What does the public think about librarians /librarianship as a profession?

Let's Discuss:

-let 's share our views* let’s discuss our profession

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You are invited to participate in this discussion series called “Let’s Discuss” Just send us a paragraph or two in response to series of questions that would be coming from time to time. All submissions will be published.

Type your response in the comment section below, or ayoalonge@gmail.com Thank you! We look forward to reading your responses...

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Discussion 1:
What does the public think about librarians /librarianship as a profession?

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DANIEL EKECHUKWU, Arik Air, Lagos said..

Change is the a thing of the mind. It is a spark that has self discovery as a fore runner. Library officer, Librarian, or Information Scientist or whatever name we call ourselves, it should be a product of Change. An adage says “ good market sells itself”. We don’t really need the government, fund(s) or foreign bodies to help us put our profession in the “light of time” here in our country. All we need is CHANGE. Change of attitude, change of mentality, change of pride. One quality that almost killed librarianship from 12^th to the late 18^th century was her conservativeness. Yes, library in those times were highly placed. Owned by Kings, Lords, Dukes etc.. but it was for personal gain and was highly restricted. But for the introduction of Paper and other technological advancement we would still be in that age. What am trying to say is that we are being too conservative and also find it difficult to “Share the basic with the base”.

Librarianship is a noble profession. It is a profession we should be proud of anytime but it should be CHANGE reactive and liberally based. In other words, we should be carried and also carry others along with us in the pursue of the effective acquisition, organization and equitable dissemination of Information bearing in mind the five (5) laws of librarianship as propounded by S. R Ranganathan.

It is important to note that public believe what they see, but if we can correct what they see through the CHANGE of our behavior towards our profession and also towards our colleagues in the same profession, then they will believe who we are, take us for whom we are and will want to venture into the profession.

Finally, I may be young in the profession but One thing that I know we cannot do without is helping ourselves in providing adequate information for self development, Building the upcoming ones through the organizing of programmes aimed at imbibing the tenant of librarianship in them , changing our ethnocentrical mentality, creating awareness of what we do, promoting our image in the rare and making our presence to be felt even in Aso Rock.

Always tell people this, You may own a Library but it doesn't make you a Librarian.

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• Elizabeth Akinbulumo from Abuja said…

A twenty-first century documentary film entitled “The Hollywood Librarian” is a good narrative of this discussion. The documentary film is a look at librarians or librarianship through a film. The idea emanated from a woman librarian called Ann Seidl who in 1995 when she was going in for her postgraduate program in library science, like many of us librarians faced conflicts between the way she sees herself as a librarian, and the way people perceived the profession. She was faced with “if” to forge ahead or opt out for another career.

The term “librarian or librarianship” means different things to different people. In my remote village the old man without any educational background in-charge of the church collection is called the “librarian,” and I am called a librarian too, of cause both of us are perceived as librarians. Fun isn’t it

Well, my suggestion to the profession is that the old library was passive, asleep, a reservoir or cistern – getting in but not giving out. While the new library today is active, a living fountain of good influence with the librarian occupying a field of active usefulness second to none. Librarians should “shout” this out, if you do not say “I am here, no one will ever know that you are there.

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Ayo Onatola Luton England said...

Dear Moderator and colleagues

Foremost, it is unbelievable that only a few responses have followed the poser that touches so much on our existence and continuing relevance as LIS professionals. I am therefore writing to make a brief comments by way of my personal contribution in response to the poser "What does the public think about librarians?"

Sincerely speaking, Librarians are supposed to be seen as Knowledge Managers, Documentalists, Record Managers, Information Managers and Research Facilitators. What a fluid profession, we belong to? To be able to perform well any of the above roles in the present global information village, the 'professional' requires to possess some degrees of resilience, courage and exploratory ability with continuing desire for new knowledge acquisition. It calls for good IT literacy beyond the erstwhile traditional routine of performing library operations.

Let us first ask ourselves, "how do we as librarians portray ourselves to the public - through our services delivery to the academic communities, schools and society that our libraries serve? A proper tackling of this poser will be correlated by the way the public should expect to take us.

By virtue of our training, we are supposed to be privileged of direct or easy access to relevant, cogent and authoritative sources of information and with opportunity for ready contact with useful information materials from all media - journal, books, electronic, etc, which can be made available to our respective library users in support of their learning, teaching, research and entertainment. Another question is "how far have we taken advantage of this position of ours as a great strength for being relevant to the objective and operations of our parent institutions?"

In summary, the way the public will perceive us will be dictated immeasurably by the extent we are able to exhibit our resourcefulness as professionals to reckon with as reliable/competent partners by other stakeholders, wherever we find ourselves for involvement in policy issues, decision making and what have you.

Finally, librarianship, apart from the paper qualification obtained, calls for greater exploits geared towards keeping abreast of development in the profession and plugging in to the evolutionary trends and advancement in the profession brought about by the digital age, by the concerned professionals.

Thank you.

Ayo Onatola

Luton, England.

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What does the public think about librarians /librarianship as a profession?