When’s a non-librarian a librarian?
Controversy, Deprofessionalization, Library education, MLS Add comments
As a library ‘paraprofessional’, I greatly enjoyed this post over at The Liminal Librarian (Update: a solid follow-up post rebutting many arguments advanced in opposition to her original post is now also available). One of the choicest bits:
We’re not doctors, we’re not lawyers, and we can’t compare library school with law or medical school. We don’t have a monopoly on intellectual freedom or finding information. In some cases, sure, a MLS adds value [but] there are also MLS librarians who spend their days reading the newspaper and ignoring their patrons. Yes, librarians like to categorize things, but people aren’t so easily catalogable, folks…No, I’m not saying that everyone who works in a library is a librarian. I’m saying that people who are doing the work of a professional librarian, who contribute to our profession, who keep up with the profession, and who are committed to the principles of the field, deserve the title of librarian — regardless of their degree status.
This commenter’s views also really hit home, given my (nascent) plan to take a shot at the MISt part-time as a long-term career-building move:
My entree into the world of library work made me want to turn tail and run, not become a librarian: the issue of who is “real” and who is not is way too reoccurring… Only through a gracious mentor/boss was I encouraged to become a “real” librarian - and her urging was so that I would be able to make a career of it (financially), and for no other reason. MLS in hand I guard carefully against absorbing any of that poisonous mentality!
I drafted a blog post on this subject months ago, but decided to bite my tongue until I have a little more workplace experience under my belt. In a nutshell: I empathize with established librarians’ anxiety over ‘deprofessionalization’ and other threats to the library status quo in the digital age, but casually dissing paraprofessionals (especially those with non-library university degrees) is extremely counterproductive, at best. For the non-nutshell version, see my comment below.
Photo credit: “MLIS” by Flickr user herzogbr of Swiss Army Librarian (Creative Commons)
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I really enjoyed your post. I encourage you to go for the MiSt or MLIS because we need leaders in our profession to stave off this sort of problem:
http://themonkeyspeaks.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/whoa-a-scary-story-wi-librarians-demoted-pay-cut/
I’d be curious to know what you think librarians should do to stave off this kind of deprofessionalization, if we can at all? Dean
March 24th, 2008 at 8:59 am
[…] When’s a non-librarian a librarian? - Library Tech Confidential […]
March 24th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
@Dean: I’m not convinced that it’s possible to stave it off completely. The public’s relationship with information has changed, and continues to change. Information literacy, it seems, is now more widespread than at any point in human history. Aside from extremely specialized skills like cataloguing and classification, a great deal of librarianship appears from the outside to consist largely of doctrine and jargon — what ’special sauce’ is left in day-to-day library work that truly requires two years of advanced study and/or serious scholarship?
Having never been in an MLS classroom (but having talked with and read the blogs of many a bitter librarian), I’m not sure if the problem is that daily life is becoming more infused with librarianship, or if (as many in the United States seem to think) library schools are becoming less relevant. Much of the hidden wisdom and alchemy of information retrieval has evaporated. Card catalogues sure were hard, etc., and yes, many electronic information products remain opaque to the lay user. But if what’s needed in libraries are skilled users of information products, rather than quasi-academic scholar/gatekeepers, how much utility is there in insisting on a graduate degree?
If deprofessionalization is only taken to mean granting non-MLSs access to work involving the sort of tasks that used to be reserved for librarians (that is, ’same work, less qualifications’), is this inherently problematic? Almost by definition, this situation implies that the MLS is, objectively, a sufficient but not strictly necessary condition for competent execution of front-line library work. Managerial functions and long-term planning may still call for the theoretical approaches and depth of study in the subject that come from an expensive, increasingly inaccessible graduate-level education, but I’m not convinced that (for example) a four-year bachelor’s degree in the social sciences plus one or two years of practical library training (at a college, or in the workplace) is insufficient preparation for staffing a reference desk.
More problematic is the employer tactic of classifying positions downward for no reason other than to trim the payroll without understaffing. There’s no easy solution to this, either, although collective bargaining sure helps things here in Canada. Still, controversial labour market conditions shouldn’t necessarily divert us from contemplating the appropriateness or potential artificiality of the paper (parchment?) wall between ‘professional’ and ‘paraprofessional’.
No one should have to swallow a pay cut just to re-apply for their own job, but if non-librarians are genuinely capable of providing top-notch service without the degree, then either the degree, the work, the paraprofessionals, or some combination of the three must have changed… if so, I don’t see how the profession itself can avoid changing, too.
Have paralegals undermined the legal profession? Will nurse-practitioners spell the end of modern medicine as we know it? There are examples like this in many professional fields as the democratization of post-secondary education has narrowed the divide between the top end of ‘paraprofessional’ and the lower end of ‘professional’. As a result, the library world may need to acknowledge that library competencies exist along a continuum of skill/ability, and that completion of a non-research driven graduate degree is no longer an appropriate litmus test.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Greg - It think you’ve captured the essence of the problem when you say “…but if non-librarians are genuinely capable of providing top-notch service without the degree, then either the degree, the work, the paraprofessionals, or some combination of the three must have changed… ”
I don’t know if the course work for the degree has changed - I haven’t been to library school. I think there is no doubt that the work has changed. From my perspective as a systems ‘librarian’ a great deal of technical knowledge, skill and experience is needed to provide top notch service.
I think the paraprofessionals have changed too. Unfortunately I’ve encountered some snobbery from librarians who are suprised at my answer of “none” when asked which library school I attended. On the one hand, I’d like to have the piece of paper to prove to them that I am qualified to do my job. However, I can’t justify the time or the debt just to keep the same job I already have and according to my superiors and peers, am doing quite well, and have been doing so for 15 years.
Yes - if I wanted to change jobs, I might face some difficulty because of that lack of paper. But I believe it would be their loss to pick a MLS degreed candidate with little, to no experience over me. I am a library professional and I didn’t get where I am without understanding and valuing the work of libraries and librarians.
March 28th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Hello there, hope you don’t mind me commenting here, but I stumbled onto your blog while looking up information about Seneca’s LITA program. I would like to have a library career in the future, but due to personal reasons I am still unsure whether to stick with the program right now (I got accepted into LITA about 2 weeks ago). Since you are a recent graduate, do you mind me asking you a few questions to help make my decision?
1) How is the timetable like?
-I understand that it might be different every year, but I would like to have a brief idea on
2) About the field placements, do you have to look for the positions yourself or the school will help you find them?
3) Another field placement question…how high do you think are the chances of getting a permanent position at one of the places? I read that you worked for the TPL at one of your placements, and my ideal place to work would be the TPL (specifically the Reference Library).
4) About how long did it take for you after you graduate? Does having a Library Technician Diploma make it a lot easier to get a library job? Or would you recommend saving money to get a Masters Degree in the future instead?
Thank you very very much for taking the time out to read this! I would send you a private email, but I can’t find it anywhere ^^; Have a great day! Your blog is very informative by the way, keep up the great work~
March 30th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
1) The timetable is, I think, quite similar from year to year. In the two shorter summer terms it’s more or less all day (one long class in the morning, one in the afternoon most days) with more variation in the later fall and winter terms.
2) The program sets you up with the placements without any work on your part. This is nice compared the co-ops I did in university, where it was very competitive and entirely up to students.
3) It’s hard to tell what your chances will be after placements. I can see some places using it as an opportunity to trial-run potential applicants, but I don’t know that any of my classmates found work with any of their placements as a direct result. My experience with TPL was that most of their hiring for library technician level jobs is done internally (i.e. postings are available only to current employees first) and that, as a result, few postings ever make it to the ‘outside world’ for external applicants. Just check out TPL’s employment opportunities page from time to time to see just how few positions are ever posted! I pretty much gave up on finding work at TPL based on my time there — not because I wouldn’t like to work there (I did), but because I was told it was probably a lost cause unless you already work there in a clerical position of some kind.
4) It took my quite a while to find library work after graduating. I had one interview pre-graduation that went nowhere, and I applied for tons of positions through the summer after graduation but only landed a couple of interviews (which were also unsuccessful).
I took a non-library position at a law firm in September which involved some library-related tasks. Only late this February was I able to secure a ‘real’ library work in a government law library. I guess it took about 9 months, in all? It was very, very disheartening applying to 2 or 3 positions per week (in the summer) and hearing very little back from employers, but now that I’m starting to settle in at my present position I feel it was worthwhile. At the time there was no indication that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, though, and I did begin to regret making an educational investment that didn’t seem like it would ever pay off.
Having a library technician diploma makes it ‘easier’ to get a library job in the sense that virtually every non-clerical library job in Toronto (with the exception of universities, which may require an undergraduate degree and relevant experience) absolutely requires the diploma. Without it, opportunities for better-paying library work are very limited.
I’m not really equipped to offer advice about a master’s degree, except to say that I myself plan to work on the MISt at U of T in order to open up more possibilities for the future. I’m certain that the coursework for the diploma is much less involved than the degree, but the diploma is much less expensive and can be completed more quickly. I chose the diploma in part because I had missed U of T’s application deadline — I hadn’t considered further education until it was too late in the year to apply — and partly because I wasn’t sure library work was for me (having experienced libraries more as a student and paid researcher than as a library worker), and because I didn’t want to jump right in by blindly committing to the additional time and expense.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thank you very very much for answering my (many) questions about the program! The timetable came out today, and you’re right, the courses are pretty packed. And thank you for the advice on job search after the program ends. Although it took you 9 months to get a full-time job, if it is something you love it’s definitely worth the wait. Hope it’ll be the same in my case lol.
As for the MISt program, I too am too late to apply (can’t get reference letters in just a few days), and Seneca’s curriculum sounds really interesting and it’s definitely cheaper. It’s certainly an option a few years down the road though.
Anyway, I really appreciated your help, and I will continue to read your blog =)
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm
[…] I’m glad to see people are finding links to my library technician job postings mash-up, but I noticed that this search term also brought up a link to this blog posting. […]
August 7th, 2008 at 11:43 am
[…] Playground, which I noticed thanks to a trackback commenting on a previous post here, has a really handy RSS feed of Canadian Library Technician jobs […]
December 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Hey. I got a 502 gateway error earlier today when I tried to access this page. Anyone else had the problem?