Association "divisions"

RE: Association "divisions"

2008-10-31T04:57:57Z

"Is there a librarian in the house?"

This is brilliant. I'm going to blog about it.

RE: Association "divisions"

2008-10-30T19:05:16Z

Generally not in the "practical" sense of the type of professional development libraries need ... but a large issue for a profession that needs to recast itself to reflect its existence outside of libraries.

A parallel can be seen in health care. Nurses seldom practice outside of institutions such as hospitals ... doctors can and often work on a consulting basis. Hospitals go, which is to say offer new services, where their medical staff (doctors) drag them.

The "biggest professional issue" in librarianship, IMO, is whether or not librarians can take advantage of new technologies and practices and impose them on their libraries. Are they to be doctors or nurses?

This means that standards must be set by librarians, not by those institutions (or those representing said institutions) they work for.

RE: Association "divisions"

2008-10-30T01:37:19Z

I appreciate your distinction between library association and librarian association. This is helpful. And so, professional development for library staff is actually in conflict, you say, with ALA's need to represent libraries to the people who support them? Seems a paradox to me...

RE: Association "divisions"

2008-10-29T18:27:11Z

Heh. The long-standing ALA (etc.) problem has been ... who do they represent? ALA is (officially!) not a professional organization; it is an educational association that purports to tell people about libraries and provides library staff with a forum.

Otherwise, it would need to be a librarians association.

This makes it hard for it to define professional standards ... lower standards may actually help the libraries.

The transformation to quasi-professional association began, in my opinion, with the opening of ALA to the recent graduates of Dewey's first library school. They, within a few decades, repurposed ALA but only to the extent that it's become a "pushmi-pullyu" (if you recall your Doctor Doolittle).

RE: Association "divisions"

2008-10-20T20:57:16Z

Update: I joined both ALA and LITA over the weekend.

Association "divisions"

2008-10-19T15:29:59Z

As part of the the open discussion following the LITA 2008 program, Andrew Pace brought up the idea that "new" or "recent" or otherwise "social media" librarians sometimes also avoid working with formal associations (such as ALA, LITA, etc.) and talked about the discourse around "to join or not to join".

This reminded me of the interview with Marilyn Mason, where she talked about the avoidance she's noticed that some new professionals have to the administrator or director roles in libraries.

Personally, I'm guilty of both. I've been so frustrated with what I've seen from afar (ALA, etc.) that I haven't felt like I wanted to join. Same with library director role. In our interview Marilyn explains this as a dis-interest in power. When she came up in the field, she said, 'we knew that we had to have the power in order to get things done' (or something like that).

Pondering...