B: describe and compare organizational settings in which information professionals practice

Section 1. Interpretation of competency

Most people experience the library through their local public library. However, many libraries exist to hold unusual collections or fit the unique needs of a particular population. The umbrella term for these is special libraries, and each type has its own characteristics in terms of management, policies, budget, and user base.

Many of these exist to support a particular industry or research discipline. For example, law libraries are found in the public, private, and academic sphere as well as in the prison system. They are structured according to the needs of the user base, and also at times limited by the stakeholders and circumstances well outside of the library.

Law libraries sometimes have a dual role to serve the needs of legal professionals as well as the incarcerated and members of the general public. This combined model is more common in smaller states, such as New Hampshire which has one public law library at the State Supreme Court House, a very small library at the only state prison, and an attorney membership program at the state university law library. Neighboring Massachusetts, on the other hand, has 15 Trial Court Libraries that are open to the public, about a dozen prison libraries, and the private Social Law Library in Boston. In both places however many smaller libraries are found in individual courts and private law firms.

The funding structure, accreditation requirements, federal regulations, and client base all determine what the management structures looks like for these different types of libraries, what types of policies are used, and what the personnel requirements will be. Public law libraries and academic law libraries will have very different types of collection needs but might find that they are prone to the same type of government-imposed cutbacks while libraries at private law firms might feel shocks from the private sector that the others do not. Small law libraries, public law libraries, and firm libraries are typically staffed by MLIS graduates and paraprofessionals while an academic law librarian will likely also like have a law degree.

While many people still envision a librarian as someone who works with a publicly circulating collection of text-based media, information professionals have always worked across a wide spectrum of institutions. As Townsend Kane (2018) asserts, “a librarian’s job is all about information” p.57 and this has remained constant throughout time. It is important to keep this foundational idea in mind as the library changes with shifts in users needs and technology. As Hirsch (2018) describes “information professionals must not only understand the nature of information today but must also remain cognizant that information, and the ways users access, use, and even create information, will dynamically change in the future.” (loc. 488). It is important to be aware of the myriad of settings that information professionals can work in and to look for new ways that librarians can market their skills.

Section 2. Reference to supporting evidence

Evidence One. Academic Assignment.

Valuing the Information Professional. This essay focused on academic librarianship and made some comparisons to local public libraries.

My first piece of evidence is an essay that I wrote for the course Information & Society (INFO 200). It focused on academic librarianship and made some comparisons to local public libraries. I examined data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as the company Libqual+ which revealed interesting regional trends for New England. For example, New Hampshire has the highest per capita number of librarians, a fact which astonishes most, although this might be reflective of the fact that many people, including me, chose to live in NH and commute to Boston. Evidence of the need for a sufficient salary for information professionals locally within the state of New Hampshire is also discussed, particularly a news story of detailing the difficulties one small town faced when they tried to hire a new library director.

I chose this as a piece of evidence since it demonstrates my ability to use available data to research the different settings that librarians work in. There are differences in the types of skills that are needed in a public library versus an academic one; this creates differences in employment and compensation trends.

Evidence Two. Academic Assignment.

Paddock Music Library Review of the Paddock Music Library at Dartmouth College.

This paper was written for the course Music Librarianship – Resources & Information Services in Professions & Disciplines (INFO 220-11). I review the Paddock Music Library at Dartmouth College. As a special academic library for students studying music, it contains research books, scholarly journals, and sheet music, as well as a separate room with equipment for listening to recorded music. The sheet music collection is divided up into two separately shelved sections, one for full scores the other for smaller practice scores.

The librarians who work in the Paddock library are specialists in both musicology and information science. There are MARC tags for cataloging music that are not used by the average cataloger and there are ongoing developments in the way that music is classified that these librarians need to be aware of.

I chose this paper to show competency in this area because it reviews a special library in detail. It examines the setting that the information professionals there work in. This shows knowledge in this area of librarianship, and an understanding of how a library collection really needs to be tailored to suit its users’ needs.

Evidence Three. Academic Assignment.

Library as Publisher Slide deck of an environmental scan and SWOT analysis examining the emergent field of Library as Publisher.

I created this presentation for the course Information Professions (INFO 204). I chose this as evidence since it shows a new area that librarians are working in, the emergent field of library publishing. Although this goes by different names at various libraries and research centers, I feel it represents one of the most important employment developments in librarianship since the widespread adoption of databases necessitated the new position of Electronic Services Librarian. In the presentation, I review research about the state of the industry in a SWOT style analysis and present some conclusions about where the field is headed. I feel that this demonstrates competence in this area. My ability here to identify new employment trends shows a significant level of understanding regarding the myriad ways that librarian skills can be adapted to new roles.

Evidence Four. Academic Assignment.  

MLIS Career Paths In The Library And Beyond Essay that examined how skills from academic librarianship might transfer to other industries.

Employment prospects across the span of one’s career are an important consideration for MLIS students today. Library jobs occur in many settings, but the skills that employers are looking for are often similar. This exploratory essay examines several studies that looked at the educational requirements, skill sets and salaries of librarians in higher education and discusses how these skills might transfer to other industries.

I chose this as evidence of mastery of this competency because it demonstrates the ability to assess the skills needed to work in traditional librarianship and then be able to explain how those skills might transfer to other job settings.

Section 3. Application of competency

Understanding this competency helped me to recognize the need to build and maintain a skillset around ongoing professional development activities. This includes cultivating an awareness of how seemingly small changes and new technology can open up new roles for librarians and alter existing ones. These changes in and of themselves can have an impact on the settings that librarians work in with many services now offered electronically rather than face to face settings and print-based books. At the same time, having the ability to recognize that some basic needs are the same from setting to setting is key to remembering what the field is really about.

Section 4. Bibliography in APA format

Hirsh, S. (2018). Preface. In S. Hirsch (Ed.) Information Services Today: An Introduction.  Kindle Edition. (315-495). Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield. 

Townsend Kane, L. (2018) Careers for the Information Professional. In K. Haycock, & M.J. Romaniuk (Eds.), The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts, 2nd Kindle Edition (57-69). Santa Clara, CA : ABC-CLIO.