Rebranding librarianship: what do you think?
May 4th, 2007 by Andrea MercadoBrendan Gallagher, a participant in Leslie Berger’s Emerging Leaders Initiative, posted to the Mentors, Masters, Leaders blog today about the survey that’s been making the rounds through various digital venues:
I’m one of the ALA Emerging Leaders this year, and I’m part of a work team that is looking at options for “rebranding the library profession in the digital world.” We’ve decided to survey as broad a spectrum of library professionals as possible in order to see what we think of ourselves.
This survey is part of Project KK. You can read more about the project and other projects on the ALA Emerging Leaders wiki. I’ve seen the survey mentioned on Twitter, in emails, in IM chats, and on blogs, and I’m hoping that ALA will actually post a link to it from the ALA home page, which would make a lot of sense and increase the outreach of such an important request for feedback.
Click here to take the survey, and definitely come back and tell us what you think about the idea of rebranding librarianship, what it will mean to public libraries, and about the survey itself.
Tags: ALA, Emerging Leaders, librarianship, public libraries, surveys
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May 7th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
As strange as it may sound, I really enjoyed taking the survey. It reminded of the reasons why I changed careers from computer programming to librarianship back in 2004. It gave my batteries a nice recharge to think about the questions–and my answers–in the survey.
I never worked in a library until 2005 (at the young age of 34), so of course my ideas of what should happen in a library are very different from many of the people that I work with. I’m always thinking of things in a more business-oriented way, and I think that’s beneficial to the current state of affairs in libraries.
I think that at one point libraries were at the forefront of people’s consciousness when it came to information, but we’ve fallen WAY behind the rest of the world in the past decade or two.
I know a lot of people don’t like to think about marketing (or don’t think we need marketing) but there are so many things going on at the library that public don’t know about. They have other things consuming their attention.
It’s even gotten to the point when I would tell people that we could get them a book we didn’t have in the catalog that they were amazed. Isn’t this the most basic thing we do as librarians? Provide books for people? And they were amazed that I would do this ‘just for them.’
It’s not good that people are unaware of our most basic functionality. It only drives home the idea that the public will even less of a clue that we offer MP3 audio books, online databases, book club in a bag, movies, live music, cafes, etc.
I think there are three areas every librarian can improve on no matter how good they already are:
1. Marketing
2. Customer Service
3. Passion for the field
At the same time, there is a lot I’m learning from people who have been in the field as long as I’ve been alive. These people know so much about the community they’re in, the field they’re in, the specific area they work in, it’s something for me to aspire to. I look forward to the day when I can be an expert, a role model, for a new librarian.
We need to get the public to see us the way we see us.
May 13th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
John Klima wrote:
“I’m always thinking of things in a more business-oriented way, and I think that’s beneficial to the current state of affairs in libraries.”
And there are many of us (PLG/SRRT) who respectfully disagree with that statement and think that’s PRECISELY what’s WRONG with the current state of affairs.
“…I think that at one point libraries were at the forefront of people’s consciousness when it came to information, but we’ve fallen WAY behind the rest of the world in the past decade or two.”
Overly broad declaration…that is in fact so broad as to be virtually meaningless. Go read some Michael Gorman, man!
“They have other things consuming their attention.”
Indeed they do. Mindless consumerism itself being the chief culprit.
Sustained reading of lengthy, discursive text is regrettably less common than it ought to be.
“…It’s even gotten to the point when I would tell people that we could get them a book we didn’t have in the catalog that they were amazed. Isn’t this the most basic thing we do as librarians? Provide books for people? And they were amazed that I would do this ‘just for them.’…”
Interlibrary Loan is amazing, greatly aided by early library automation well before the current “digital age”.
Maybe we can use “official” library blogs to help get the message out better than our mostly static websites currently do. I definitely enjoy email reminders when my books are due, and email reminders when my holds are ready for pickup, and being able to pay fines online is pretty darn cool. There are things the business world CAN teach libraries, but let’s not be uncritically accepting of every business fad coming down the pipe (something all too common in North American scholarly discourse in general and LIS in particular).