Hello, and welcome to my blog! The purpose of this site will be to reflect and comment on the material covered during my time in SI 643 - Professional Practices in Library and Information Centers. Although I am a frequent reader of blogs, I have never maintained my own blog, so I embark on this journey with a mixture of excitement and concern about generating constant ideas and opinions to share with my fellow library students and colleagues. Since there's no time like the present, let's begin!
Professional Competencies
This week, I began by reading over the ALA's Core Competencies of Librarianship, which details the areas in which graduates of ALA-accredited masters programs in library and information students should be knowledgeable. That is, it roughly defines what library students, such as myself, should be learning throughout the course of our studies. Before beginning graduate school, I had relatively little professional experience in libraries, and considering I have been a "member" of the profession for a little over four months, I had a hard time evaluating the list of competencies. I therefore decided to compare the University of Michigan School of Information's curriculum with what ALA says I should know at the end of two years. Since UofM is a well-respected educator of future librarians and is a leader in information science, I assume our curriculum is more-or-less a reflection of some trends in library education.
During this comparison I noticed two priorities that seemed particularly urgent. The first is understanding the "legal framework within which libraries and information agencies operate" (item 1G in the ALA Professional Competencies). The legalities and legal frame work surrounding information science is certainly an area in which my personal knowledge and understanding is sorely lacking. As librarians, we must balance our core professional beliefs and ethics (such as open access to information and intellectual freedom) with the laws that govern our society (like copyright, privacy, and intellectual property). While we are not required to be legal experts, we are on the "front-lines" actively navigating many of these issues with our users. Of course increase in our reliance on electronic or online information has led to additional complexities (e.g. who exactly owns an electronic book?), and therefore it is increasingly important for librarians to at least understand basic legal concepts and where to find more specific information. SI's Information Policy offerings appear to fill this need.
The other "urgent" area is, more generally, "Technical Knowledge and Skills" (item 4). SI's focus on "connection people, information, and technology in more valuable ways" reflects the School's commitment to providing students with a solid technical background. One could go on at length about challenges and changes that technology has brought to libraries, but for the purpose of this post I will limit myself to simply saying "it's important." In general, we must strive stay -up-to-date with emerging technology in order to remain relevant, identify our continuing value and strengths, and connect to new generations of users. A strong focus on technology can be found throughout SI's curriculum. In addition to popular course offerings like networked computing, database applications, and website design (to name just a few), LIS students are exposed to technology in some otherwise "non-technical" courses - a good example is this blog requirement for class! I feel confident that as an SI student I am given the resources and opportunities to flex my technical muscles in a meaningful way.
Identifying "outdated" aspects of the competencies was more difficult; "outdated" has a rather harsh connotation, therefore I chose to focus on what can be considered "lower priorities" instead. I noticed that while the first section of the ALA competencies list understanding fundamental principles of library science as a field, such as "the history of libraries and librarianship" and "the history of human communication and its impact on libraries," the SI curriculum is relatively light in this area. There do not appear to be courses specifically in these areas. I assume this is because there are so many areas of professional education that need to occur over the next two years, and a topic like "the history of libraries" is less likely to be required for a job than, say, "cataloging." It's dangerous to say these topics are "outdated," but rather they are more easily pushed aside to make way for other more tangible skills necessary for future employment.
It should be noted that one of the competencies not listed above, that of "Learning theories, instructional methods, and achievement measures; and their application in libraries and other information agencies," is at the core of what we seem to be embarking on in this course. I see a librarian's opportunity to work with students, helping them understand more about the process of finding information and synthesizing it to make more sense of a given problem, as one of the most appealing parts of the job. I am therefore looking forward to learning more about helping others learn.
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