Disjunct between what librarians do and what we should be doing

Librarianship "has many competent and thoughtful people...who are deeply disturbed by the disparity between what they believe constitutes professional practioce and what most librarians now do (Bundy and Wasserman, 1968: 7)."

This fascinating statement was made 38 years ago and many librarians continue to agree. CLA 2006 reflected this disjunct in various discussions. Many spoke of the need for new graduates in their libraries, emphasizing the need for new skills and admitted the lack of these skills and a mind-set to integrate those skills in incumbents in their own libraries. If one reduced the discussion to the logical end: we don't need their bodies, just their skills. Ironically the new graduates pointed out the lack of space and accomodation to help them break into the university arena.

There will always be a skills disjunct. New librarians have just spent a few years dedicated to learning, exploring and playing. Incumbents may not have the time to partake in the fount of new information, new skills and new software.I would LOVE to have a year to learn about new ideas, PLAY with new software and the time to mull all over and integrate it into currently existing systems. Find the time...hahahahahaha, sorry, hysteria took over for a sec. No time. Someone mentioned something about publishing for tenure....

How we relate in our field has changed. We were object-oriented (books and other physical objects), with a greater focus on process as time went by. We are now undergoing a move into a relationship-based field where relationships with objects and processes (and clients) morph, paralleling the move to the semantic web with its focus on contextual relationships. Our context can shift as frequently as moment to moment. Thus not only are we now resident within or live change, (whereas before it acted upon us or we acted upon it) the speed of change has increased.

What the aforementioned disjunct speaks to is the need for flexibility in our librarians : "core business practices and production processes are changing so rapidly that their [industry's] real bottom-line need is for people who are adaptable and who know how to learn [constantly] and problem-solve (Hanna, 2003: 25)." Basically we need people who can rise to the challenge of operating in an unstable and rapidly changing environment and who can "make whole cloth out of vague threads."

How do we encourage flexibility? Deal with the inflexible? next blog...

ML Bundy and P Wasserman. (1968). Professionalism reconsidered. College & Research Libraries, 29(1), 7.
D Hanna. (2003). Buidling a leadership vision: eleven strategic challenges for higher education. EDUCAUSE, July/August, 25-34.