Posts A couple of days ago I shared that I thought it was a copout for the profession to express only a demand for engaged lifelong learners from library school courses at universities, when this is what any employer should expect of any graduate, So, what do we teach in university library technology courses? Part 1.
If you want to see an interesting discussion of whether getting a degree in librarianship is really worth the cost, and whether one needs it to do the work one wants in a library, or to work as an excellent library worker, please see Andy Woodworth’s The Master’s Degree Misperception, Emily Lloyd’s excellent Response to “The Master’s Degree Misperception” and Andy’s further response, The Master’s Degree Misperception, Ctd.. Comments are very interesting, but I was left with the overall idea that if we could all have Emilys in our library – with or without Master’s degrees – libraryland would do just fine thank you.
O'Brien, T. (2006). Questions. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/oberazzi/318947873/
At the end of November I will be reconsidering what I am teaching in my classes about technology and about public librarianship. Here are the questions that will not go away for me.
Do librarians only get their professional skillset at university?
There was also some debate in some of the sessions at the ALIA Access Conference at the start of September about whether the different streams of librarianship – academic, special, school, public – had enough in common for there to be a common skillset that we should be teaching. Or is it that we prepare graduates with the basic, basic skills (in what??) and then the profession should expect to take those graduates under their wing for a couple of years of specific coaching in the area where they work. If so, it would point to it being very hard for librarians to cross sectors once they were employed, and (apart from school libraries or academic libraries that may have specific extra academic requirements) this is not exactly my experience.
Is there a difference between university and vocational training?
Are the qualities / skills required to complete a librarianship degree are the same as the qualities / skills needed to work as a librarian? Should the outcomes be wholly vocationally focused? I am thinking of the opportunities that people get in their studies of theoretical physics or pure mathematics at university. It seems that very small parts – if any - of these courses focus on real-life skills that a physicist might need like how to use corporate email, budgeting or managing lab technicians. Are we doing our graduates a disservice if we focus too much on vocational skills?
If we pare away the practical, on-the-job skills that we can teach, what is there left to teach an undergraduate? I am the first to admit that much of the professional literature in librarianship still consists of very vocationally based “how we done it good using this kind of tool” types of papers. Is librarianship closer to veterinary studies or nursing where practical hands-on units are what the graduate needs? I would guess that most students enrolled because they want to be librarians, not because they want to engage with theoretical niceties of library science. But are we doing the profession a disservice by not having a greater component of theoretical engagement and deep thinking about the profession – something that one is often too busy to do when on the job ?
So – what do I teach?
So – I am teaching a subject called “Information Management Technologies”. It is the basic introductory unit for first years and postgraduates. I am unsure what the profession requires in the area of technology that can and ought to be taught at university level. To be very frank, my main aims are to ensure that the students come out the other end unafraid of technology, willing and able to jump in and tackle unknown technologies and to see themselves as powerful when it comes to technology use. To be able to look at a problem and assess tools available and apply and modify them to produce a solution – and to know how to share that solution and get support on the way. But again – these are generic skills, not specifics. But … I cannot believe that I should just cover any old subject matter I need in order to get this across.
I know that we teach management in library school, rather than sending students off to the business school because it is essential that we provide *context* . I think there has been a similar approach with library technologies. Currently the syllabus of the unit I teach has a lot of generic technology material – how to use Microsoft Excel or Access, how Groupware is used in corporations, how the Internet works. My aim has been to take this material and inject context, context, context to it – if you are a librarian or a records manager, here is how you may use these skills, here are the problems you will have that need to be solved with these. The problem is that I still have an uncomfortable feeling that part of what I am teaching is “remedial technology skills”, rather than library/records management technology. Should we be spending class time ensuring that students know how to use the mailmerge function in WORD? If we don’t teach it, who will? Are we trying to churn out super-duper office workers rather than people with specific skills at connecting information and people?
I really do not have a clear answer to these questions. I know that librarianship is often a second career choice and often first years do not have the basic technological skills and confidence that they will need in the profession. There is no point trying to explain APIs or getting them to create a feed using Yahoo Pipes if they do not have a basic understanding of what an operating system is, how a database is structured and how to export data between systems. I do feel a bit like I am letting the profession down, and stymieing higher theoretical engagement with information studies, if I spend more time teaching generic technology skills. It is possible, however, that this is entirely appropriate.
I also need to be careful not to bleed over into subjects like Information Organisation or Reference materials or Collection Development – as this material is covered by other areas of the course.
So – what do I make assessable?
Smart, efficient students game the system. Find out what parts of the course are worth how much, and focus attention – which is often shared with a job, a family and a life – on getting the highest marks for these.
I am wondering whether my approach for working out what I should be teaching should start with what I should be assessing? It goes against my ideas about learning being a chaotic, community-aided, delightful engagement of curiousity. But although my aim is that students learn and have a delightful, stimulating time doing it, it seems to me that their bottom line is to get qualified and employed. Which may be at odds with the profession’s expectation that they come out as engaged lifelong learners…
So – What do you think?
I would love some input about what specific technological material should be covered in a first year course for librarians and records managers.
(Currently I am covering:
- Information technology and telecommunications
- Operating systems and software
- The Internet and the information professional
- Search engines and the World Wide Web
- Databases, data management and data manipulation
- Large database systems
- Web 2.0 and Library 2.0
- Multimedia
- Social media
- Ebooks . Groupware and portals
- Security and ethical use of data
- Digital persistence and archiving
- Trends in Information Management Technologies )
Mail merge is an interesting case point. It seems trivial on the surface but it’s amazing how many people don’t know about it. But I contextualize it in with data management and manipulation. It requires the same thinking. Fields and records and data reuse. You can use many data sources. So you can also think in terms of mashups. As an information professional I got irritated with my sons primary school teacher repetitively retyping a list of class names into all her records and notes and letters. So I taught her mail merge.
Hi Kathryn, Another fantastic post. As a student who is graduating with a Grad Dip TL at the end of the year I am disappointed that the course I did really didn’t cover as much technology as I would have liked (esp. databases). I am keen to look at doing my Masters in Library but wonder if my time (and money) is better spent on an IT qualification that deals with these concepts in a bit more depth or changing my university to one that does cover this content.
That’ s a nice list but if I could choose, I’d love to learn how to use different library management systems. We can pick up other tools, eg, blogging or Twitter easily but not LMS, at least an intro would be great.
Sue, yeah. Mailmerge is one of those really nice “do you or don’t you?” examples. It is a very,very odd juncture … With my 12 year old being taught in his primary school classes many of the hands-on computing skills that I am teaching in mine. Last week the kids had an assignment using Google Sketchup, this week they are editing using Audacity. He had his first Powerpoint exercise in Year 4 …yet the current syllabus for library school students includes “do a PowerPoint” as part of an assignment…and mainly to teach good ppt techniques, not as an incidental tool for something else.
Thank you PM. Your comment caused a lot of very interesting conversation on my Twitter network. Two of the comments that left the biggest impression on me was the suggestion that we need IT people on library teams, even if they are not librarians…which is true…and the counter argument that libraries rarely pay sufficient salaries compared to what IT graduates can get in other venues…also sadly true…
Hoi, LMS are covered under the Large Database Systems…but this unit is for Records Managers as well as Librarians, so I cannot concentrate too much on library specific systems. This week the students get to log on to the admin module for Koha and set up a borrower category, an item type and then set the loans policy…which I would hope would give them an idea of what to look for if they had to do any LMS admin…but it really is just an introduction. I would rather focus on skills than products…but it would be interesting to set some kind of assessment involving specific LMSs…. And Records management products…but the hard thing would be for them to get access to commercial products to have a look….any ideas ?
One more I’d add to the list is marketing. I’m always surprised that our Masters course in the UK thought the idea of selling oneself was not important.
Surely, in a time of diminishing budgets we need to become irreplacable and tell and show people what we do?
Hmmm…marketing in context of technology?? Am covering promotion and marketing in context of social media…as in ” this is how some libraries use it”, rather than “how to run a marketing or promotions campaing from go to whoa with a multitude of tools” . Also looking at marketing and promotions in the Public Libraries unit in context of IFLA’s public libraries document…plus how to put argument for social and economic value of public libraries.
Oh – and covering personal/ professional identities and reputation managment on social media..
perhaps i should’ve gone to Australia for your course
Awesome post. It adds to my recent thoughts I’ve been having about whether LIS complies with the definition for “profession”. Without specialised skills, can LIS be recognised as a profession? I, too, would like to know more about library management systems – how they work, case studies in their use, etc. I’d like to point out though that promotion isn’t “marketing”. Promotion is only one aspect of the marketing function. Marketing is taking a strategic focus on delivering specially designed services and experiences to clients who require them and communicate in ways which reach them. Hence promotion is only the communication side.
I’ve found that there is wide misconceptions about the concept of marketing and its potential role it can play in libraries.
kathryn, linkage between desired learning outcomes, learning materials, and assessment is critical. learning happens through assessment as well as engagement with other learning materials. it’s application of the theory in practice through assessment that connects the dots for many students. so yes, thinking about what you want to assess is fundamentally important.
i think it is possible to encourage students to develop as engaged lifelong learners, even if their drive is to get qualified and get a job. it’s difficult, and not going to work for every student, but careful alignment of objectives, material and assessment can go a way towards achieving this. modeling the traits that you want your graduates to emerge with is also critical, and students respond well to genuine enthusiasm and passion. you’ve got that in bucket loads – and that’s half the battle won.
i disagree that it’s a copout for the profession to “express only a demand for engaged lifelong learners” (and i really don’t think that’s all their demanding, either). engagement and a willingness to learn are absolutely critical for success as a professional. when you talk about what you want to teach students in your tech course, you say:
those are generic skills. all of them. we contextualise the generic skills in our units, and we do focus on the development of skills that are highly specific for our contexts. but in a general introductory technology unit (that is, not a unit designed to produce sys admins or ‘library technologists’), is there really a role for going beyond generic skills as they apply to the information context? specifics date – we need to constantly update our specific skills. generic skills don’t. they grow with us. for example, this semester i’m teaching 13 different web 2.0 / social media technologies in one unit, but while the students are learning about specific technologies, they are more importantly learning to be fearless, to seek out information to support their own learning, to be engaged, that a pln is a valuable tool, and that they can’t afford to step out of the learning game at any stage in their career. the learning doesn’t stop when they finish their course, and that’s a lesson that i’m not sure always gets learned as soon-to-be graduates in any discipline acquire their professional qualification. students aren’t going to walk away from this unit with a badge that says “i know how to use twitter”, but i do hope they walk away with one that says “i’m not afraid to take that piece of tech and see what it can do”. the assessment and the criteria are geared towards this; the assessment links back to the learning materials in a quite obvious way; and the learning materials and assessment align to the objectives of the unit. one of those objectives relates to independent learning; another to the ability to evaluate technology. those are generic skills, but i’m teaching them within an information context and as they apply to technology.
mmm, perhaps not my most articulate rant… but what i’m getting at is this: the profession’s want for, and our focus on, generic skills is not a copout. generic skills will grow with our students. if we teach them about database structures and to be fearless with technology, then they’ll be open to possibilities, and they’ll be able to work out how to do a mail merge when the time comes.
as for improving your course: i would suggest talking to industry. when i designed a public library intensive recently, i spoke to all of the big services that our graduates typically end up at. i’d also suggest talking to students who’ve taken your unit in the past. i did this recently as i looked at redesigning a unit i’m teaching next semester, and the students highlighted some fundamentally important things. each of us could push our own agenda here in telling you what should go in the unit, but it’s the employers’ and the students’ input that really matters, right?
Loved the article, Kathryn.
As a recent graduate of that library school, I have to say that that unit you’re teaching was THE most frustrating unit I did there. The problem was that the unit did focus on very basic computing skills, and that there were no other options for people who already had those. Because of the wildly differing levels of aptitude, I was bored and annoyed at being stuck with being talked down to for a couple of hours every week.
As for mail merge – I would just teach people how to Google guides on doing mail merges. However, that’s coming from someone who’s worked IT and uses the xkcd method of solving problems:
My basic philosophy of learning is that the end result should be people who know how to find things out for themselves. Usually, in a specific environment, that involves knowing the jargon and the shape and pattern of the knowledge for that area, and the usual sources of information. THAT is what people need to learn at library school – that and how to network. Everything else is findable if you know how and where to look.
Sorry, HTML fail. The link still works though
Thanks Kathryn for your stimulating posts on this topic.
I graduated from Curtin last year, and Information Management Technologies was the absolute highlight of my library studies. I loved every minute of it – a lot of it was totally new to me, and I found it really exciting. A whole wonderful world opened up to me (and is still opening up to me). It was interesting to read the comment from another recent graduate, Claire, as our experience of the unit was so different (likely because of our different prior experience) – however I totally concur with her ‘philosophy of learning’ and would also argue for a more flexible approach.
As you noted, the course in its current form is very practical in its orientation, and as I came from a theoretically-oriented background (with no library or real IT experience) I found it quite refreshing to be focussing on practical skills and thinking about possible real-life library situations. However, I did feel that the course needed some theoretical context to situate it all in. I would have liked to be reading the work of theorists who were thinking about the implications of IM technologies and what it meant for library work. As you rightly point out, there is a dearth of good theoretical stuff in the library-studies literature. Looking at writers from other disciplines such as internet/cultural studies would perhaps have been good to help guide our thinking on it all. However, I also realise that you can’t fit everything into one short course.
As a new graduate currently working in an academic library, my thinking is that perhaps some of what was taught in the course (such as the mail-merge) should occur not in the classroom but in the context of an actual job, ie, be included in the ‘on-the-job training’ which new employees receive; so you learn what you need to, in order to fulfil your duties; and so the learning is directly relevant to the job itself. How effectively that is done within the organisation, and how proficient librarians become at it, is then the manager’s responsibility, not the uni lecturer’s.
What should be the job of the academic? In my view it is introduce students to IM technologies, to make students aware of to the possibilities of where these technologies are heading, where they can go, what it means, how we can use them, and so on. The classroom is the place to explore and express ideas freely, without being bound by ‘policies and procedures’ and resistance to change which can characterise a library (or any similar organisation). We want new graduates to come into the profession with fresh ideas, enthusiasm and openness about these technologies, so positive change can occur. In my view your aim “to ensure that the students come out the other end unafraid of technology, willing and able to jump in and tackle unknown technologies and to see themselves as powerful when it comes to technology use” is totally spot on.
As to what specifically to teach, I agree that is difficult to know. Perhaps in the end it doesn’t matter so much what you actually teach because with this particular subject of IMT the student’s own motivation to discover it, use it, and engage with it is the key to finding out about all of it. It is all out there for them already, waiting to be discovered, and the teacher can become a pointer in certain directions, and seek to inspire students to go and explore the landscape at the student’s own boundaries of experience. Perhaps including an element of self-directed learning in the course where students can choose their own topics depending on what interests them and depending on their existent knowledge and experience with these technologies (which differs widely among students) could be a way forward. It may be going against the grain of what is usual teaching practice, and I imagine there would be many challenges with this approach, but maybe we should be moving toward more ‘customisable’ learning styles.
Finally, on another point you raised about the graduate attributes being generic to all graduates etc: perhaps what is different for library graduates (particularly those that go on to be academic librarians) as opposed to non-library graduates is that teaching is an important part of the librarians role (and increasingly so) and librarians are charged with helping uni students to achieve those same graduate attributes. Many of the graduate attributes (Curtin’s at any rate) directly relate to what academic librarians are attempting to teach uni students in the form of ‘information literacy’ instruction.
Hi Kathryn
Interesting article which I enjoyed reading. As a recent graduate from library studies, what I found interesting was the gap between what we were taught, and then what I’ve experienced in my employment. We were encouraged to explore new technologies like Second Life (which was the craze when I was studying) and think of how they could be used in libraries. However, apart from academic libraries, most places I’ve worked at are not using social media, or new technology, or even new versions of software programmes. While I believe that we want enthusiastic and motivated graduates who are keen to experiment, it is important to give them skills in technology that they can adapt to use no matter what their workplace is like, or allows them to access. Also quite often the librarian will be the expert in IT in the workplace, so teaching students, as Claire mentioned, how to find the information to troubleshoot is a valuable skill, I believe.
I’ve thought a lot about this idea not just in the context of libraries, but in the context of university education generally. I am coming to the conclusion that university degrees are not in fact there to teach a skill set or a set of information as such, but to instill students with a particular philosophy
What seems to make the difference between an excellent librarian or teacher (the uni fields I’m most interested in 
) seems to not be which course they did (or in the case of some whether they have completed the course) so much as a frame of mind that focuses on the philosophy of the discipline at its finest. Do they care about access to education and information as an empowering social force, as a way to change the world and the lives of those they assist? Do they care about doing a good job? Do they understand what that entails? Do they grasp that at the end of the day a Librarian is no more the guardian of a book repository than a Teacher is a babysitter? If they are focused on teaching and learning, on assisting access and facilitating understanding rather than on a simplistic ‘recipe book’ approach which is task oriented rather than outcome oriented, then they will learn what they need to learn and do what they need to do to do the best for their patrons. This is the fundamental difference between the professional and the para-professional approach, the para-professional is task oriented and the professional is purpose oriented (as a conceptual rule for professional vs para-professional generally. I am NOT slagging off Lib Techs, I work as one all the time, this is about the delineation between approaches, so a good Lib Tech may think like a professional -and is worth their weight in gold- , while a poor Librarian may think like a para-professional). The non-professional might be characterised as ‘put books on shelves’, the para-professional as ‘provide access to books’ or even ‘books and digital resources’ and the professional as ‘provide access to information’, with ‘provide access to information’ encompassing all kinds of information and the skills required to access and utilise it.
I think that university study aims to give this appreciation for their purpose to the professional, as well as to provide them with the generic skills (lifelong learning, anyone
) to be able to seek out the specific new skills and tools they will need to achieve this purpose. Universities aim to encourage students to maintain this more conceptual view of their professional purpose and then apply it to the practical situation, without losing sight of their purpose by getting bogged down in the day to day practicalities. In this way they can identify ways in which they can use new tools to fulfil their existing purpose (which appears to be what you want to teach your students to be able to do), to be aware of what is out there and on the look out for new technologies to solve old problems or to fulfil the same underlying purposes in a better way.
At the end of the day this boils down to some views already expressed both in the original post and the comments.
“To be very frank, my main aims are to ensure that the students come out the other end unafraid of technology, willing and able to jump in and tackle unknown technologies and to see themselves as powerful when it comes to technology use. To be able to look at a problem and assess tools available and apply and modify them to produce a solution – and to know how to share that solution and get support on the way.” Kathryn Greenhill
“My basic philosophy of learning is that the end result should be people who know how to find things out for themselves. Usually, in a specific environment, that involves knowing the jargon and the shape and pattern of the knowledge for that area, and the usual sources of information. THAT is what people need to learn at library school – that and how to network. Everything else is findable if you know how and where to look.” Claire
“but what i’m getting at is this: the profession’s want for, and our focus on, generic skills is not a copout. generic skills will grow with our students. if we teach them about database structures and to be fearless with technology, then they’ll be open to possibilities, and they’ll be able to work out how to do a mail merge when the time comes.” kate
As a side note on the whole ‘marketing’ issue by the way, the clearest deficit I see in this area is in Librarians maintaining awareness of their purpose and role. If they understand the scientific underpinnings of their role (for example, are aware of the research which demonstrates the improvement in academic achievement which results from having qualified TLs in schools, or resulting from time spent in recreational reading, research about the efficacy of point-of-need instruction in information literacy versus discrete ‘skills’ course approaches, techniques for scaffolding literacy development of teens with poor literacy etc) then they are more able to articulate to others when they do not understand. Librarians (like many a profession) are undermined by a lack of understanding of the job that they do and the research underpinning why they do it and what it achieves, so Librarians must be armed with the ability to combat misconceptions by articulating their role and its research basis for themselves. In addition to this, there needs to be more high quality research in this field to provide more ammunition to the beleagured Librarian
(P.S. I heart Stephen Krashen and any research he is involved in 
)
a libcamp twitter feed inspired comment – Sounds like a good idea to get students to really get their hands dirty and learn how to do something of their own, make a contribution to the lib community (i’m thinking building something, or modding something to do a new job, thinking open source etc?) but this might be tricksy
. Worth thinking about anyway 
. I know a bunch of people will have low tech skills but if they work in group mixed with high and low skill people, and you facilitate and scaffold in your excellent way 
then perhaps as a whole class (or mini groups depending on what you choose to tackle) you could make something /real/ which would benefit the library community, thus highlighting the link between the purpose, the technology, and the skills (including the skill to learn new skills 
)?
just my thoughts