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 Masterâs Degree Misperception, Emily Lloyd’s excellent Response to “The Master’s Degree Misperception” and Andy’s further response, The Masterâs 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 2.0Â 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 )
