B. Compare Environments in Professional Settings

Introducation to Core Competency B. Compare the environments and organizational settings in which library and information professionals practice.

In a Summary of Andrew Abbott's 1998 article, Professionalism and the Future of Librarianship, I learned that the future of librarianship is contingent on the link between librarians and their work. Abbott looks at the jurisdiction of librarian's work and forces that push against librarians and their work. Change in social and cultural forces brings new professional competitors to librarianship from the audiovisual, artificial intelligence, computer technology fields and commercial information providers. Librarians must compete with these other experts for control over information resources and the jurisdiction of information providers.

In Two Library Information Centers, I compare the Sunnyvale Public Library and NASA-Ames Life Sciences Library in terms of their clientele, mission, budget, services and staff, user access to resources, accessibility for disabled, outreach services, the Web site, and physical characteristics. At time of the writing my preference was to work in the special library. However I was a first semester library school student. Now that I am in my final semester, I see more value in the mission of the public library 'to meet the informational, recreational, educational and literary needs of the community and see public libraries as a possible future workplace.

Reports on American Libraries, the monthly magazine of the American Library Association (ALA), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) helped me as a new library school student draw comparisons between public and academic libraries and their professional associations. For the second report I interviewed librarians in several academic institutions to discuss their involvement in and benefit from membership in professional library associations. Since then, I have become a member of both ALA and the California branch of Academic and Research Libraries (CARL), and have attended many professional association conferences, such as ALA and Special Library Association (SLA) annual conferences, I feel that my career should not be limited to any one kind of library. Many well-known librarians have moved from one type of library to another during their careers, as my report on Fall 2006 Luminary Lecturer Rebecca Vargha, President of the Special Library Association, verifies.

I have participated in internships and coursework that have enabled me to experience and compare the different environments in which library and information professionals practice.

Before starting SLIS, I finished the Library Technology program at Foothill College. While there I participated in two internships, one at Meyer Library, Stanford University, an academic library, the other at Life Sciences Library, NASA-Ames Research Center, a special library. Because both internships involved working primarily with serials, I was able to draw comparisons between the work culture of academic and special libraries. For instance, the small staff at the NASA-Ames library allowed for more task diversity and included contact with library users. The solo librarian at Life Sciences conducted research for NASA scientists, dealt with reference requests, selected materials, responded to budgetary concerns, cataloged, worked on budgeting, and instructed users. Her assistant dealt with interlibrary loan requests, circulation, and collection maintenance.

The organization and large staff at Meyer, Stanford's main library, results in task specialization. For example, my internship in technical services excluded any contact with library users or even other library departments. From this experience I concluded that a small library with a diversity of functions satisfies me more than a highly specialized organization.

I have also had internships in archives and museums. I've had two internships in archives. Archives differ from libraries in that they house collections of primary resources, while library collections consist of secondary resources. The movement in library and archives today is toward creating digital, online collections, a logical extension of the Web as the ultimate outreach tool.

My internship at the Computer History Museum involved creating a digital exhibit called Selling the Computer Revolution: Marketing Brochures in the Collection. I participated in converting the collection to digital format and cataloging the records. The skills I learned--scanning techniques, database design, and metadata development are transferable to any digitization project whether undertaken by an archive or library, such as the Silicon Valley History Online, managed by archivists at Santa Clara University and The Calisphere, a searchable collection of primary resources managed by the California Digital Library (CDL).

I worked on another online database, ArchiveGrid, developed by Research Libraries Group (RLG), now owned by Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). ArchiveGrid is a database of detailed descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies and archives. My contribution was to search the Web for data about these collections to populate the database. I am presenting a small segment of the ArchivGrid spreadsheet as evidence of my work. In the process, I made virtual trips to multiple small town libraries and archives in my home state of New York.

Both of these internships involved special projects and may be closer to the special libraries environment than the public or academic libraries environment. My own interests are more geared toward academic and public libraries. My current internship is at the mixed-use, academic-public, Martin Luther King Library, where I am on the public side. Here I am engaged in a project to develop the collections for six new branch libraries. I participated in developing, administering, and analyzing the New Collections Survey in print, online English, Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese versions. I'm working with the Director of Technical Services on a proposal for a new SJPL Collection Development Policy Statement, a task that involves researching the collection development policies of other large, urban, public libraries with diverse populations like San Jose and reorganizing the current SJPL policy statement.

LIBR 230 Issues in Academic Libraries class has helped me better understand that my main interest is in academic libraries. I researched a Profile of De Anza College Library to collect information that would be of interest to prospective job applicants who were unable to visit the library in person. An applicant has to dig deep to discover the truth behind the statistics that for instance this college of more than 23,000 students employs only 5 librarians plus the library director. Each librarian then is responsible for approximately 5,000 students. One wonders how any real information literacy instruction can take place.