Capabilities of the 21st Century Library Information Professional

I was lucky enough to go the ALIA Information Online conference recently and heard the conference keynote address by James Neal, University Librarian Emeritus, Columbia University and Vice President/President elect, American Library Association.  The title of his talk was The 21st century information professional: chaos breeds life!

The premise was the information sector is experiencing radical change and we are in are in a state of chaos.  However chaos breeds life and our information profession is full of life. We are seeing radical shifts in professional staffing.

Jim Neal says we need a commitment to risk and experimentation and to collaboration.  However we continue to maintain redundant, inefficient library operations, ageing service paradigms.  He then quoted Winston Churchill, “to improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.”

His speech was a hour long and you can use the link above to see a video of it in full.  However below I have transcribed a small section of his talk (any mistakes are mine) which focused on the skills and capabilities that as 21^st Century Information Professionals we should have or be working towards.

We are seeing more and more professionals with diverse academic backgrounds in libraries.  Because of the changes in the roles and responsibilities we have as information organisations we need individuals coming in to the work of the library who bring different types of skills and backgrounds and academic credentials. We have this wide range of professional assignments. 

We are seeing support staff and students taking on the types of jobs librarians did in the 1970s and we are building much more messy, fluid organisational structures.  This challenges our values and our outlooks and our styles of informational professional organisations.  It changes the way our community understands and recognises us, respects us.  It drives our ability to remain organisationally relevant and to have impact.

So I’m often asked, “Jim when you interview a person for a job, what are you looking for?”

I’ve made a list:

CAPABILITIES OF THE 21^ST CENTURY LIBRARY INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL

•       Deep Subject, Process, or Technical Expertise

•       Deep Service Commitment

•       Commitment to Research and Development

•       Commitment to Assessment and Evaluation

•       Communication and Marketing Skills

•       Project Development and Management Skills

•       Political Engagement

•       Resource Development Skills

•       Commitment to Rigor

•       Entrepreneurial Spirit

•       Commitment to Collaboration

•       Commitment to Social Justice

•       Leadership/Inspirational Capacity

                                                                                                                 

This is the library Informational Professional of the 21^st Century and clearly no one individual is going to bring all of these characteristics and qualities to their assignment in the library but this package of capacity is defining in terms of our ability to be successful as library organisations and it’s what I think builds the robust, energetic and successful library organisation going forward.

I think the bottom four are the ones I have put much more focus on in terms of evaluating everyone who comes into my library organisation.

Is there a sense of entrepreneurship, risk taking?  Are they committed to not working in isolation but in collaboration with their colleagues within the local library and on a regional and national basis?

Do they have a heartfelt, a soulful commitment to social justice, to the core values of our profession?

And do they have the potential to be leaders and do they have that inspirational capacity?

To me these are fundamental qualities going forward for the 21^st Century.

We need to think carefully about these core elements? Why did we join this profession?   Do we have a clear sense of mission? What do we want to accomplish? What is our self vision? It’s not to catalogue 20 books tomorrow or to answer ten reference questions well.  Although that’s important.

It’s what is our career going to accomplish?  What difference are we going to make?  What tools enable us to be effective?

What will be our career path?   I ask interviewees what is the next job you are going to apply for?

Being a powerful professional voice – how will we serve the profession and make a difference in our communities?

Our academic credential is history.  Therefore our it's about our continuous improvement, how will we go on and advance and grow, become better at what we do.

Kelly W