Challenging the "Jacks of All Trades but Masters of None" Librarian Syndrome

George J. Fowler, Samantha Schmehl Hines, George J. Fowler, Samantha Schmehl Hines

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787569058
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Librarianship may be said to be facing an identity crisis. It may also be said that librarianship has been facing an identity crisis since it was proposed as a profession. With the advent of technology that lowers barriers to the access of information, the mission of a library has become indistinct. This volume will explore the current purpose of librarianship and libraries, how we become "Masters of our Domains", develop expertise in various elements of the profession, and how we extend outward into our communities.

“OTHER DUTIES AS ASSIGNED”: ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPACT OF INSTRUCTIONAL TASKS

David Brennan and M. Elizabeth Davidson

ABSTRACT

While the important role of information literacy instruction as a central service in academic libraries is well observed in scholarly literature, there has been little examination of the impact of the rapid increase of instructional duties on practicing librarians, whose traditional instruction duties have expanded or whose positions have not traditionally required leading a classroom. The study in this chapter explores librarians’ perceptions of the impact that increased instruction tasks have had on their day-to-day and long-term goals, perceptions of the support they receive in performing their instructional duties, and what types of instruction training they have received throughout their career. The ways in which the addition of instruction duties for librarians have been perceived by the librarians themselves as they strive to increase support for instructional services without impacting the library’s ability to continue to perform traditional public and technical services functions is discussed as a marker of the future needs of the field and the necessity of recognizing professional strain.

Keywords: Library instruction; information literacy; resilience; burnout; administration; management

INTRODUCTION

Historically, the duties of the academic librarian have varied by the mission, type and size of the institution, and the needs and focus of the population served. While larger institutions typically support highly specialized library positions, small to mid-sized institutions require librarians to be a jack-of-all-trades, with a span of increasingly complex duties outside of their primary job descriptions. The rapid rise of technology and ease of access to uncurated information on the Internet has added complexity to a librarian’s traditional role. With the role of information gatekeeper and curator uncertain at best or removed at worst, library instruction has become a principal response to the challenge of teaching critical research and information evaluation skills, and the rapid expansion of instructional duties and changes in information literacy pedagogy has librarians struggling to keep pace with changing information landscapes and curricular needs. While this practice may answer the call for higher accountability by librarians in student education and retention, it places increased demand on the time librarians have to commit to their primary duties and raises the risks of burnout in the field (ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee, 2016). The struggle has been compounded by the consistently decreasing budgets, which have pressured academic librarians to expand their instructional roles while maintaining their original workload (ARL Statistics, 2013a, 2013b; Schonfeld & Long, 2014).

What then is the response to expanding instruction duties? One way is to treat it as no different than any other additional duty – the concept of “resilience” has been long promoted in the library community when resources such as time and budget are constrained, creating a sense of pride in perseverance and encouraging library workers to maintain service levels or status quo in the face of challenging circumstances that cannot be changed on the individual level. Resilience is even one of the planks in the American Library Association’s multi-year The Libraries Transform Campaign: “ALA Center for the Future of Libraries works to identify trends relevant to libraries and librarianship” (“Libraries Transform: Trends,” American Library Association, n.d., byline), establishing it as a central concept to the future of how librarians self-identify. As pointed out by Galvin, Berg, and Tewell (2017), the risk of celebrating the resilience of libraries and librarians in trying times is that it establishes resilience as the new normal rather than treating it as a temporary solution. The impact that expansion of instruction duties has on the effectiveness of librarians as they progress through their profession should be examined by thorough analysis and addressed with systemic changes.

Our study explores the perceptions of academic librarians who are in college and university environments and are experiencing the effects of increased emphasis on information literacy education. In particular, our interest was on the ways in which librarians have personally experienced these transitions as they provide increased support for instructional services while continuing to perform traditional public and technical services functions. We were interested in whether our respondents’ job descriptions included some iteration of instructional duties; what their actual instructional duties entailed; whether librarians had perceived an increase in instructional duties over time in their current positions and over time during their library career; and whether they felt adequately supported and prepared to perform their instructional duties.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The centralization of information literacy as a vital academic library service is reflected in the historical increase in instructional expectations for librarians. In 1973, there were no instructional components listed in reference librarian job advertisements; however, by the 1990s all academic reference jobs included a requirement for instructional skills and many advertisements included new behavioral skill requirements in written and spoken communication (Lynch & Smith, 2001). The increase in the prevalence of an instruction component in job advertisements following the development of the “information literacy” concepts (Zurkowski & National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, 1974) and the “teaching library” (Williamson, 1971) has only continued in the past few decades (Clyde, 2002). This follows trends in the broader information environment such as the introduction of subject-specific databases and the expansion of access to these resources in educational and professional settings (Ariew, 2014; Cowan, 2013; Reyes, 2006). Increasingly, academic library job candidates are required to create and deliver a presentation on an instruction-related topic at the time of their interview; this includes technical service position candidates who have not traditionally had the same instruction expectations as reference or information literacy/Instruction Librarians (Avery & Ketchner, 1996; Wang & Guarria, 2010).

In today’s information-rich climate, faculty have come to regard the instruction of information literacy as one of the college library’s central duties and the most important service that librarians provide (Schonfeld & Long, 2014; Wolff-Eisenberg, 2017). Likewise, Cox and Corrall’s (2013, p. 16) encompassing literature review found that “practitioners increasingly assert that teaching is no longer a specialization within the profession, but central to all library work.” Further, library administrators perceive traditional instruction and presentation skills as vital to fulfilling the library’s instructional role on campuses, taking precedence over the newer skillsets of instructional design and knowledge of educational technology (Shank & Dewald, 2012). Librarians are actively involved in generating classroom materials and resources, and in designing classes to support their instruction practices. These tasks can require significant time commitment and would benefit from pedagogical knowledge and training (Albrecht & Baron, 2002; Bowles-Terry & Donovan, 2016).

Despite all this, there is no strong evidence that librarians are educated in the tasks of instruction or information pedagogy. Sproles, Johnson, and Farison (2008) found that of the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) programs in their study where a reference class was required to earn the degree, only “66% of students are exposed to the concept of information literacy instruction in a required reference course” (p. 206). In addition, while there had been an increase in the availability of classes in information literacy instruction over time, there were no classes that addressed the entirety of the ACRL’s Standards and Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators (ACRL, 2008). Their findings indicate that though library students might receive a conceptual introduction to information literacy, even those who opted to take the class on instruction were not introduced to the complete set of skills they need to most effectively convey information literacy education. These findings are corroborated by Westbrock and Fabian (2010), who found that librarians were more likely to learn of and train in the ACRL’s proficiencies in situations such as mentorships, self-education, or on-the-job-training rather than during their library school education.

Unspoken but highly implied in many of these studies is the sense of unpreparedness felt by librarians in the field who are required to teach as a part of their job but received little or no guidance when earning their degree. In spite of this, there is little literature addressing their lived experiences. In Walter’s (2008) study, librarians expressed repeatedly that the mission creep of information literacy instruction created personal stress as they tried to meet the demands of both instructors and librarians. Houtman interviewed eight librarians in 2010 about their teaching experiences, and the interviewees at multiple points discussed their lack of preparedness and the challenges it presented...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• “Vital Assets”: Libraries as Partners in Community Development
• Inside-out Library Services
• Where the Users Are: Reconsidering Information Provision through Roving Models of Service
• The New “Jack of All”: The Evolution of the Functionality and Focus of the Academic Librarian in New Spaces and New Roles
• Responding to Change: Reinventing Librarian Identities in the Age of Research Mandates
• Academic Librarian and Practitioner Collaborative Research Model: A Diagrammatic Metaphor
• “Other Duties as Assigned”: Academic Librarians’ Perceptions of the Impact of Instructional Tasks
• The Role of Public Librarians in Supporting Physical Activity
• Index