reflexivity in the practice of librarianship

It's been a convergence of reading and ideas lately. I was thinking about my article I'm working on regarding definitions of academic librarian competency and the implications of some of its initial results. There was something about the results I found quite disturbing but couldn't quite pin down. I happened to start reading "The Philosophical problem of truth in librarianship" (Labaree and Scimeca, 2008). On page 46 of the L&S article the concept of learned professionals and reflective practitioners was discussed, as those "who appl[y] experiential reflexivity, interpretation, and application to their work...." and "...a reflective practitioner is any individual who engages in a systemic inquiry about his/her own practice and pays deliberate attention to his/her own professional experiences."

The light went on. My research was showing there was a lack of reflective practice in the different authors' uses of the concept of competency. Eek. An unexpected and yet fascinating result, and one which I never would have recognized myself, if I hadn't read some of the business literature available on competency. We don't define, or we adopt, borrow and mutate, or create these definitions but don't seem to reflect on the implications of what we are doing with this concept, or not doing. It shouldn't have been all that unusual an "aha!" since I am cynically wont to believe this of many practicing members of the LIS field. For some reason I expected better of those writing on competency.

I also happened to pick up the book on "Building your portfolio: the CILIP guide" as part of my reading on an investigation of the use of portfolios in the renewal, promotion and permanence process. There is a whole chapter on reflective writing, as this is an integral part of their process of eventually applying for a designation through CILIP. It made me very happy to see reflective writing and reflective practice "institutionalized" in such a positive way. I believe research to some extent enforces reflective thinking but not everyone does research. It was great to see reflexivity applied in the daily work context since this is the world most of us still inhabit. I'm going to try harder myself, documenting and hopefully increasing the number of posts to this blog.