Competency B
Compare the environments and organizational settings in which library and information professionals practice
Librarians are information professionals and in the popular conception of their trade they seem to be pigeonholed into a narrow niche. In reality a librarian may work in a variety of different locations, industries, trades, and environments. In my experience within my program I have viewed many of the different areas that librarians truly work in. Whenever I have explained to others my chosen profession they have been amazed at the variety of roles that librarians are able to succeed in. Which is easy to see that Librarians are the original information professional our skills and abilities allow us to succeed in navigating large collections of information and organizing it based on a variety of rules and requirements. The areas that librarians inhabit are a long list indeed and I am constantly surprised to hear about others that have developed careers in areas that at first do not appear as apparent connection. In this technological world that we are in we are flooded with information and must make sense of it for ourselves and for others around us and many new industries are being developed that are serving this purpose.
It is difficult to develop a concise listing of all the different areas that librarians work in as each environment may involve a completely different role. In the traditional realm, librarians work in public and academic libraries. In these institutions they work as reference librarians, children’s librarians, and cataloguers. Law librarians, medical librarians, and corporate librarians may serve as the sole librarian of their organization and as many librarians refer to wearing many different hats. Librarians work in positions of management, research organizations, and information technology companies in a variety of roles especially user interface design, information architecture, and others. Others still choose to be entrepreneurs and establish their own research businesses based on a variety of services. From marketing research to competitive business intelligence information, delivering information for public and governmental resources librarians can have a large impact. Learning from instructors and fellow students it is simple to see that librarians are not limited by any means by the constraints of their education. No one is forced to work in one particular area but has many options available to them. Market realities may affect what is available at a time but librarianship has never appeared as limiting ones options.
Before I started my program I sought out meeting librarians in different professional roles and interviewed them in person and via email. I wanted to be sure I knew that the profession I wanted to obtain my degree in was diverse and interesting and I learned it is much more varied than I expected. The librarians I spoke with worked in a variety of capacities and locations. At California State University Fresno I spoke with a cataloging librarian and learned about what that task involved. The school has a new library that is exquisitely designed and an impressive repository of many different materials. The cataloging librarian was responsible with processing new material and providing original cataloging information for those materials. It was interesting to learn that she and an associate did a fair amount of original and copy cataloging but the university did not have the option to change values in the WorldCat database. I spoke with a reference medical librarian that worked with the University of San Francisco medical center branch in Fresno. This position was interesting compared to another reference librarian at the public library in downtown San Diego; I interviewed for an assignment for my reference librarianship class.
The two positions involved working with different audiences of people who required finding information materials. For the medical librarian the emphasis was that the doctors did not have the time to conduct the original research themselves. The medical librarian could spend extra time and create documents for the doctors to perform their jobs better along with attending meetings with the various medical departments to see where service could be improved. The public reference librarian spent time communicating with a wide audience of members of the community seeking different types of information. Some questions were easy but many others involved level of detective work while providing convenience to the patron by giving multiple options to receive results from the reference librarian such as printed or emailed materials. A portion of the work was also explaining how the patrons could find the information in the future.
Another couple of interviews I conducted involve librarians working in more technical professions. One individual was an information architect working for a company subcontracted by Microsoft. In the experience that she described working as information architect involves understanding how to layout information on a web page or application in a manner that users understand. This process involves user research, understanding the audience, and what the company involved wants their users to derive out of the web page. Through iteration the information architect develops site diagrams and wire frames and once the project is completed it is sent to a web designer to codify the work. In the web design course offered by SLIS one particular librarian gave a presentation about his work. Florian Brady was an interesting speaker that works in the Silicon Valley technology industry. He was able to explain how librarians can make an impact in the technology industry and gave an example of his latest startup. This particular startup involves visual search technology to assist industries such as medical companies. One example he gave was the concept of taking a picture of a person’s broken arm and comparing images of it to others available to determine whether the person had a hairline fracture and whether it could be severe. Brody made a point that the type of skills we were learning while at SLIS are applicable to modern technology. Professional information workers will have to develop skill sets in cataloging and organizing vast repositories of information such as images where computers may miss insights such as medical conditions.
In my examples I took courses that developed my business abilities. Through my entrepreneurship course and my marketing for non-profit course I was able to learn about two relevant areas that are different from traditional workspaces but incredibly important and excellent examples of the abilities that librarians have and should continue to develop in any professional organization. In marketing I learned about the many different aspects that are involved in presenting a non-profit organization to the public. In fact for traditional libraries marketing is one of their key weaknesses. Many libraries feel marginalized and forgotten especially in this time of states facing budgetary implosions and seeking to cut funds wherever they are able to continue functioning. Marketing is essential for any successful business and this course gave me the understanding that we should be advocates for our work using data to illustrate and gain attention to our efforts and drawn attention and funding.
As an entrepreneur one of the focuses for developing a business was focusing on your strengths and providing content that has value added. Any other type of librarian can illustrate how important they are to their organization by following similar principles. When providing reference work to a patron a librarian can be part of the process by not only including the requested material but also by adding more information and recommendations to the material that has been evaluated. For public librarians this may be difficult to pursue due to limited time but librarians in other organizations may have to provide this type of service especially those that work for busy organizations that want just the facts. Law libraries, medical libraries, corporate libraries are all examples of that type of environment.