Monday, July 16, 2012

deconstructing de-professionalization of academic librarianship?

Is it possible or worthwhile to attempt to meaningfully deconstruct the movement towards the de-professionalization of academic librarianship? I have certainly been attempting to at a facile level, mentioning neoliberalism as a driver along with the changing face of LIS and the resulting polarization of positions in the library, among others. But where do we go from here?

I suspect it may be worth stepping back and taking a look and the values and ethics driving each side and answering the question: Is there conflict at such a basic level? There are values/ethics and upon these we build a concept of professionalism with activities in support of those values and ethics? Is the argument not that proponents (whether conscious of unconsciously) are making inroads into our values but instead are making inroads into our professionalism/the activities by which we define our professionalism? A mix of both? Inseparable?

I attempted to find a list of values and ethics supported by and specific to academic librarians. I must have the wrong end of the stick because my google searches kept pulling up the value of academic libraries! So where are the much ballyhooed values/ethics academic librarians consider sacrosanct? The search for profession and academic librarians certainly pulls up more relevant results re: professionalism. And what about discussion(s) re: what the point of academic libraries are? It is probably safe to say there is a growing disjunct there between librarian "values" and the presence of neoliberalism at the admin level.

But to go back to values/ethics for now. Does anyone know of a list for academic librarians? ALA provides a Core Values of Librarianship for all librarians, listing Access; Confidentiality/Privacy; Democracy; Diversity; Education and Lifelong Learning;  Intellectual Freedom; Preservation; The Public Good; Professionalism; Service, and ; Social Responsibility. These do not specifically address the academic context as Access would be limited by membership at an academic institution with an attempt at licencing for onsite users...except academic libraries are now more than ever requiring login for their onsite computers. Core values tend to be qualified by the context within which one operates, so these ALA values are by no means Platonic or archetypal once context comes into play. It is that contextual list of academic values I have not located to date re: academic libraries. Citation anyone?

And to jump back to professionalism: Penni Stewart's article in the Vol. 56 (10) 2009 CAUT Bulletin speaks of academic librarians under attack, mentioning deskilling (downgraded, divided into narrow technical areas, work transferred elsewhere), eliminating or freezing jobs, acquiring and preserving disappearing as an activity (along with its corollary Access), specialized expertise in a subject area being devalued with an accompanying emphasis on generic skills, greater control over everyday decisions, more bureaucracy over librarian activities (and outcomes) with greater oversight of research and scholarly work and even professional development, with an accompanying decrease in academic freedom.

Perhaps instead of trying to identify values specific to academic libraries, that I haven't found but assumed existed, I should just be addressing points of conflict to identify whether these conflicts are value-ridden or activity driven?




Friday, July 13, 2012

admin/librarian conflicting work values in academic libraries?


Barbara Burd’s article “Work Values of Academic Librarians: exploring the relationships between values, job satisfaction, commitment and intent to leave(ACRL Eleventh National Conference) is a very good reminder that higher education or academic libraries are not currently homogenous, nor are the librarians who staff them. And duplicating the methodologies used in her study would be extremely illuminating for academic librarians wanting to understand the dissonance in their respective workplaces and would provide ammunition to show how common (and evidence-based) the phenomenon is. There's nothing like a good research study admin would find hard to refute.

The author’s definition of work values provides the opportunity to identify the conflicts/context in academic libraries as one of competing values:  “Work values…are a reflection of our motivations, our preferred work setting, the way we interact with others, and our work style. Our work values determine what we expect to achieve from the work experience and, as such, determine our choice of vocation and our reaction to job situations (p. 1).” It provides a framework that helps us identify (some of?) the dissonance now occurring between academic library professionals, changes in both the LIS field and higher education, and in how our library administrations are managing this change.

The dissonance isn’t simply that we have a mismatch between librarians and their workplaces and that identifying what type of librarian you are and what type of library you are will allow you to aim for an organization that fits you. For one thing identifying a type of organization can be difficult at an individual level and secondly, I think the changes we are seeing in academic libraries are sweeping ones, a drive to more homogeneity as a result of a number of factors already touched on in previous blog postings. And I'm not even sure we can turn these trends around.

Then why is identifying these categories important? If anything is important re: the attack on professional identity, it would be the ability to note what currently is and isn’t working in the relationships between the entities (types of librarians/types of organizations) and which are currently perceived as more successful in the face of trends that are driving us to what the social scientists call rationalization(1) or “McDonaldization.” That, combined with a study that explicitly records, across multiple institutions the current levels of dissonance between librarian’s values and the new homogeneity in how academic libraries are managed may provide the impetus for a reconsideration of the implementation of some of these trends within our libraries…or not.

For those of you who are curious about the methods the author used I suggest you link to her freely available article (linked above). In a nutshell she uses Chatman’s “Organizational Culture Profile developed from Q methodology (p. 2)” and a Likert scale to measure job satisfaction, commitment and intent to leave.

    (1) “Rationalization is the application of the most efficient means to achieve given goals and the unintended, negative consequences of doing so.” Brym, Lie and Rytina (2010). Sociology: your compass for a new world. Toronto: Nelson Education, p. 89.

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

library directors as subculture in academic libraries?

I am desperately trying to understand the growing polarization of academic librarians and library management. One could claim both are subcultures in academic libraries except that the librarians are too disparate a group to be considered a subculture. A subculture has "a distinct set of values, norms, and practices within a larger culture" [the culture of academic libraries]. Academic librarians are only now organizing themselves into a group in response to a specific threat, one to their professionalism. I don't know if anyone has elucidated what the common values, norms and practices are for this group.

Even as an outsider, I do get the impression though that library directors are a subculture though. I don't know about yours, but ours meet regularly to discuss issues facing academic libraries within our region and act in concert (as much as possible) regarding specific issues and I believe have their own listserv. You commonly hear them asking "well what are the other libraries doing" when discussing various issues and based on my experience, they prefer to act in concert with other libraries (which may be considered reasonable in these budgetary times to reduce expenses).

The danger in any subculture is that they start to reinforce their own perceptions of reality. And in uncertain times this gets scarey as decisions may be based less upon externally available evidence than upon constantly circulating opinions. For me the tipping point which led to my consideration of the existence of a subculture, was the release of reports on the future of academic libraries that didn't reference their own librarians. Apparently we're part of the furniture of libraries with no role in the future of "their" respective libraries, that our knowledge, experience and dedication to a positive user experience is irrelevant to the future. Are we heading towards plug-and-play librarians with no emotional component, tools to be employed at their will?

But I digress. The more interesting query is "how have we arrived at this place?" assuming such a subculture exists. I suspect the process that brought us here is based on a number of factors including the commodification of education and the growth of university bureaucracy, the quicksand known as LIS under the influence of technology, changing roles in LIS, the growing cornucopia of digital and electronic resources and the parallel and increasing dearth of funds, the lack of organizations representing the interests of library professionals, along with uncertainty and fear on everyone's part. None of this helps us resolve the issues but one hopes it will bring a better understanding to both sides with respect to how these issues still drive us when we would all rather be in the driver's seat.