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A seriously large set of links about the library profession, opinions and ideas all in a mishmash from which I will attempt to spin something out that will be useful. There are probably a couple of Sforzandos stashed here.
The question of whether the library profession needs a list of core competencies that all librarians must be able to do or risk dismissal. I think that's a good idea, and I like the options being laid out for those librarians not up to core standards either have the opportunity to improve themselves and demonstrate competence or be sent onward to their next profession. The upgrading of skills to meet job requirements is something we do in our work with users all the time (especially in public libraries), so it makes sense that we should also have to experience it from the user's perspective when we have to upgrade our skills so that we can still be relevant and useful. Many of the commenters there mention that accountability needs to start in graduate school. So many people sas:y "You need a Master's for that?" - the perception that what librarians do is not sufficiently rigorous for graduate school work. (That perception is entirely wrong, but the things that really make us worthwhile are often invisible to those who see us.) We can probably retool a lot of our coursework and requirements so that those people coming out of the school have been vetted and forged to the point where the users can feel the expertise at work. Hopefully, this will help bridge the divide between what we learned in school and what's actually getting done in our workplaces, so we don't have shell shock arriving once the full schedule is unveiled and the job shows us all the things we didn't learn in school. We need to have core competencies and technological skill requirements. We also need to have classes in the practical spects of the library profession, like dealing with flashers and unjamming copiers. That also runs up a question of how one manages to gently dissuade people who are either in the schooling or thinking about the profession to stay out if they're not going to be competent or committed to the work. Someone who believes librarians shouldn't be technologically competent, for example, should probably be steered away from becoming one, because they're demonstrating a lack of a core competency and an unwillingness to learn it. We should be happy to embrace technology that allows users to keep their library barcodes on their smartphones and the corresponding technology that allows us to scan those barcodes, much like how we really needed to embrace things like the OPAC when they came to us. That said, security concerns are always valid ones, so we need to pair our enthusiasm with knowledge, like how to spot a keylogger that's been attached to your system, for example, in case someone wants to steal keystrokes from users of the public library and take their banking information.
All in all, though, we need to be able to articulate to prospectives what kind of job they should expect if they get into the field, and be able to do so in a way that will make it obvious whether or not that prospective wants to continue on their current career track. Sometimes reading what professionals are saying to newly-minted graduates can help them make the decision to stay on or abandon at the beginning of the ride. Or at least give them an idea of what will frustrate them when they join the profession.
------
A redesign of San Jose Public Library's website gave control and trust to the librarians and ditched jargon in favor of simple areas with words that normal people use. Reduction of jargon is always a good thing - it makes it easier for our users to get into the process of finding the things they're looking for. If they progress to the point where they need advanced capabilities or refining the search to focus and get rid of tangents, then we can reintroduce the jargon, along with the concepts, that will make them power-users. Trusting the staff with the website (and updating it with some of the latest useful tech, like RSS feeds) is also an excellent thing - staff can generate content at a far faster rate if given permission right up front to go and create, and will do so on things they find interesting, which will make for better posts and community involvement, as well. Giving them that trust always make management nervous, because they want to be sure the principles of good customer service are always applied to all professional interactions. As that article points out, though, the best principles of customer service may not be the values that the management is promoting, nor are they going to allow the library to stay inside their safe, comfortable, non-offensive zones. Being a little edgy is good, it provides some necessary authenticity and it allows you to venture out into the teritory where people actually are - there are still some topics you won't be able to engage directly with, like endorsement of political candidates, but you can provide the forum for other people to do it and fact-check them with your super-powerful research skillz without crossing lines into advocacy that will make The Management stick your head on a pike as a warning to others.
The other part of that equation is that the thing that Management or the more experienced staff you have think X is...well, it might be what they thought...or it might be something else entirely that's pretty obviously X once you actually see it at work and can manage to get Management and others to see it in the same light. When there's new stuff involved, or new methods for teaching stuff, there's always a tension between the people who don't see the value in it because it's nontraditional and/or they don't want to make the effort to understand its value and the people who are sold on the new thing or method and want to have it integrated, or at least discussed and the good bits taken into the institution's knowledge. Which means sometimes you need to say "The goal posts we have been using as our metric need to change, so that our instruction can become better", other times it means insisting that a method of instruction that's popular and easy to present is entirely wrong for the audience it is being presented to and will hinder their learning instead of facilitating it. Sometimes it means taking a look at yourself and saying, "What has worked for us in the past will no longer suffice. We must adapt." There's also the time when you say there's no way we can get people to use our tools and resources if our vendors insist on screwing us over by making them difficult to use and not grouping them all in one nice place. And then there are the times where you shout profanities and incindiary langauge at a rights cabal when they do something boneheaded that will screw over all their customers, including you. Most often, though, it means observing what is going on around you and seeing how it can be adapted to your purposes, or listening to the person that either has already done it or has the inkling of the idea that needs more fleshing out for it to become that awesome new thing that will help everyone out.
The way things were are not the way things are, and a very important part of staying relevant to the population around us is in delivering our services in a way they understand and appreciate, and in making our services relevant to their lives. If that means offering programs on how to make games, as well as time to play them, or in giving instructions, in plain English, on how to make it so that Fancy Wismo the kids/grandkids got for you works and is easy to use, then that's our thing. If it's helping someone who's been a manual laborer for the last twenty years navigate computerized job application sites so they can get back to being a manual laborer, that's us, too. If it's informing and advocating for our continued existence because the people need us, far more than they ever notice, that's what we're got to do, too. We must be current, we must be relevant, and we must be in the forefront of people's minds, something they will turn to just as often as they will our competitors, if not more. We can cede certain ground to things that are more convenient and that will do that job satisfactorily enough, but we have to then be able to explain why we're better than them when accuracy, depth, or their grade matters based on what information they pull up.
-----
Speaking of stupid decisions, when HarperCollins said they would force ebooks bought by libraries through Overdrive to expire after 26 checkouts, would make sure that library borrowers couldn't use their reciprocal agreements to access each others' collections, and do the equivalent of union-busting by saying they don't want to play ball with consortia and groups buying content for each of their members, they not only invoked the Can of Whoopass Rule, they gave libraries several easy and stark reasons why to stop playing that game entirely. DRM in libraries is stupid, and the collections budget should be spent buying things that will not expire and will not allow a publisher to change the terms of the agreement, including nuking the content already paid for, whenever they damn well please. Not to mention that having to frak around with three pieces of software that might talk to each other on a good day is insanely hard on everyone. Better to grow your own material and showcase it DRM-free and easily accessible than to keep shelling out bucks for extra copies of crap that's not actually yours. While doing that, it's also time to let the people engaging in these limiting practices know just how much their ideas suck and that they should reconsider.
There are people working on possible solutions, like a royalty fee assessed to a public library each time an electronic item is checked out that would make things work far better than any sort of DRM solution that cripples devices, libraries, and readers.
There are also people working on statements indicating what will be the minimum acceptable standard for digital content like eBooks, however they choose to name them, eBook user's bill of rights or the reader's bill of rights for digital books or what other thing they choose to do. And then it's important that once those principles are articulated, they stick through libraries choosing to adopt those ideas and implement them in tehir own practices. In volume.
----
When it comes to instruction in technology, a lot of people are very interested in making sure that young people and teenagers don't expose too much of their lives to the kind of people that want to prey on them. Places like Beyond Netiquette are devoted to the intersection of the tween/teen/twenties age group, their technological lives, and how parents can help foster good decision-making and an awareness of where the Rubicon is. Part of that, though, is being able to recognize when teens are savvy and when parents are going into overkill or helicopter mode. Teenagers are often intensely private people in their real dealings, especially with regard to parents and other well-meaning adults, so some of that extends on-line. They also get reminders of what can happen if the circle of trust is broken - cyber-bullying or suicide accounts, while awful to read, do impart a lesson that teenagers are listening to (unlike that cheesy drink driving video foisted on them in an attempt to scare them straight). It's a lesson parents can learn, too - knowing which things are signs of problems and a need to find a way to get involved is a good start, but the way getting involved is gone about can be just as crucial. We already know that there are real consequences for digital acts - but we also need to remember that there are ways that work and ways that don't when it comes to trying to help teenagers with their lives, digital or physical.
-------
That's all, folks.
The question of whether the library profession needs a list of core competencies that all librarians must be able to do or risk dismissal. I think that's a good idea, and I like the options being laid out for those librarians not up to core standards either have the opportunity to improve themselves and demonstrate competence or be sent onward to their next profession. The upgrading of skills to meet job requirements is something we do in our work with users all the time (especially in public libraries), so it makes sense that we should also have to experience it from the user's perspective when we have to upgrade our skills so that we can still be relevant and useful. Many of the commenters there mention that accountability needs to start in graduate school. So many people sas:y "You need a Master's for that?" - the perception that what librarians do is not sufficiently rigorous for graduate school work. (That perception is entirely wrong, but the things that really make us worthwhile are often invisible to those who see us.) We can probably retool a lot of our coursework and requirements so that those people coming out of the school have been vetted and forged to the point where the users can feel the expertise at work. Hopefully, this will help bridge the divide between what we learned in school and what's actually getting done in our workplaces, so we don't have shell shock arriving once the full schedule is unveiled and the job shows us all the things we didn't learn in school. We need to have core competencies and technological skill requirements. We also need to have classes in the practical spects of the library profession, like dealing with flashers and unjamming copiers. That also runs up a question of how one manages to gently dissuade people who are either in the schooling or thinking about the profession to stay out if they're not going to be competent or committed to the work. Someone who believes librarians shouldn't be technologically competent, for example, should probably be steered away from becoming one, because they're demonstrating a lack of a core competency and an unwillingness to learn it. We should be happy to embrace technology that allows users to keep their library barcodes on their smartphones and the corresponding technology that allows us to scan those barcodes, much like how we really needed to embrace things like the OPAC when they came to us. That said, security concerns are always valid ones, so we need to pair our enthusiasm with knowledge, like how to spot a keylogger that's been attached to your system, for example, in case someone wants to steal keystrokes from users of the public library and take their banking information.
All in all, though, we need to be able to articulate to prospectives what kind of job they should expect if they get into the field, and be able to do so in a way that will make it obvious whether or not that prospective wants to continue on their current career track. Sometimes reading what professionals are saying to newly-minted graduates can help them make the decision to stay on or abandon at the beginning of the ride. Or at least give them an idea of what will frustrate them when they join the profession.
------
A redesign of San Jose Public Library's website gave control and trust to the librarians and ditched jargon in favor of simple areas with words that normal people use. Reduction of jargon is always a good thing - it makes it easier for our users to get into the process of finding the things they're looking for. If they progress to the point where they need advanced capabilities or refining the search to focus and get rid of tangents, then we can reintroduce the jargon, along with the concepts, that will make them power-users. Trusting the staff with the website (and updating it with some of the latest useful tech, like RSS feeds) is also an excellent thing - staff can generate content at a far faster rate if given permission right up front to go and create, and will do so on things they find interesting, which will make for better posts and community involvement, as well. Giving them that trust always make management nervous, because they want to be sure the principles of good customer service are always applied to all professional interactions. As that article points out, though, the best principles of customer service may not be the values that the management is promoting, nor are they going to allow the library to stay inside their safe, comfortable, non-offensive zones. Being a little edgy is good, it provides some necessary authenticity and it allows you to venture out into the teritory where people actually are - there are still some topics you won't be able to engage directly with, like endorsement of political candidates, but you can provide the forum for other people to do it and fact-check them with your super-powerful research skillz without crossing lines into advocacy that will make The Management stick your head on a pike as a warning to others.
The other part of that equation is that the thing that Management or the more experienced staff you have think X is...well, it might be what they thought...or it might be something else entirely that's pretty obviously X once you actually see it at work and can manage to get Management and others to see it in the same light. When there's new stuff involved, or new methods for teaching stuff, there's always a tension between the people who don't see the value in it because it's nontraditional and/or they don't want to make the effort to understand its value and the people who are sold on the new thing or method and want to have it integrated, or at least discussed and the good bits taken into the institution's knowledge. Which means sometimes you need to say "The goal posts we have been using as our metric need to change, so that our instruction can become better", other times it means insisting that a method of instruction that's popular and easy to present is entirely wrong for the audience it is being presented to and will hinder their learning instead of facilitating it. Sometimes it means taking a look at yourself and saying, "What has worked for us in the past will no longer suffice. We must adapt." There's also the time when you say there's no way we can get people to use our tools and resources if our vendors insist on screwing us over by making them difficult to use and not grouping them all in one nice place. And then there are the times where you shout profanities and incindiary langauge at a rights cabal when they do something boneheaded that will screw over all their customers, including you. Most often, though, it means observing what is going on around you and seeing how it can be adapted to your purposes, or listening to the person that either has already done it or has the inkling of the idea that needs more fleshing out for it to become that awesome new thing that will help everyone out.
The way things were are not the way things are, and a very important part of staying relevant to the population around us is in delivering our services in a way they understand and appreciate, and in making our services relevant to their lives. If that means offering programs on how to make games, as well as time to play them, or in giving instructions, in plain English, on how to make it so that Fancy Wismo the kids/grandkids got for you works and is easy to use, then that's our thing. If it's helping someone who's been a manual laborer for the last twenty years navigate computerized job application sites so they can get back to being a manual laborer, that's us, too. If it's informing and advocating for our continued existence because the people need us, far more than they ever notice, that's what we're got to do, too. We must be current, we must be relevant, and we must be in the forefront of people's minds, something they will turn to just as often as they will our competitors, if not more. We can cede certain ground to things that are more convenient and that will do that job satisfactorily enough, but we have to then be able to explain why we're better than them when accuracy, depth, or their grade matters based on what information they pull up.
-----
Speaking of stupid decisions, when HarperCollins said they would force ebooks bought by libraries through Overdrive to expire after 26 checkouts, would make sure that library borrowers couldn't use their reciprocal agreements to access each others' collections, and do the equivalent of union-busting by saying they don't want to play ball with consortia and groups buying content for each of their members, they not only invoked the Can of Whoopass Rule, they gave libraries several easy and stark reasons why to stop playing that game entirely. DRM in libraries is stupid, and the collections budget should be spent buying things that will not expire and will not allow a publisher to change the terms of the agreement, including nuking the content already paid for, whenever they damn well please. Not to mention that having to frak around with three pieces of software that might talk to each other on a good day is insanely hard on everyone. Better to grow your own material and showcase it DRM-free and easily accessible than to keep shelling out bucks for extra copies of crap that's not actually yours. While doing that, it's also time to let the people engaging in these limiting practices know just how much their ideas suck and that they should reconsider.
There are people working on possible solutions, like a royalty fee assessed to a public library each time an electronic item is checked out that would make things work far better than any sort of DRM solution that cripples devices, libraries, and readers.
There are also people working on statements indicating what will be the minimum acceptable standard for digital content like eBooks, however they choose to name them, eBook user's bill of rights or the reader's bill of rights for digital books or what other thing they choose to do. And then it's important that once those principles are articulated, they stick through libraries choosing to adopt those ideas and implement them in tehir own practices. In volume.
----
When it comes to instruction in technology, a lot of people are very interested in making sure that young people and teenagers don't expose too much of their lives to the kind of people that want to prey on them. Places like Beyond Netiquette are devoted to the intersection of the tween/teen/twenties age group, their technological lives, and how parents can help foster good decision-making and an awareness of where the Rubicon is. Part of that, though, is being able to recognize when teens are savvy and when parents are going into overkill or helicopter mode. Teenagers are often intensely private people in their real dealings, especially with regard to parents and other well-meaning adults, so some of that extends on-line. They also get reminders of what can happen if the circle of trust is broken - cyber-bullying or suicide accounts, while awful to read, do impart a lesson that teenagers are listening to (unlike that cheesy drink driving video foisted on them in an attempt to scare them straight). It's a lesson parents can learn, too - knowing which things are signs of problems and a need to find a way to get involved is a good start, but the way getting involved is gone about can be just as crucial. We already know that there are real consequences for digital acts - but we also need to remember that there are ways that work and ways that don't when it comes to trying to help teenagers with their lives, digital or physical.
-------
That's all, folks.
