There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo’s post about how many librarians outside of Systems see learning about (or doing anything with) technology as being something outside of their sphere of responsibility. The second was Jenica Rogers-Urbanek’s follow-up post about how dependent on Systems/IT we are to implement the things we dream up. The third was Michelle Boule’s discussion of her experience working at a large ARL library and how “academic libraries want to be innovative, they think they are, but processes keep them from ever doing anything remotely cutting edge.” All of that got me to thinking about how hard it can sometimes be to get anything techie done when you’re in a public services position. And while part of that is because lots of people in public services don’t have the skills to actually implement the things they dream up, it’s also related to the way our organizations are structured, which is a much deeper and more difficult problem to fix.
There are lots of library schools doing students a serious disservice by not making it clear that anyone coming out of library school these days needs to have some minimal level of technology skills. Where I went to school, Florida State, was definitely one of those (not sure if they still are). In 2004, you could get out of FSU’s program without having taken a single technology-related course. And I had friends who chose that route, graduating without the ability to even create a “hello world” HTML page. And it’s not just the sort of tech stuff that Dorothea does that they are lacking. There are basic tech competencies that people just aren’t coming out of library school with. Like the ability to scan the horizon to see what’s new in library technologies. Or the ability to logically troubleshoot technologies instead of throwing up your hands the minute something doesn’t work like it should. Or the ability to critique and compare technologies. I wrote a post a while back about Skills for the 21st Century Librarian where I argued that these “big picture” skills were ones that every librarian should have, regardless of position. I still feel that way and I am appalled by those library schools that are graduating public service librarians who are prepared for librarianship of the 1970s.
I am hardly a techie and would be embarassed to call myself a techie in the company of folks like Roy Tennant and John Blyberg. I call myself a “cut-and-paste techie” because I can figure things out by seeing how other people made stuff work and then modifying what they did for our needs. I’m good with web design — I’m very comfortable with HTML and CSS and I can use PHP and JavaScript to do the little things that make maintaining a website much easier. I know enough about server maintenance to keep it running (but it helps that our stuff is backed up daily so I can’t break anything TOO badly). I’m willing to play with code to see if I can figure it out. I’ll try something, break it, back out of that change and see if I can figure out how to do it right. I’ll do that until I accomplish what I set out to do. Everything I know, I’ve learned from trial and error. In my library school program, there were no classes available that taught scripting languages. I want to learn how to code. I want to be able to build things from scratch. But with the number of hats I wear at work right now, I’m lucky if I have time to read a single article in Library Journal during an average month. I can do a surprising amount with the skills I have, but I feel myself bumping up against the limitations of my tech skills from time to time. And it bugs the heck out of me. I guess we all feel that way sometimes.
But what qualifications are really important for someone whose job isn’t specifically to develop applications? There used to be more of a clear line between people who did public services stuff and people who did systems stuff. That has really changed. We’re seeing all these hybrid jobs out there — these web/reference librarians, or distance learning librarians, or user experience librarians, or emerging technology librarians for public service, and more. There are all these public service jobs that require people to do all the traditional public service stuff (reference, instruction, liaison work, collection dev, etc.) as well as wearing the techie hat. And it’s a good thing, because you want people who are focused on user services to be aware of the technological landscape and what could be implemented to improve the user experience. But what skills are really important for these people to have? I think that largely depends on your relationship with your systems and/or IT folks. If the systems/IT folks can implement anything you dream up, then you just need to know how to dream. But the more likely scenario is that they’re stretched too thin maintaining the technologies the library already has. And while they’d love to spend time coding up cool applications for end users, it’s just not a top priority. So where does that leave public services? It leaves them needing someone in public services who can deliver on what they dream up.
I’ve seen an increasing number of job ads these days asking for people with knowledge of 2.0 stuff — blogs, wikis, Flickr, etc. I know this has been seen as something really cool, but it worries me in some ways. What does knowledge of 2.0 tools mean? You have a blog? You read blogs? You edited the Wikipedia? You have a Facebook profile? It’s important for librarians to keep up with the hot technologies, but does it make someone a techie? No. Can you install MediaWiki software on a server? Have you moved blog content from one software to another (say Moveable Type to WordPress)? What do you do when your blog or wiki’s database becomes corrupted? What mechanisms would you use to prevent spam on a blog or wiki? Can you customize our blog or wiki to look like the rest of our website? I wonder if we’re really asking the right questions. Frankly, if no one in public services has tech skills in the first place, would they even know what to ask? It’s also critical that these librarians have skills that transcend knowledge of the latest and greatest. These libraries need to ensure that they hire librarians who will still be useful to them after Facebook, blogs, wikis, and the like are “so five minutes ago” and we’re on to the next batch of stuff. You need people with skills that are bigger than specific tools.
But more than having people with skills, I worry about the way many libraries’ technological infrastructure is set up. Lots of libraries have no access to a server. They’re controlled by the school or municipal IT department. That’s how it was at Norwich when I got here. To make changes to the website, we had to contact the University Webmaster who had a LONG list of change requests from every department on campus. When I was hired, a big part of my job was supposed to be creating screencast tutorials for the distance learners, but IT wouldn’t give me server space to put them online. I feel very lucky that when I said I couldn’t do my job without access to a server, my Director let me get a VPS and run it myself (which was a little scary at first, but there haven’t been many issues I couldn’t handle). It’s given me the opportunity to try out all sorts of technologies and choose the best ones for our needs. I’m grateful that I was able to gain the trust of the Webmaster who gave me FTP access to the server the University website was on so I could be in charge of the library pages. When I look back on the past almost three years I’ve been here, I’m blown away by what I’ve been able to accomplish. I love this profession because I can do concrete things that improve services for our patrons. If I don’t feel like I’m moving forward, I’ll end up a dead shark.
When I see major academic libraries that are using PBWiki or WetPaint and blogs that are not locally hosted, I know that’s not a place I’d want to work at. If you have money, technologically savvy people and you’re using free, hosted stuff that you have little-to-no control over, something is seriously wrong with the way your organization is structured. I think some organizations haven’t figured out how to deal with these 2.0 tools. Who is supposed to support it? Who makes the decisions and has the control? There are so many potential turf issues when you have technologies that public services librarians want to implement for the end user. The systems librarians may not have time to maintain this stuff, but they may not feel they can’t trust the public services librarians to take the ball and run with it.
So, I think the problem is so much bigger than library schools still teaching students that this tech stuff is optional (which is not to say that isn’t a huge problem too). It’s also the way organizations are structured. So many libraries have a 1.0 org chart for a 2.0 world. They’re not structured to support public services technologies like blogs, wikis, etc. They’re not set up to allow for the sort of experimentation and agile decision-making that is required to meet the changing needs and wants of our users. So I don’t know that in an environment like that, hiring an emerging technologies librarian or a 2.0 librarian or whatever is the answer. You’re just putting a band-aid on a problem that goes to the heart of how your organization is structured and how decisions are made.
I’ll be curious to see if and how larger libraries address these issues over the next few years. I love that Berkeley’s New Directions Initiative has the goal of “support[ing] an open process that will allow the Library to understand and adapt to the evolving information needs of our faculty and students.” And I’m blown away by what Jeff Trzeciak has accomplished at McMaster in terms of creating a more agile organization that is ready to meet the challenges of the future. I think many libraries will have to go through similar processes over the next few years or we’re going to have a whole lot of dead sharks on our hands.
While I don’t disagree that it’s important for public service librarians to have basic technology skills – not just understanding web 2.0 tools but also being adept at MS Office, basic Mac OS, file storage, etc. – it may be a disservice to public service librarians to discount all of the technical knowledge involved in using library databases. We have nearly 400 of them, though some use the same interface. Understanding the nuances of these different systems and how to exploit their technologies to help end-users get the results they want takes tremendous technical skill. Some of it is learned in an LIS program, but more is learned on the job through practice and trial by fire. Your post also overlooks the importance of understanding instructional technology. To be effective, academic librarians have to be familiar with courseware, multimedia and various web 2.0 tools being applied in the classroom. When you start to think about it, can any LIS program teach all these skills? Probably not. To do a better job of preparing LIS graduates for the 21st century we need to equip them with the ability to be self-motivated and adept at learning technology skills. I don’t think it matters whether you can set up a wiki on your own server or use a free web-hosted service. I’d like LIS graduates who understand when and why a specific technology makes sense to meet users’ needs (and when it doesn’t) – and how to go about making good implementation decisions. The technology tools will always be changing. Many of them can be self-taught (as you indicated). Where we might fail our LIS students is not in letting them graduate without an HTML course, but in not providing them with good analytic and learning skills – and a thirst for “keeping up”.
Meredith,
I agree with much of what you say, but who knows how fast those requirements may change? When I graduated Library School (way back in ’91), we were required to take courses in relational databases and also had to pass a proficiency course in the latest technology (basically DOS programming and formatting). Was this really useful 5 years later? Not really, no, although I’m sure I can run circles around the youngsters in DOS. 🙂
When new technologies came out, my colleagues and I set out to learn them ourselves. HTML? check. CSS? check. XML? sure. Did we get to use them a lot at work? Not really, but it did make talking to the IT dept. easier. (If you know enough to be dangerous, they tend to listen to you).
I think what was more helpful to me in library school was being taught that this is a NEVER-ENDING PROCESS. There will always be new sources, new search functions and new software/systems to learn. The mark of a good librarian is not how well you aced a course in your masters Program, but how well you can adopt that ability to real life.
To be honest, the most helpful courses I had were in cataloging (because that taught why things were done that way in the past and how best to improve them for the future) and the administration course (because in my public library life we really did have to face lawsuits!)
And I think we all know that changing a MLS curriculum is never quick enough for the latest. Perhpas instead we should look towards how to teach library students not just the latest nifty programs, but how to make them work in real life. It’s very different.
Dan
Steve and Dan, I totally agree with both of you. That’s why I mentioned the value of teaching “big picture” skills. I think LIS schools need to teach students how to learn, evaluate and troubleshoot technologies generally so that they have the ability to do the same with whatever comes along next. No library school will ever be able to teach every aspect of library work, but technology skills or competencies should not be seen as not being central to librarianship.
Of course database searching is a valuable skills, and it’s *also* one that not every librarian is adept at. I was not trying to provide an exhaustive list of what librarians should know. Nor do I think that every librarian needs to know how to install MediaWiki (it’s more an example of the difference between maintaining Web 2.0 tools and just using them as an end user since I was wondering what a library is looking for when they say they want someone with 2.0 skills).
I think libraries also have a huge role in promoting continuing education. That includes not only giving time and money to librarians to learn things that will make them more effective in their job, but also bringing staff together in workshops and other skill-sharing sessions. There’s often a lot we can learn from our colleagues.
Someone with enough tech skill to be dangerous might well start asking questions like “Why DO we have umpty-gazillion database interfaces?” and “Which database interfaces actually *work*?” and “Which standards bodies might we want to pressure to create interface guidelines for database vendors?” and “How might we band together to tell our database vendors that we don’t WANT these umpty-gazillion interfaces?”
Instead of “We’re stuck with these umpty-gazillion interfaces that don’t work very well, so what we have to do is learn them all.”
Great point, Dorothea! It shouldn’t have to be this complicated.
I totally agree, Dorothea. And that’s why I was grateful to learn not just the HOW of library systems/knowledge/history, but the WHY, and through that what can be done to change it for the better. I am very appreciative that my library school looked to us students as people who would make the difference in the profession, not just statistics to push out into the usual world.
I don’t need to play my creds of how I’ve worked to make those changes you describe. I know I have and I know it’s not always a straight forward path.
What I see often are too many attempts to reinvent the wheel….if an existing database doesn’t work, is there a way to make it work without just dumping it all for the next new thing? Are people who are willing to work within their system (with IT or vendors) considered forward thinkers or “outdated?”
I think it’s important to understand WHY something did exist, even if it was developed by some vendor who had no clue. I know the folks in my business need to see the steps from a current solution to a new (and hopefully better) solution, and to do that, you have to work with what you have. And sometimes, you’re an army of one.
There are some very thought-provoking ideas here so here’s my contribution.
1) Library School Curriculum. In my experience as a current student and my experience as a student rep in a curriculum committee, I’ve been realizing that course expectations aren’t as high as they can be and allows for passive learning. That is, assignments that consist of reading, posting responses to readings, and writing papers may benefit one or two active and independent learners, but the overall expectation does not foster active engagement with the course content. This is especially unfortunate for classes with an online component to them where students may or may not meet regularly and benefit from face to face, synchronous discussion of themes underlying course content.
While there is truth to graduates (and people in general) who enter the workforce without the understanding or self-motivation to learn continually, I hope we can find a way to teach our teachers how to craft and execute real-world and interactive assignments. (I also hope to see this applied to library orientations and information skills courses given by library staff, but I fear I’d go too far off topic.) We need nothing less than faculty engaged and enthusiastic about learning in order to model this for librarians to model this to our users.
2) Liaison Committees. In response to recent comments, I was curious if there are association committees authorized specifically to work with vendors to represent a collective professional voice. I don’t recall seeing any, but could be mistaken. Thanks!
You mentioned that when you see libraries running applications like PBWiki on a hosted site, you know you wouldn’t want to work there. That may be true–but don’t automatically assume that the library is structured wrong or is disfunctional. My library runs PBWiki on a free, hosted site, as well as several other services, like our blog. Our choices are to use the free services or not have it at all because of finances (which probably does not make us a library of choice when considering whether to work here). But we also do not want to sit on the sidelines when we know that there are ways that we can use new tools–that work very well for us, by the way. There is no waiting for someone else to do our updates on our Wiki or blog, and we’re not bothered by the fact that it is hosted somewhere else.
Annie, I said when I see major academic libraries running things like that, not all libraries. There are lots of libraries that simply don’t have people with the tech skills or the finances to implement these tools, and those are libraries for which things like PBWiki and Blogspot are perfect for. I’m a huge advocate of hosted products for libraries that don’t have any access to a server. But there are plenty of libraries that have both tech-savvy staff and money who have to sit on their hands because the process to actually get approval to install something on a server (even just to experiment with it) is so circuitous. And that’s who I was speaking to, not the sort of library you probably work at.
Other than the server space (which costs surprisingly little each year), everything I’ve implemented for my library has not cost a thing. MediaWiki is open source. WordPress is open source. We don’t have a big budget for tech stuff, and we’ve managed to do quite a lot by using open source applications. But if you don’t have access to a server, your only option is hosted stuff, and that’s ok, but control is something many libraries are concerned with and with hosted apps like PBWiki, you don’t have as much control. Still, I’d use it too if there was no other option and I do use it for lots of projects.
A small budget is not something that would keep me from working at a library. A change averse culture and a culture that discourages innovation through its decision-making channels would keep me from working at a library. Doesn’t sound like you have that problem. We’re fortunate these days that there’s so much we can do online without spending a dime.
I go to Florida State now, and it is the exact opposite extreme: Now ALL they teach is Library 2.0. Since I am a Millennial and grew up with all of this stuff, I just feel like I am wasting my time (and money) in class. I understand that not everyone is on the same level, but there needs to be a healthy balance between tech skills and traditional library skills.
Agreed, GenY! Wow, that’s really crazy how quickly they shifted to the opposite extreme. And library 2.0 or web 2.0 or whatever is hot now is definitely less important to teach than those “big picture” technology management skills that you need on an everyday basis at work. Sounds like FSU is still missing the boat.
In grad school I took some tech courses, (mainly web design) and many of my classmates would tell me “I don’t know why we take these courses, in a real library setting I will leave it up to the systems person.” Grrr. Not only that I was looked at like a freak because I took more than the required tech classes. I work 2 library jobs now and in my first week in one place there was a problem with our automation system and I was asked to call the company because they were having trouble getting an answer. Well I must have said the right words because I not only talked to someone, I got the problem fixed, and ended up being the technical guru. God help me!
Long story short, the issue is twofold in pertaining to library school tech knowledge 1. schools have to be open to life long learning in the technical field and not just hot button items (blogs, wikis, etc) 2. students have to be open to learning technical knowledge and not shutting their eyes to it because they are afraid to fail.
I have problems not so much with anything “2.0” as with “flavor of the month”. In other words, the powers that be see something “sexy” – like roving librarians with headsets or tablet PCs that are expensive, unnecessary, and difficult to connect, or wanting librarians to deal with complex and ongoing public computer issues without having the proper training and/or IS backup – and then accusing them of not being able to deal with “change” because they have quite legitimate concerns. Meredith is entirely correct that the typical library org chart doesn’t work well in this new environment. I believe the two Michaels have written some LJ columns about this. We keep hearing about libraries “flattening” their organizations (another month-flavor) but they start rising very quickly again.
I’m also a current grad student in an LIS program, and I do worry about some of my classmates who seem to be in over their heads when it comes to even the easiest of technologies (like the classmate who didn’t know what PowerPoint was). I don’t think it’s necessary to teach yourself javascript for fun like I’m doing, but a basic understanding of how a web page works is probably not a bad idea and I don’t see anywhere near that level of competency among the people in a lot of my classes. There is a core class that is supposed to be fairly tech-focused, but it’s taught by a few different people so some students are getting a really good intro to technology and others aren’t.
I am what you call a web/reference librarian. My position started on the reference desk and morphed into the web development role when no one else at the library would take on the task.
From my experience, being “tech-savvy” is more an attitude. Although I took web design and php in library school, most of what I know I’ve picked up on my own (after all, we do know how to find the information we need!). I come from a graphic design background, and that along with my experience as a librarian gives me a very different perspective on technology that a traditional IT person. If anything, I find our views often clash, and I find no support for what I want to do in the way of online services to our community.
I’ve also started working at a local community college, where the IT support is no better. If anything, I find IT questioning the value of what we’re doing when it comes to Web 2.0 implementation.
However, when you don’t have access to a server and you have no other staff to help you, things like PBwiki and Blogger start to look real good. I figure down the road these things can be migrated to our own server, but if we wait on IT to do anything, it will never happen.
I agree with you that librarians are much more user-focused than IT people. If more librarians were willing to learn at least some HTML and CSS, I think a lot more would be achieved in helping our customers both inside and outside the library.
In public libraries, this organizational problem between techs and public services librarians is even more pronounced. We started chat reference at our library, and because we serve a rural community, a lot of our features (such as the chat widget) do not work properly. Not only am I not able to fix the tech issues (due to my lack of “computer admin” privileges) but I am told that either the IT department is too busy, or that the issues aren’t a big priority. I didn’t learn much 2.0 from library classes, but a librarian at my internship emphasized that I should get familiar. So I have, but in my current position, I am not able to really use much of what I have learned. Though I would like to become more tech-savvy (and actually have access to the library’s web design interface) I have mostly had try things on my own time outside my library.
I am an Florida State 2007 MLIS grad. At the graduate level the school still has a split personality between “traditional” librarianship and information studies with a good dose of technology. The undergrad program is strongly oriented toward information technology and as those students go for their master’s, the grad program will finally shift.
Students who want to experience Second Life and learn to write strict XHTML with CSS will find sufficient courses to equip themselves for 2.0 anything.
“The systems librarians may not have time to maintain this stuff, but they may not feel they can’t trust the public services librarians to take the ball and run with it.”
My 2 cents: Usually it is the network administrators, not systems librarians, who have control issues that circumvent the integration of technology.
Systems librarians aren’t always network administrators and often have little influence on what goes on in that department. Some are mostly ILS managers, web opac designers, e-resources managers, etc.
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