Academic Librarian as broker of self: no good grasp of self

What is interesting in academic libraries is the number of visions or perspectives we need to be aware of regarding who we are. We need to identify who these people are and whether they have a right to who we are. We need to form our own opinions, find ways to implement our perspective and market this assiduously to stakeholders. Ironically, we tend to broker bits of ourselves to various stakeholders, rather than take a step back and develop a coherent, externalized concept representing who we are or want to be.

Keeping in mind the concepts of competency, standards and evaluation, we may be attempting to broker between at least four or five stakeholders regarding who we are. This does not include our students as stakeholders.

Within the library there are the perspectives held by individual librarians or blocks of librarians. These opinions may be informed by issues mentioned in my previous blog entry on what constitutes an academic librarian. Some of the issues that may inform librarians’ opinions include: tenured, grandfathered into tenure, comfort with technology, history/training, the presence or absence of effective evaluation procedures and/or standards regarding conditions of employment.

There is also the morphing perspective held by management as to what constitutes academic status. This perspective matures as it moves further away from the initial years when status was granted, it may reflect political demands, perspectives in the literature and discussions held internally and externally with librarians over the years since implementation. This perspective is likely to take the form of some kind of formal framework.

Then there is the Faculty Association perspective, assuming you are considered faculty. This perspective is informed by what is expected of faculty and rarely considers expectations of librarians as a separate concept. This perspective may also inform other faculty members’ and university administration’s concept of what is expected of academic librarians. This also may be a formal framework enshrined in a collective agreement.

All of these perspectives may already be embedded to different degrees within the institutional framework, including cultural and legal. Dealing with these perspectives results in attempts to shoe-horn modifications and we crazy-quilt results because we broker ourselves. I believe we need to take a step back, define who we are within the academic context providing as clear direction to our stakeholders as possible and implement this identity at both the cultural and legal levels through the academy. This will not be easy, I agree.

As to the question of why we broker ourselves, I shall leave for another day...