task overlap between librarians and paraprofessionals is a fact of workplace life. How sympathetically we view this overlap may relate to how we view the future of librarianship. By now, most of us accept the need for change, or at least its inevitability. We differ considerably, however, on how rapid and how profound we think that change should be.
Some of us adopt an evolutionary approach that presumes the basic soundness of our current policies, practices, and structures. Others actively encourage a radical rethinking of our basic assumptions and processes, believing that to remain viable players in an increasingly volatile education and information environment, we must create new services, new collections, new organizational structures, new information access tools, and new relationships, not only amongst ourselves, but with our allies and competitors alike.
In this period of volatile and rapid change, staffing assignments are made increasingly on the basis of competencies, not simply degree levels. The library of the next millennium surely will require creative, flexible, independent and, increasingly, specialized staff at all levels. Both support staff and librarians will be required to be quick learners, risk takers who are grounded in the values of our profession and skeptical of technologically driven agendas.
In the foreseeable future, task overlap between support staff and librarians probably is inevitable and, indeed, may not matter all that much. If a task can be performed successfully by a particular grade of employee, it probably should be. It is also true that many of the tasks once performed by librarians no long qualify as professional if, indeed, they ever did. Rather than clinging to the wreckage of the past, librarians should encourage all library staff to focus their attention on their highest-level duties.
Today, our services and collections, as well as the duties of individual staff members, are being rethought -- if not by us, by someone, somewhere. In order to remain successful players in the new information environment, librarians need to develop new service models, new organizational structures, and new staff deployment strategies. These are models that, in many cases, break with past practice. We will do this, I think, by maximizing the creative potential of all staff and by moving away from the rigid hierarchical structures of the past. Flexible organizational structures will provide opportunities for librarians and career staff to work together collaboratively and responsibly in a less hierarchical environment.
Change is not without its pitfalls. For the sake of brevity, I am listing a few personal concerns and recommendations:
If librarians and support staff work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, they will forge exciting new careers for themselves, build new models of information delivery, and ensure a central role for the library in the information environment of the twenty-first century.
Judith Segal
University Librarian
Jeanne Armstrong
Librarian for the College of Arts & Sciences
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA 98225--9103
Perhaps it's the season that makes the reason for the lack of discussion on this topic. But, readers, these questions do need answers because roles are changing. There is no argument with Paul's perception of librarians as the good, dedicated people they are; there is also no argument with Rhonda Vandergriff's concern that paraprofessionals not be demeaned. In libraries, we know they are valued.
Yet, we ask again, but in a different way: Are there consistent, important distinctions, other than salary and rank, between librarians professionals and library paraprofessionals, perhaps in the way they perform some of the same functions or share leadership roles? Are there noticeable distinctions in their respectively espoused philosophies, commitment or vision with regard to the social and educational roles of libraries?
And, if so, are these distinctions apparent to the public? Do they need to be?
Paul B. Wiener
Special Services Librarian
SUNY at Stony Brook
pwiener@ccmail.sunysb.edu
As usual, Larry Oberg's little essay is brilliant, almost definitive. The one thing it lacks, though, is an answer to the main question, ("What's the difference between etc.") and that, I suspect, is because there is no answer.
If I may paraphrase Larry's response, it is: No, there really is no diffference between the various libaray work and professional levels, though we must do our best to define and create differences and act as if they don't or shouldn't exist, although they must exist and always have existed, due to sociological facts of life we must never mention. But Larry said it better.
Sorry to sound cutting; I really do like Larry's post, but think it basically re-states the question as an answer. And it is curiously devoid of any references to specific tasks, skills, and responsibilities. The recent movie Antz addresses this matter in a more amusing fashion.
One concern I have with this topic is one of language. "Para" as an add on to "professional" leads to a host of discomfort and confusion, especially if one takes professionalism as an attitude, and profession as any such activity which has some measure of definition as regards one's livelihood.
A couple examples:
A professional dancer
A professional back-hoe operator
A professional library technician
The only place I can readily think of where "para" made the mainstream of comfort regarding a job description was "paralegal." A paraprofessional as an identity, not only is vague and challenges contemporary notions of political correctness, it remains a potential insult to those who are labeled as such. Perhaps, to get around this we might consider "paralibrarians" (although I am just kidding here).
I can recall years ago, while working in my first real library related job prior to my library school education and training, a day when several of the staff in a prominent academic library tech services unit got up to leave the area. I asked what the buzz was all about and was told that a meeting was occurring. As I started to get out of my chair, one of the seasoned, multiple degree librarians checked me by stating "the meeting is only for the professionals." I was stunned at the demarcation. My father had raised me to believe that a profession was any such occupation in which genuine effort and integrity was made over time that afforded one's measure of livelihood.
Remember the "Doonesbury syndrome" -- I believe we were talking about "professional students." Now of course, it is hip to talk of "life-long learning". Go figure.
I think we need to move away from the term "paraprofessional" as an identity group.
Having said all this however, the REAL issues which Drs. Segal and Armstrong detail however, remain.
Does having an MLS make you a librarian in today's definition? And if it does, is this not a default certification?
Standards then, become of central issue, which I suspect the ALA accreditation process is designed to address.
The subsequent question might then be, should a library association have accrediting jurisdiction over a "school of information"?
You may join the discussion and look over the list of past and future topics.
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