What Should Every Librarian Know?

If there’s one thing all library and information science school graduates share, it’s some degree of dissatisfaction with their professional education. It was too practical. Or too theoretical. There wasn’t enough technology. There was too much. It failed to challenge the library status quo. Whatever the complaint, the argument is that library school has failed to prepare us for the complex and rapidly evolving world in which we work.

I’ve never entirely bought this assertion. Sure, we can all point to some particularly egregious exercise we had to complete on the way to earning an MLS. Or, more likely, some basic skills we should have acquired, but didn’t.

But library education has a tough job balancing the core professional knowledge—what we need to know to be librarians—with the knowledge to succeed in specializations, including everything from children’s librarianship to preservation to cultural informatics. That leaves library programs with just four, or at most five, required courses to communicate the profession’s fundamental tenets. (To see how extensive this knowledge has become, check out the program objectives in the American Library Association’s excellent 2008 standards for master’s programs.)

When I speak with library school students, the tension between general knowledge and specialized knowledge is played out around jobs, especially in these economically troubled times. “Will I be qualified to work in any library?” some students ask me. “Do I need to specialize to find a job?” I don’t have any easy answers, but what I do share is my own belief: you can be a successful librarian anywhere, with any group of users. But be prepared to learn, formally and informally, about your users and their needs, and the content and services, instruction and technologies, that you can use to meet their needs. And promise yourself you’ll never stop learning.

I was thinking about those students when I came across Char Booth’s “The Library Student Bill of Rights” (tiny.cc/zwfON). Char, a recent library school grad and an e-learning librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, challenges library educators to “create a more vibrant and resilient profession” by embracing 10 basic rights for students.

Some of these rights—like “the right to challenge” or engage in debate and critical inquiry—are at the heart of any good education. But several of them go right to the core of what we do as a profession, and if implemented would arm graduates with a stronger set of skills to take on whatever professional challenge the job market might throw at them.

One is the “right to educate,” or to receive training in learning theory, pedagogy, and instructional design. Old news to those of us who prepared for school library media careers, but something completely lacking in the education of the rest of us. Another essential is the “right to evaluate,” or training in action research methods and user evaluation to understand the impact libraries have (or not!) on the lives of our users. A third necessity is the “right to collaborate” with each other and with other professionals—key to succeeding as a librarian today. And I love the “right to innovate,” which calls for experimentation to be woven throughout the curriculum and not just confined to technology coursework.

Char’s Bill of Rights may have been written for library students, but we all need these rights, throughout our careers. The next time a library student asks me what they can do after graduation I’ll say, “Anything.” And hand them “The Library Student Bill of Rights.”

bkenney@reedbusiness.com