I feel compelled to add a further note, without lengthening my previous post, but they do complement each other.
Firstly, I still think that professional education is important.
In particular, technical knowledge, such as cataloguing and collection maintenance is important, as is the delivery of reference services.
That said, I don't believe that a degree in library science is mandatory in order to complete these tasks. The fact that I, a mere Arts graduate, was able to learn the principles of all of these through a textbook and readings, should be enough of an indication that it's hardly rocket science.
Some professionals exhibit shock when they hear that X Library Service is letting *gasp* library technicians, or even *shock* *horror* library officers conduct reference queries. But really, since when was the capacity for interpersonal comprehension and advice something that required a university degree? It comes down to training and people skills. Not a piece of paper.
I've certainly worked in libraries where staff haven't had that piece of paper, and they're definitely smarter than me. They should be allowed to demonstrate their skills, so that we can provide the best service possible to our library users.
(On a final note, I understand that at the end of the day, there are the regular duties and workflow to worry about. I totally accept this as a legitimate reason to keep the roles separate. After all, we're not paying librarians $33/hr to be checking books in and out. However, to claim academic achievement as a reason to keep the reference and circulation duties separate is complete bollocks, and just serves to create elitist division within the workplace. Your circ staff have brains too, or you wouldn't have hired them. Right?)
Monday, May 18, 2009
Non-professional skills for library professionals...
Firstly, I wrote a guest post over at Blurb It, with a list of YA "must-reads". It's totally not comprehensive, as (a) that would be far too long to read, and (b) I wrote it later on. However, feel free to add suggestions in the comments.
But to my main point. Over the last few months, I've been weighing the pro's and cons of either undergoing further academic study, or instead trying to continue to get a range of professional experience in the field, and I've kept coming to the same conclusion:
Pursuing further library studies will make me a good academic in library science. Getting a wide range of experience as a librarian will make me a good librarian. However, being a good academic won't necessarily make me a good librarian, and being knowledgeable in library practice won't necessarily correspond to an insight into library science.
In March, I delivered a paper at the Somerset Celebration of Literature, about all the things that I learnt about librarianship that they didn't teach me in Library School. This has been further reinforced in my recent experience working with Reader Development projects for Victorian Public Libraries.
But today, what I wanted to reflect on is the various skills that are so valuable - not only for library professionals, but for all library staff (especially in public libraries - which, for the life of me, I cannot remember being taught when I was studying Library Science. That said, I personally consider them essential skills.
Customer Service
How many times would you let a phone ring before you picked it up, regardless of how busy you were? Do you keep an eye on your front entrance of the library, and at least make eye contact with every visitor wherever possible? Do you approach a library user if they do not appear to have a sense of purpose? Despite our best efforts in being community-orientated and welcoming to all, there is still an unfortunate preconception that librarians are often unhelpful and stand-offish. And by "librarian", I mean the person behind the desk, regardless of what their title is. Poor customer service will make the difference between people becoming regular users, or never coming back.
Social Skills
How good are you at talking to complete strangers? More importantly, how good are you at initiating contact with a complete stranger? To be honest, talking to strangers is something that I'm always a little anxios about, but it's become a necessarily skill, both in learning to network professionally and engage with library users. I've noticed that a substantial number of my reference queries in the library have been initiated by me making the first contact, whether it be a greeting, a smile, or getting up from behind the desk to talk to them. Again, it's about making people welcome to the library, and by making first contact, they know that you're not "too busy" to talk to them. This also leads to forming relationships with your library users, which is SO important when it comes to reader development. It's the first necessary step to getting those discussions happening in the community.
Online Social Skills
Yes, we've all heard the phrases Web 2.0, Social Media, and so on bandied around. And this is all very well and good to train people how to use the technology, but you wouldn't train somebody to use a telephone if they didn't know how to conduct a conversation with it. Technology is useless without context. The same goes with web media - it's not "Online Social Networking" if you're not actually "Social Networking". That's just Being "Online" (which is totally Web 1.0). Getting involved in national projects such as Ask Now is one way to develop online social skills, through providing live chat reference services. Similarly, getting onto reader development sites and interacting directly with other library users through discussion boards / blogs / comments is another excellent way of developing both online social skills, and reader development skills.
And this is certainly becoming far more pertinent as more people become reliant on accessing library services through remote access. We should be able to provide those people will the same excellent service that one would provide to a library user who walked in the door, with the same level of friendliness, empathy and willingness to help.
Reader Development
Of course, a lot of this comes back to Reader Development - to encourage readers to broaden their reading choices, actively promote reading as a creative recreational activity, and build community through sharing experiences of reading. It's not about the books, or the collection, or even the technology. It's about the reader, and connecting readers with reading experiences, and with each other. It's about the role of reading to facilitate pleasure, pastime, lifelong learning, social inclusion and community. Without it, there'd be no library.
Is it something that you'll necessarily learn in a text book? Is it even something you need a university degree to be able to do? It may not necessarily be considered a "specialist" skill by any stretch of the imagination, but the ability to connect with readers in the library, and really share that pure pleasure of reading, in all its forms and ends, throughout the library community, is really at the heart and soul of what public libraries are about. And absolutely vital to this the empathy and trust necessary to connect with library users, the passion to share and inspire with them a love of reading and a desire for community building and learning. The rest is all academic.
Of course, I realise that I've completely deviated from my main question of study vs. experience. But I think I've already answered that. I want to be a librarian, not an academic. So, I'll be a librarian.
But to my main point. Over the last few months, I've been weighing the pro's and cons of either undergoing further academic study, or instead trying to continue to get a range of professional experience in the field, and I've kept coming to the same conclusion:
Pursuing further library studies will make me a good academic in library science. Getting a wide range of experience as a librarian will make me a good librarian. However, being a good academic won't necessarily make me a good librarian, and being knowledgeable in library practice won't necessarily correspond to an insight into library science.
In March, I delivered a paper at the Somerset Celebration of Literature, about all the things that I learnt about librarianship that they didn't teach me in Library School. This has been further reinforced in my recent experience working with Reader Development projects for Victorian Public Libraries.
But today, what I wanted to reflect on is the various skills that are so valuable - not only for library professionals, but for all library staff (especially in public libraries - which, for the life of me, I cannot remember being taught when I was studying Library Science. That said, I personally consider them essential skills.
Customer Service
How many times would you let a phone ring before you picked it up, regardless of how busy you were? Do you keep an eye on your front entrance of the library, and at least make eye contact with every visitor wherever possible? Do you approach a library user if they do not appear to have a sense of purpose? Despite our best efforts in being community-orientated and welcoming to all, there is still an unfortunate preconception that librarians are often unhelpful and stand-offish. And by "librarian", I mean the person behind the desk, regardless of what their title is. Poor customer service will make the difference between people becoming regular users, or never coming back.
Social Skills
How good are you at talking to complete strangers? More importantly, how good are you at initiating contact with a complete stranger? To be honest, talking to strangers is something that I'm always a little anxios about, but it's become a necessarily skill, both in learning to network professionally and engage with library users. I've noticed that a substantial number of my reference queries in the library have been initiated by me making the first contact, whether it be a greeting, a smile, or getting up from behind the desk to talk to them. Again, it's about making people welcome to the library, and by making first contact, they know that you're not "too busy" to talk to them. This also leads to forming relationships with your library users, which is SO important when it comes to reader development. It's the first necessary step to getting those discussions happening in the community.
Online Social Skills
Yes, we've all heard the phrases Web 2.0, Social Media, and so on bandied around. And this is all very well and good to train people how to use the technology, but you wouldn't train somebody to use a telephone if they didn't know how to conduct a conversation with it. Technology is useless without context. The same goes with web media - it's not "Online Social Networking" if you're not actually "Social Networking". That's just Being "Online" (which is totally Web 1.0). Getting involved in national projects such as Ask Now is one way to develop online social skills, through providing live chat reference services. Similarly, getting onto reader development sites and interacting directly with other library users through discussion boards / blogs / comments is another excellent way of developing both online social skills, and reader development skills.
And this is certainly becoming far more pertinent as more people become reliant on accessing library services through remote access. We should be able to provide those people will the same excellent service that one would provide to a library user who walked in the door, with the same level of friendliness, empathy and willingness to help.
Reader Development
Of course, a lot of this comes back to Reader Development - to encourage readers to broaden their reading choices, actively promote reading as a creative recreational activity, and build community through sharing experiences of reading. It's not about the books, or the collection, or even the technology. It's about the reader, and connecting readers with reading experiences, and with each other. It's about the role of reading to facilitate pleasure, pastime, lifelong learning, social inclusion and community. Without it, there'd be no library.
Is it something that you'll necessarily learn in a text book? Is it even something you need a university degree to be able to do? It may not necessarily be considered a "specialist" skill by any stretch of the imagination, but the ability to connect with readers in the library, and really share that pure pleasure of reading, in all its forms and ends, throughout the library community, is really at the heart and soul of what public libraries are about. And absolutely vital to this the empathy and trust necessary to connect with library users, the passion to share and inspire with them a love of reading and a desire for community building and learning. The rest is all academic.
Of course, I realise that I've completely deviated from my main question of study vs. experience. But I think I've already answered that. I want to be a librarian, not an academic. So, I'll be a librarian.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The Great I AM...
Okay, that title should boost my hits from the Christian demographic on the interwebs...
But I actually refer to Information Awareness Month, which is an Australian campaign to to increase public awareness of the breadth of the information industry through a series of events all through the month of May.
So, firstly, to echo the "I AM" affirmations that are declared on the website's website:
I AM a librarian
Not an information consultant, knowledge manager, document controller, information disseminator, resource coordinator, information literacy specialist, audience developer, emerging technologies trainer, content manager, social media expert, reader advisor, user experience designer, literature reviewer, collection maintenance specialist, communications officer, copyright advisor... Yes, I have performed many of these roles to some extent at one point or another, because that's what I DO. But it's not what I AM.
Again, I repeat, I AM a librarian.
And I say to all you librarians, don't shy away from the title. Don't let our name be watered-down by the corporatisation of the industry. We can perform a wide range of duties, and the industry is so diverse that there are some areas of librarianship that I will never be an expert at, but one thing we all have in common is that we are librarians.
Wear it with pride. Own it. Declare it.
I AM A LIBRARIAN
*ahem*
Now, on the IAM theme of Diversity, I'd like to put my Reader Development hat on for the moment, seeing as that's the world in which I've been immersing myself for the past few weeks in my work at the State Library of Victoria. Particularly, I would pose these questions to you:
How diverse is your reading? How do you go about promoting diverse reading habits amongst your library users?
Now, I'm a self-proclaimed YA reader. I like to think my reading is fairly diverse - after all, YA is about a target audience, not a particular genre. And a lot of it is far more profound than a lot of adult fiction which I've read. I like themes of liminality and transcience in adolescence, the somewhat-psychotic personalities that emerge in this pivotal point in life, and the lessons that we learn as teenagers that we often forget later on in adulthood (and often re-learn from our teenage kids!).
Plus, I read across the genre, with male and female protagonists, leaning more towards social realism, but also read my share of fantasy and speculative fiction. If you have any doubt as to the extent of diversity in YA fiction, then just check out the line-up at the Reading Matters conference this month.
But that said, I do try to diversify my reading. I try to get through at least one non-fiction text and one adult novel, a handful of short stories, and regular political / current affair articles per month. Having lived in Darwin, I know all too well how easy and comforting it can be to inhabit a singular world, but unless you never plan to leave, you're eventually going to have to get back up to speed on the rest of the world. I remember the first day back in Melbourne, seeing a 20-something indie girl sitting on park bench, eating tabouli out of a plastic container, and reading Tsiokas' The Slap, and thinking "Yup, I'm not in Darwin anymore".
But I digress.
The point that I'm trying to get to is that I've been growing up in a library environment that promotes reader advisory. I've trained people in it, teaching staff all about genre, and getting them to glean from the library reader what they've been reading lately, what they like reading, and then finding them something that will match their reading tastes.
Which is all very well, if:
(a) the library user has actually read a book recently and / or knows what they like to read, and
(b) you want your libraries users to be boring readers.
Yes, boring readers. You know the type. They start their sentences with "I only read..." and end them with strangely specific things like "british police procedure detective fiction". This is encouraged through reader advisory tools, often bookmarks with "If you like X, then you should read Y", where X is a given author, and Y is a list of other writers who tend to use the same genre / narrative style / themes.
Which is all very well for getting a fix of more of the same, but not necessarily the healthiest of reading habits. It's a bit like having sushi for lunch every day, because I know that I like sushi, and it's not that unhealthy in itself, so what's the big deal anyway?
However, there's a whole range of literary cuisines out there! The wider we read, the more we learn about the world, and about ourselves. As librarians, it's our duty to encourage readers to be creative with their reading choices, and challenge them to challenge themselves by reading outside their comfort zones. Guide them into becoming a creative reader. Because, really, there's nothing quite like getting through one's first Dickens, or one's first Chabon, or Winton, or Asimov, or even Stephenie Meyer. It might not be your cup of tea, but you have a wider landscape to compare your reading experiences with, and it gives you something to talk to other people about.
So, here's your challenge for Information Awareness Month, following the theme of diversity. Read a book that you really don't want to, then tell somebody about it. If you don't have somebody to talk to, feel free to comment here. Then go out, and challenge your library's users to go and read something that they would never have. And be sure to ask them what they thought of it later on. It'll be interesting conversation, that's for sure.
Happy reading! And stay tuned - I have something special coming up for Library & Information Week later this month. :)
But I actually refer to Information Awareness Month, which is an Australian campaign to to increase public awareness of the breadth of the information industry through a series of events all through the month of May.
So, firstly, to echo the "I AM" affirmations that are declared on the website's website:
I AM a librarian
Not an information consultant, knowledge manager, document controller, information disseminator, resource coordinator, information literacy specialist, audience developer, emerging technologies trainer, content manager, social media expert, reader advisor, user experience designer, literature reviewer, collection maintenance specialist, communications officer, copyright advisor... Yes, I have performed many of these roles to some extent at one point or another, because that's what I DO. But it's not what I AM.
Again, I repeat, I AM a librarian.
And I say to all you librarians, don't shy away from the title. Don't let our name be watered-down by the corporatisation of the industry. We can perform a wide range of duties, and the industry is so diverse that there are some areas of librarianship that I will never be an expert at, but one thing we all have in common is that we are librarians.
Wear it with pride. Own it. Declare it.
I AM A LIBRARIAN
*ahem*
Now, on the IAM theme of Diversity, I'd like to put my Reader Development hat on for the moment, seeing as that's the world in which I've been immersing myself for the past few weeks in my work at the State Library of Victoria. Particularly, I would pose these questions to you:
How diverse is your reading? How do you go about promoting diverse reading habits amongst your library users?
Now, I'm a self-proclaimed YA reader. I like to think my reading is fairly diverse - after all, YA is about a target audience, not a particular genre. And a lot of it is far more profound than a lot of adult fiction which I've read. I like themes of liminality and transcience in adolescence, the somewhat-psychotic personalities that emerge in this pivotal point in life, and the lessons that we learn as teenagers that we often forget later on in adulthood (and often re-learn from our teenage kids!).
Plus, I read across the genre, with male and female protagonists, leaning more towards social realism, but also read my share of fantasy and speculative fiction. If you have any doubt as to the extent of diversity in YA fiction, then just check out the line-up at the Reading Matters conference this month.
But that said, I do try to diversify my reading. I try to get through at least one non-fiction text and one adult novel, a handful of short stories, and regular political / current affair articles per month. Having lived in Darwin, I know all too well how easy and comforting it can be to inhabit a singular world, but unless you never plan to leave, you're eventually going to have to get back up to speed on the rest of the world. I remember the first day back in Melbourne, seeing a 20-something indie girl sitting on park bench, eating tabouli out of a plastic container, and reading Tsiokas' The Slap, and thinking "Yup, I'm not in Darwin anymore".
But I digress.
The point that I'm trying to get to is that I've been growing up in a library environment that promotes reader advisory. I've trained people in it, teaching staff all about genre, and getting them to glean from the library reader what they've been reading lately, what they like reading, and then finding them something that will match their reading tastes.
Which is all very well, if:
(a) the library user has actually read a book recently and / or knows what they like to read, and
(b) you want your libraries users to be boring readers.
Yes, boring readers. You know the type. They start their sentences with "I only read..." and end them with strangely specific things like "british police procedure detective fiction". This is encouraged through reader advisory tools, often bookmarks with "If you like X, then you should read Y", where X is a given author, and Y is a list of other writers who tend to use the same genre / narrative style / themes.
Which is all very well for getting a fix of more of the same, but not necessarily the healthiest of reading habits. It's a bit like having sushi for lunch every day, because I know that I like sushi, and it's not that unhealthy in itself, so what's the big deal anyway?
However, there's a whole range of literary cuisines out there! The wider we read, the more we learn about the world, and about ourselves. As librarians, it's our duty to encourage readers to be creative with their reading choices, and challenge them to challenge themselves by reading outside their comfort zones. Guide them into becoming a creative reader. Because, really, there's nothing quite like getting through one's first Dickens, or one's first Chabon, or Winton, or Asimov, or even Stephenie Meyer. It might not be your cup of tea, but you have a wider landscape to compare your reading experiences with, and it gives you something to talk to other people about.
So, here's your challenge for Information Awareness Month, following the theme of diversity. Read a book that you really don't want to, then tell somebody about it. If you don't have somebody to talk to, feel free to comment here. Then go out, and challenge your library's users to go and read something that they would never have. And be sure to ask them what they thought of it later on. It'll be interesting conversation, that's for sure.
Happy reading! And stay tuned - I have something special coming up for Library & Information Week later this month. :)
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