Library Specialists

One does not ordinarily think of librarianship as a profession with many specializations.  In some fields such as medicine, law, and information technology there are clearly jobs which require a particular set of skills.  An application developer does something different than a network administrator and a trauma surgeon is clearly distinct from an oncologist.   Within the library world, the differences between job roles are seemingly less vast.  Working in reference is not the same as working in serials or circulation yet one can learn those roles fairly quickly.  Indeed many libraries combine those jobs in various ways depending on the need of the organization.

However there are exceptions.  Cataloging stands out as one.  There are a great deal of rules one must learn in order to effectively describe library materials.  Additionally one must master the MARC format as well as tools such as MARC Edit and OCLC Connexion.  Furthermore the nature of the work is different than what most librarians do.  It requires a highly detail oriented focus instead of the service one which most library tasks call for.  So library cataloging is one area many librarians steer clear of unless they have a strong interest.  Systems librarianship is the same way as well to a certain extent.  In order to be a successful systems librarian, one must acquire technical skills.  These can include everything from understanding how the ILS works to programming depending on the institution.

Yet the gaps between these branches are fairly narrow.  Many systems librarians fell into the position by accident.  There is even a book devoted to the subject.  And some libraries combine job roles in all sorts of ways.  So over time what were separate departments have drifted together.  Titles such as Circulation and Systems are giving way to Access Services, Discovery Services, and Metadata librarian thus emphasizing the essential aspects of what it takes to operate a library.  Plus we all get the same degrees.  It's not always called Library Science, but the essence of what we study in graduate school is often the same.

So when considering if one is in a specialized field or job role the key distinguishing factor is education.  If one needs extra education in order to do a job, then it is a specialized one.  Thus the various branches of medicine are specialties because in many cases one either needs to know a particular body of knowledge, attend a certain school, or continue one's education beyond getting the degree itself.  The same is true to an extent in IT.  Many organizations (rightly or wrongly) require certifications in order to have certain jobs.  Even without the certification different aspects of the field require learning new skills.  For example a Systems Administrator may need to acquire in-depth knowledge of networking in order to become a Network Manager.

That is not to say all librarians are interchangeable.  We're specialists in the way lawyers are. We all have the same education and anyone can take any job.  However the more one does a particular job, the better one becomes at it.  So an experienced reference librarian will fit most easily into a similar sort of role.  Of course one can branch out and take on different responsibilities, but it is always easier to stay within one's area of expertise.

Ultimately there is a lot of politics in all of this.  Defining oneself as a specialist is the first step towards arguing for better pay or more resources.  One can start a professional association to argue for why their specialization needs to exist, be recognized, and why it should be funded.  So whenever one defines themselves as being a specialist in something it helps to reach for the nearest grain of salt. 

I'm not saying these issues aren't important - they are.  In an era of declining or stagnant budgets libraries need to distinguish ourselves in order to continue selling the value of our profession.  There may be few true specializations within librarianship, but the field itself is distinct within the broader information science world into which we are often lumped.  Librarians provide access to information, tools to use said information, and assistance in making sense of it all.  The services and spaces we provide can't be easily replicated elsewhere despite what broader cultural narratives may say.  So in a sense we are all part of a specialized information science discipline, one rooted in service and unfettered access to knowledge.

Blurring Professional Lines

A while back a friend of mine asked how archivists could maintain core professional values while always collaborating with other professions.  It's an intriguing question, which had not occurred to me at the time.  Last year I wrote about  the differences between various branches of the information science world.   My main point was that the walls between us are largely of our own making.  There is a great deal of politics in the making of professions and sometimes that gets in the way of good ideas.

Yet we must consider the opposite point of view.  There are reasons libraries and archives do things differently.  Standards of description and access have evolved the way they did not just because people can't get along, but to meet the real world needs of practitioners.   In other words a certain amount of separation from allied professions is necessary to effectively do one's job.

But that's not really the point.  Not all collaboration is made equal and some partnerships are one sided.  Librarians, for example, vastly outnumber all other types of information professionals.  We've been around longer and our standards are more developed.  So "collaboration" between us and say archivists can easily look like the library is assimilating the archives.  It is worth pointing out that many university archives are already contained within libraries. So there is always the risk that in seeking to collaborate with our allies librarians may end up swallowing them.

I am not arguing for the very silos which now exist.  In an ever changing digital world, the boundaries between what belongs in a library and what should be in an archive is definitely blurring. A certain amount of collaboration is needed in order to operate effectively in the digital world.  So within the relatively safe confines of our offices, we absolutely should be reaching out to those across the hall and lend a hand on projects where our expertise could be of value.

My fear is that too much blurring of professional lines may render some information professionals invisible to the wider world.  If everyone who manages information looks like a librarian then we're all liable to be lumped together within the same organizational unit and forced to compete for the same money.   The same principle holds true for advocacy both within and outside our organizations. Archives probably face this problem more.  Many people don't really understand the difference between what an archivist does and what a librarian does.  If we blur the lines between us too much we risk creating confusion.  Worse, it could make archivists look redundant to cabinet level staff who do not understand the very real differences between information science professionals. The less clear those boundaries become, the harder it is to justify attending expensive conferences or asking for money for new personnel.

Ultimately what works within the processing room, may not in the board room.   Institutional politics have a very real impact on funding and staffing levels.  So while we should be working together to ensure the long term preservation of our cultural heritage, the never ending competition for dollars is more adversarial.  The library and the archives need to remain separate enough to be able to justify their continued existence but not so much so that we don't talk to each other.  It's a delicate balance. However my feeling is that those who are up and coming can walk the line.  We understand the values of collaboration well enough.   We also understand that there are bigger fish to fry.  Because while information science professionals debate what silo they belong in, Google continues its endless march towards being the only source of information people will ever want.

To Focus or Not

A while back I was reading the SMB IT Journal.  For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Journal is written by an IT Manager named Scott Alan Miller and focuses on information technology from the perspective of small businesses.   For a variety of reasons, that market segment has different needs than large corporations.   In that vein there was one post about the differences between IT generalists and those who focus on a particular specialization such as networking or application development.  Miller's main point was that they each inhabit separate markets and the more one goes down a chosen path, the harder it is to switch tracks.    For those of you interested in information technology, the article was a fascinating read and well worth checking out at the above link.

There is a similar dichotomy within information science.  Academic, public, and special libraries all have their own unique needs.  Moreover large libraries and small ones also are very different regardless of what type of institution they are.   So someone who works in a research library will likely be doing a job which focuses on one particular aspect of librarianship such as reference, cataloging, or systems.  The same is not as true of archives since so many people work alone. However even here different institutions have different needs.  So an individual who has spent their career working at a university archives might have trouble adapting to a small historical society where the main emphasis is on outreach.

Moreover the different branches of the information science tree are quite dissimilar from each other. Libraries, archivists, and data scientists typically come from the same programs.  Of course there are specializations, but upon emerging from school with an MLIS it is entirely possible to start a job in a different part of the profession than one expected.  An example would be training to be an archivist and then taking a job as a librarian.  But once such a choice has been made, forever will it dominate your destiny.  That's perhaps a bit melodramatic, but my own experience has been that after about 18 months working in an academic library the archival world seems very distant.

But information science is not IT.   We don't have the depth of knowledge that they do.  That's not a criticism even though it may sound like one.  Consider the breadth of certifications available just from the Computer Technology Industry Association  .  Or those offered by vendors such as Cisco, Microsoft, and VMware to name a few.  When viewed in that light it's easy to see why some IT people get locked into a particular path. The amount of learning one must do to make the boxes truly sing requires as much.  One must also consider how fluid our field is.  Archivists regularly work within libraries (whether or not that's a good thing is a different matter) and some jobs straddle both worlds.  And records managers work with the same materials archivists do.  There are also lots (and lots) of jobs which don't fit neatly into any box.  Just check out I Need A Library Job.      

As I wrote back in September many of these divisions are artificial.  In that sense we are not at all like IT.   We aren't separated by the sort of vast technological gaps those folks are.  Yet the barriers created by standards can be almost as vast.  Sure a librarian can be trained to do archival description or a records manager trained to do appraisal.   But there is a learning curve in doing so.  That is why collaboration is so important.  Nobody knows everything.  And the key to that collaboration is understanding that these silos we've constructed around us are really of our own making.

What Keeps Us Apart?

When thinking of information silos one eventually must consider their origin.  And of course there are many factors.  But a lot of it comes down to history.  When professions evolve separately they tend to stay that way.  Different philosophies, standards, and practices develop.  People become embedded in their own ways.  There's probably an element of human nature here.  We seem to be programmed to only trust people we consider part of our "tribe".

That logic could probably be applied to many aspects of life, but we're talking about the information science world.  And in that world there are several branches.  There are libraries (and many kinds at that). There are the data science folks.  Most people put archives in there too.  More on that in a minute.  And one must not forget those information science professors which taught most of us.  Those aren't necessarily neat divisions. A lot of universities have a "special collections" which lumps together rare book collections and archives, for example. There also are hybrid organizations like the Digital Public Library of America.

The commonality which holds those parts together is information.  The definition of that word could fill a whole book.  In fact it fills more than half a million of them according to Amazon.   It's been too long since I've really considered the question (my professors must be cringing) so let's stick to the following from Dictionary.com: "knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc".   Looked at from that perspective librarians, archivists, data scientists, and others all deal with the same stuff.  The exact types of information, how we gather it, and what we do with it vary immensely.  But books, journals, data sets, and manuscripts all serve as mediums for people to gather information.

Yet that is a very library-centric view.  Each of those professions are very different.  For example Danna Bell-Russell, in her final presidential address at this year's Society of American Archivists Conference emphasized that archives are about the stories they allow people to tell.  That's an equally valid view. Archives are literally the stuff of history after all. The same logic can be applied to data science or even digital asset management for that matter.  They each have their own methods, standards, and technologies. Perhaps librarians are like the Borg, constantly trying to assimilate any profession which involves conscious thought.

Ultimately all these divisions are artificial.  The archivist could just as easily fit in the museum world as the information science one just as the data scientist can be at home in the IT department.  Or perhaps even those professions belong in the information science world too. It has been said that there's a lot of politics in the creation of standards.  The same holds true, perhaps even more so, in the making of professions.

Which brings me to my final point.  We live in the information age, the era of big data and cloud computing. As the world changes at an ever faster rate libraries and archivists alike need to be careful.  The new actors in the digital age, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc, have little to do with the old.  This arguably affects libraries more so, but any profession which deals with the management and conveying of information is in the same boat.   The challenge for those of us in professions born of the analog era is to define ourselves in a way which preserves our role in society.