What IS a librarian

More than a decade ago, Sarah Pritchard, then director of libraries at Smith College and now university librarian at UC Santa Barbara, shared the following message with the LIBADMIN list. It remains my favorite summary of what it means to be a professional librarian.

Damon Hickey, The College of Wooster

Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1993 14:15:22 -0400
From: "Sarah M. Pritchard"
Subject: What IS a librarian?
Sender: Library Administration and Management
To: Multiple recipients of list LIBADMIN
Reply-to: "Sarah M. Pritchard"

While generally I have been in agreement with the comments of those in favor of keeping the term "librarian," I have some additional thoughts in response to Damon Hickey's challenge to discuss what it is -- if anything -- that different segments of the "library" profession have in common.

Part of the very problem in library science and library schools is that other academic and professional disciplines do not believe that there is a solid theoretical or methodological underpinning to our profession, thus wonder why we need a graduate degree instead of some technical/vocational approach. We have not done a very good job in our schools of combatting this, and it leads to school closings, trivialization of library research, and endless whiny defensiveness cloaked as lofty "status" arguments.

In fact there are many broad conceptual issues and frameworks that we should all have in common, whether we are children's, public, small college, medical, research university or corporate librarians. Until we understand and promulgate these we will continue to have internal fragmentation and external disregard.

Here are just a few of the things I have in mind:

librarianship as the study of recorded communication (regardless of format);

how to understand the different purposes of communication (education, leisure, creativity, information, public debate, etc.) nature of communication formats as an issue in itself;

how to choose among formats, user behaviors and differences among user groups -- here's where you can study individual groups such as children or engineers, but what must be stressed is that we study users and the ways they get and use informational, educational, and creative communication;

how to analyze and communicate with diverse communities of users intellectual freedom -- including issues of access, privacy, public policy (and you better believe this applies even in the corporate world) economics of the publishing, vendor and related industries and how these affect access, organization, format, delivery, etc.

systems analysis for processing information -- that is, don't just say "we need automation;" know how to analyze operations and task flow to operate a library or information service of any general kind. This is a combination of management and technology skills.

structures of information and communication in different fields and specialties -- not the picky details of each field, but the "meta" structural approach -- what are the different kinds of ways that information and creative communication evolve in various social and professional contexts, and how do we navigate among them library and information services as part of broader social institutions of education and communication

That's a start. We are in a field that blends the disciplines of communication studies, the sociology of knowledge, education, public policy and management.
It seems to me that those cut across the mundane tasks of our daily work in a variety of settings. If all we want to do is order books or search databases, then it's quite true that we don't need a master's level program. We must have specialties, of course -- but we absolutely must generalize from those to take the broader view of the profession, and library school is the time and place to begin (you can always learn new reference tools on the job, but how often do you debate philosophy and social policy?).