The Bruised Edge

Is there a commonality that all librarians share?  Some would say that instruction is the commonality in librarianship.  I disagree.  My choice would be the Five Laws of Library Science (adjusted to account for non-book materials).

To boil down the five laws even further, one might say that a service-orientation is the central component of librarianship.  This service-orientation doesn’t have to be manifested in face-to-face interactions, though.  In fact, I’d suggest that the majority of the points of service in a library do not involve a librarian or library staff member interacting with a patron.  I don’t say this to diminish the importance of the work that reference librarians do, but just to note that anytime a patron interacts with any of the library’s systems (classification system, website, catalog, desktop computers, etc.) there is a point of service.

In light of this, all teams (departments) in a library are public service oriented.  If a patron sits down at a computer in the library and doesn’t find the software she is looking for (or the system doesn’t work as expected (within reason)), there is a point of failure.  If a patron goes to find a book on the shelves and can’t find it because it has been misshelved, there is a point of failure.  If a patron searches the library’s website (or catalog) but doesn’t find the information she is looking for because of the quality of the markup or content (or cataloging), there is a point of failure. Yes, reference librarians can help with all these points of failure (or find someone else who can help), but I’d wager the majority of patrons don’t seek them out.  We just expect things to work and move on if they don’t.

It’s interesting that librarians don’t (in my experience) measure the public service aspects of all the teams in the library (e.g., often we measure number of books reshelved, but not the patrons’ ability to successfully locate materials on our shelves… or, we measure the number of times we evaluate and reorganize a website, but not how many clicks it takes a patron to access a resource).  I’m sure this is, in part, because we choose to measure what is easier to measure (the low hanging fruit). But, since what is measured is often what’s valued, perhaps we’re doing ourselves a disservice?  That’s fodder for another post.

So, how do we know we are doing a good job?  One way is certainly the anecdotal evidence gleaned from day to day interactions with our patrons.  Another way is to ask people who have these interactions about their impressions (and encourage them to share their experiences). Another, still, is to observe patron behaviors through logs of their activities (click counts, time spent on a page, etc.)  One might also find useful information about patron needs and behaviors in the research of our field (often a mix of the first three methods).  Another way, of course, is to do usability studies and/or to conduct surveys asking the patrons about their experiences.  All these measurements in my opinion are individually flawed but work well in unison to give us an adequate (though still incomplete) picture of our patrons.

We don’t expect every librarian to have experience in all these information gathering activities.  The fifth law of library science is that the library is a growing organism.  This means there is something organic about it and, I’d suggest, that like any organism it has different parts — each serving different purposes to the whole.  We don’t expect reference librarians to pour through web server logs analyzing their contents (or to catalog books as they come into the library).  That’s because there are a certain set of skills required for this.  Similarly, there are certain skills required to teach a course, conduct a reference interview, or prepare for a RAP session (planned one on one instruction).

One might make the case that anyone can learn these skills (suggesting, perhaps, that there isn’t as much skill involved as one would think), and it might be that anyone can learn to conduct a successful reference interview or write a program that integrates the library’s proxy server with the electronic resources on the library’s website.  If this is the case, then, we truly are all generalized (e.g., any one person in the library can do the job of any other).

I don’t think that is really the case though.  Sure, there are some activities that can be learned (and there are probably groups of activities that share commonalities — suggesting opportunities for cross-training), but to do something well takes a lot of time and practice.  The difference between a student programmer and a professional one is significant (in the amount of time it takes for a project to be completed and in the result that each produces).  I would think that the same is true of teaching.  There is a significant difference between a student teacher fresh out of school and one with ten years of experience (and activity in her field). Don’t we as librarians want experts assisting our patrons, creating our cataloging records, selecting books related to a particular field of study, creating our websites?

Sure, given time, many librarians (though I don’t think all) could become adequate instructors or scripters (or catalogers or acquisition librarians).  What concerns me is that in the meantime, there must be a prioritization of these activities (which means, by necessity, a deprioritization of other existing activities).  This is certainly within the rights of a library (to adjust priorities accordingly).  One might decide that instruction needs are more important than the needs of patrons using the library’s website (or trying to access the library’s special collections, many of which may be unprocessed and unavailable to patrons at the current moment).

To be sure, there is a balance that must be struck.  I worry, though, about what gets deprioritized and also the message that it sends to librarians whose main activities don’t involve instruction.  It seems to devalue these other activities, obscuring even further the important role that they play to the patrons’ ability to find the resources that they need.  I used to say that cataloging was the foundation that libraries stood on.  When I moved into more of a systems role I saw the systems with which patrons interacted as being paramount.

I can see how reference and instruction librarians see the world through instruction tinted glasses.  I think what we need perhaps, though, is not a generalist’s approach to library science but better communication between the different areas/responsibilities within the library (and better assessment of how our patrons’ needs are being met).  We need a more organic library that responds to all the service needs that patrons have as they interact with our people, resources, and systems.