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The progressive librarian: 10 ways to be more forward-thinking

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by Sarah Tanksalvala

For librarians, being more progressive means embracing new ways of approaching their job and the role of the library in a university. Progressive librarians are working to revitalize libraries by making them more than simply places that store information. Part museum, part lab, progressive libraries are exploring and defining their services based on people’s needs.

“Librarians find themselves in the midst of trying to reinvent themselves and what they do,” says Sebastien Marion, virtual services librarian at New York Institute of Technology. “The challenge is how to go from book-storage places to collection places to places that engage with skills.”

Progressive librarianship has a number of defining components. Progressive librarians support reading culture, in an academic environment in which many are pushing for all-digital libraries. Progressive librarians support personal learning, and see the library as a place where personal learning and lifelong exploration can take center stage.

Here are 10 tips for librarians looking for ways to become more progressive.

 

1. Focus on the human component: Libraries might be seen as places to go work quietly, but progressive librarians look for ways to make libraries more human-centric. Read more…

Top Five Skills Required For Librarians Today & Tomorrow

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Because today’s librarians must be experts in dealing with both physical and digital information, we have identified the Top 5 skills every librarian must have, or develop, in order to succeed now and into the future. I will touch on all five today and explore them individually in the weeks to come.

1. Information Curation

Since the primary role of any type of library is information curation, the need for that skill set will never go away. However it will evolve as volume and variety of information expands. As content creation becomes available to all, information curation becomes a more critical skill. Librarians are becoming increasingly vital in the process of evaluating and editing what is most valuable, as well as categorizing and classifying it for easy retrieval and use.

2. In-Depth, High Value Research

The digital information environment operates mostly on a ‘Find It Yourself’ paradigm, a model that has threatened the very existence of librarians. Yet finding what they need and want can be a significant challenge for consumers and users of information. Most people lack good research skills and all of us are dealing with a velocity and volume of information that is difficult to manage. As the proverbial haystack gets bigger, finding the needle gets tougher, making librarians a valuable go-to resource. Read more…

Three Questions to Ask and Answer Every Day | Leading from the Library

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By on December 16, 2015

Steven BellFinding fulfillment in the workplace is no easy task. Leaders and library workers should routinely ask three questions to create the library environment they and their colleagues will want to come to every day.

Libraries should be great places to work. We provide our communities with essential services that help them maximize their potential as learners, workers, parents, citizens, and whatever else they desire. The library is the place where great discoveries and life-changing revelations can happen every day. Most libraries offer respectable working conditions. So why do library workers and their leaders, often pointing fingers at each other, ask why their workplace is so toxic? Our libraries should be amazing places to work. It demoralizes staff and leaders alike when there is discontent and dysfunction. Whether it’s bullying, annoying coworkers, or feeling ignored or unappreciated, library workers can become cynical, disillusioned, and angry about their work environment. Like a nasty virus, the toxicity spreads and envelops the organization. Leaders at every level in the library must make it their responsibility to create the climate that supports a workplace where we all want to be.

THREE QUESTIONS TO ASK

Library workers at all levels in the organization know it’s a challenge to create the right environment where everyone is working as one in achieving a clearly articulated vision. It’s up to library leaders to share that vision in a compelling way. What can the rest of us do to contribute to the culture and working environment that enables us to create the library where we all want to work? I’m going to answer that question by sharing three questions that every library worker should ask of themselves each day:

  • Am I thinking like an owner?
  • What did I do to make our director or dean look good?
  • How did I make a difference for our community?

Here is why I think all three can help us unite as a staff to develop a truly engaging library work culture.  Read more…

Loyalty, Schmoyalty What do you do when you realize your devotion to your institution is not reciprocated?

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By James Dixon DECEMBER 14, 2015

Recently, I received an email from a good friend, a tenured professor on another campus, complaining about the latest indignity he had suffered at the hands of administrators.

He had made a routine request for a minor adjustment to his teaching schedule — essentially, swapping one course for another — only to have it denied for no apparent reason and with no explanation. He later learned that a junior faculty member, a “rising star” in the department, had been given the course my friend had requested, despite the department’s longstanding tradition of basing such decisions on seniority.

“I’m sick of this (expletive deleted),” he wrote. “After all I’ve done for this college and this department, all the loyalty I’ve shown over the years. Well, no more. I’m done.”

My reply was even more succinct: “What took you so long?”

You see, I came to the same conclusion several years ago, after a particularly harrowing experience in which a few of my “colleagues” ganged up on me and tried to damage my career. As I wrote at the time, they very nearly succeeded, and probably would have if I hadn’t taken certain steps to protect myself. When push came to shove, all my years of service to the institution, all my outstanding teaching evaluations, all my publications and presentations, apparently meant nothing to the college’s corporatist administrators. They showed me no loyalty whatsoever. In the aftermath, I came to realize that I, therefore, owed no loyalty to them, to the institution, or to the department. Read more…

Better Together: The Cohort Model of Professional Development

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By April Witteveen on December 3, 2015

Higher ed is changing fast right now, and so is librarianship. Traditional in-person library and information science (LIS) education provided students with a robust network of peers for support. Over the last couple of decades, however, trends in higher education have reduced that automatic peer group—not only asynchronous online courses but also “unbundling,” in which students take classes at their own pace and from a variety of institutions. Postgraduate professional development opportunities, ranging from one-day conferences to workshops to certificate programs, were already more isolated, and these, too, have felt the further distancing impact of the digital shift. In addition, the proliferation of new competencies in librarianship can mean that a given librarian’s coworkers may have few if any points of overlap with what they do every day or need to learn—especially if they’re the sole representative on staff of a new library function.

Fortunately, there’s a movement afoot offering learners increased peer support without forgoing the benefits of self-directed and distance learning. Back in 2004, in a College Quarterly article titled “Cohort Based Learning: Application to Learning Organizations and Student Academic Success,” Kristine Fenning defined the term, noting that a paradigm shift toward learning communities, particularly those supported by a cohort-based framework, was under way. The cohort model has gained significant traction in higher ed. Cohorts are also growing in popularity across the LIS field, creating new venues for professional development and project management at multiple points in career paths, from MLS graduates just starting out to seasoned library leaders.

How it works

A cohort is a group of learners who share common learning experiences in order to build a stable, ongoing professional community. A cohort-based model, Fenning writes, results in a positive feeling toward the subject matter and learning becomes more meaningful. The social environment of a cohort is “the key to preventing isolation [on] the learning journey.”

Read more…