What IS a Librarian? Yet More from Library Camp 2014

What IS a Librarian? I asked at the session which I facilitated at Library Camp 2014. Of course, being a librarian I knew what I was, and the jobs that I did, and the various roles and activities that other librarians do. My reason for asking was to try to find the refined essence of librarianship, the one thing that can be explained to people to show the special skill that a librarian has to have. Like a builder constructs buildings, a medical doctor treats ailments, an accountant looks after finances. There are many nuances to their jobs, but that is their raison d'etre, their reason for being, so what is a librarian's definitive description?

I hoped by the end of the session that we would come up with a sentence or short paragraph that can the define the main quality of librarianship that can be used on websites, campaigns, in literature, letters to MPs, anywhere that the real job of a librarian needs to be explained. In the end we came up with the thought that maybe one snappy definition was not necessarily enough, the phrasing needed to be suitable for the intended audience, but we only had a scant 45 minutes to pursue a basically philosophical argument. We did come up with a number of ideas that certainly identified the threads that make up the tapestry of librarianship, and some good sentences.

I did not do a statistical survey of the jobs of the 15 or so people that came along to the session, so I can't scientifically say that they were a randomised sample of library staff, but I do know that some were qualified librarians, others were not. Some worked in public libraries and others in academic libraries, but they all agreed about the following aspects of librarianship.

• Librarians are a conduit of Knowledge
• Librarians support and facilitate Knowledge creation in the community
• Librarians engender empowerment

Those three statements on their own are powerful thoughts. They demonstrate that librarians deal with the flow of  knowledge from one individual to another. We all thought that there was an educational aspect to librarianship: a librarian doesn't know all the answers, but knows where to find them and can teach other people to do the same thing (information literacy). We realised that there is a spiral of knowledge creation, where a librarian is a key component: a librarian helps someone discover knowledge, the individual gains understanding and then can impart that knowledge, which is collected and distributed by a librarian. This bit really could do with a diagram, I need to think about this.

Meanwhile, here are some of the statements that were constructed:

"Our business is helping people access information"

"A librarian serves and empowers users and communities by sharing, facilitating and supporting access to knowledge and information"

"A librarian is a conduit of information who supports his/her users, and through sharing and facilitating this knowledge, thus empowers them"

"A librarian is a facilitator who supports the user and shares knowledge with information to empower and server their appropriate audience"

Well, I think there is enough there to show that a librarian is a Knowledge Broker. It is not all about books.

It's about anything that can contain knowledge: people, computers, images, maps, data, objects and artefacts, anything.

I promised the people who came to my Library Camp session that I would blog about the session and perhaps write something about it, so I am sorry that it has taken me a while to get around to it, but now I have I am inspired to go into more depth, and write that article.

Best practices in Children's Mobile Libraries: Stock procurement

Someone has to make the decision of what to put into a children's mobile library and as can be expected, it varies according to the authority. In some library authorities the operators advised a library purchasing team about which books or items were popular and went well in their vehicles. Some purchasing teams were made up of children's librarians, but in others they were not. In some authorities, the operators had no say at all, library stock being centrally purchased from a Library wholesaler. It is perhaps no surprise to discover that the services where operators were able to advise the acquisitions teams about which books their customers liked were more successful at inspiring children to read. 

The number of requests for specific books, or even books of a certain genre, was much greater in the vehicles where the books were centrally purchased by staff who had no contact with the vehicles, staff from the vehicles, or even other children's libraries. I was on one vehicle that had no dinosaur books, which really disappointed one little boy. I also visited a CML which had no horse books, and that really disappointed a young girl. On the other hand, I found two different CMLs where the operators had a lot of say in which books to stock and they were really enthusiastic about the books, getting books off the shelf to show me, saying things like "have you seen this one?" "this one is new, I really like it", " this is great book, and the kids love it". It is that sort of enthusiasm which inspires children. I also found two vehicles on which children told me they preferred to their nearest static libraries because the CMLs had more "books that they like". There was also the vehicle that visited a tiny rural village school. The teachers were so grateful for the service, because their children were "voracious readers" and the village was so isolated it was not easy to get to another library, and as one of the children said to me, it would have been really expensive to buy all the books she read. Those children revelled in the variety of books that the CML stocked.

Unfortunately, not even children's librarians get it right. There was one CML which I visited where the books were purchased by the children's team, who no doubt were guided by general trends and new exciting authors. The operators outlined three problems with their stock, and they felt that the children's librarians were not listening to their suggestions. One problem was that there was not enough non-fiction in stock, only a tiny shelf-full. The librarians apparently were of the opinion that reading fiction develops empathy and understanding, which is no doubt a good way to introduce children to feelings and a safe way of handling them. However, they forgot that libraries are store houses of knowledge as well as stories, and sometimes it is the knowledge that inspires children to read, or helps them learn out of the classroom. The second problem was sometimes new books would turn up, which were "trendy", but the customers of that vehicle ignored them. That new series was just not to their taste. It shows that local populations have their own opinions and a book which does really well in one community may not in another. The third problem was that librarians who come onto the vehicles to read stories from a "storybook collection" frequently chose really inspiring books, that simply were not available for loan, so children who wanted to read the book they had just heard, which happens frequently, could not borrow the book.


Now, why is all this important? I feel that I have been rambling a bit with this blog, and it is a little while since I have been thinking in the terms of logical arguments. The point is that to motivate and inspire children's reading, to give them the reason to read, you must offer them things that they will want to read, however puerile, however trashy, or even however highbrow. Books about films, or television characters, or comics, or graphic novels, or about ballet or boxing, are all a way of getting children hooked on the printed word, and gives them practise and motivation to start understanding those symbols we use to convey messages. CML operators spend a lot of time talking to children about books and their likes and dislikes, and therefore know what their particular customers want. Operators who like the stock themselves, and who have had a hand in choosing it, are more likely to know which book is just right for customer "X", and which books will be borrowed, and will have the enthusiasm to "sell" a book, or an author to a child. therefore operators recommendations for stock should be heard and implemented.

Choice and variety is also important, which sounds like a contradiction to getting the right books for the right child. I can only explain the phenomena of a large selection of the right books for one community with the memory of one boy I met, taking ages browsing at the shelves standing, looking, perplexed, being hurried by the teaching staff, sighing longingly, "There so much to choose from". His problem was not that he couldn't find anything he liked, he had found everything he liked.  

The revolutionary power of reading

On Friday I watched the latest film about Che Guevara (Che: part one, produced by Steven Soderbergh). I suspect that his role was glamorised for dramatic purposes, and it was based on his own recollections, so the feeling I got of him being a great hero, good man, reformer and someone who cared deeply for humanity and all round good egg, may have been a ploy of the film maker. However, there is a scene which shows Che in the middle of the Cuban jungle, at the end of a days march, sitting down away from the rest of the other men, reading a book. Another man comes up to him, one of the recruited peasants, and Che tells him to do his maths homework.

At the revolutionaries' camp a school is set up to teach peasants to read and write, because the revolution is not won just by the sword. the reforms that Castro and Che wanted included giving the working people of Cuba the power of knowledge, the revolutionary power of reading. if you can read, you can overthrow the establishment. This part of the film should be shown in schools all over the country.