Prelims

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CHALLENGING THE “JACKS OF ALL TRADES BUT MASTERS OF NONE” LIBRARIAN SYNDROME

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ADVANCES IN LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION AND ORGANIZATION

Series Editor: Samantha Schmehl Hines

Recent Volumes:

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ADVANCES IN LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION AND ORGANIZATION VOLUME 39

CHALLENGING THE “JACKS OF ALL TRADES BUT MASTERS OF NONE” LIBRARIAN SYNDROME

EDITED BY

GEORGE J. FOWLER

Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

SAMANTHA SCHMEHL HINES

Peninsula College, Port Angeles, WA, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78756-904-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-903-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-905-8 (Epub)

ISSN: 0732-0671 (Series)

List of Contributors

About the Authors

David Brennan is Head, Technical Services and E-Resources Librarian at the Hoover Library, McDaniel College. He received a BA in Communications from Gannon University, and his MLS from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to coming to McDaniel, he was Collection Development/Digital Resources Management Librarian at the George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library, Penn State Hershey, and the Electronic Services Librarian, Clifford E. Barbour Library, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. His experience and research has concentrated on library operations and management, collection development, systems, and electronic resources. He has presented at the Charleston Conference, the Pennsylvania Library Association, the Medical Library Association, and the Towson Conference for Academic Libraries. His complete CV can be found at: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3698-6794

Mark Dahl is currently Director of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He has served in academic libraries for 20 years as a systems librarian, associate director for technical and digital services, and director. His professional interests include digital library initiatives, student engagement with library resources, and the future of the liberal arts college library. He has presented and written extensively on new and emerging roles for academic libraries. In recent years, he has held leadership roles in the Orbis Cascade Alliance consortium. He holds an undergraduate degree in history and journalism and master’s degrees in history and library/information science.

M. Elizabeth Davidson is Head of Public Services at Hoover Library, McDaniel College. She received her BA in International Studies in 2008 and her MSILS in 2011 from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Prior to her work at McDaniel, she served as Library Director at Mitchell College in New London, CT. She is interested in effecting positive change in the library field from all levels of employment and has contributed to the podcast Break Room Chats, a resource from LLAMA’s New Professionals’ Community of Practice. She has presented at the Connecticut Library Association Annual Conference, the American Library Association Annual Conference, The American Library Association Midwinter Meeting, and the Towson Conference for Academic Libraries. Her complete CV can be found at: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1902-4179

Julie Biando Edwards is Associate Professor at the University of Montana. In 2017, she was awarded a Fulbright to teach in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of Botswana. She holds an MSLIS from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an MA in English from the University of Connecticut, and a BA in English from the University of Montana. She is the author of numerous articles, the co-editor of Beyond Article 19: Libraries and Social and Cultural Rights (Library Juice 2010), and the co-author of Transforming Libraries, Building Communities: The Community Centered Library (Scarecrow 2013).

Nina Exner has more than 20 years’ experience as a Practicing Librarian. As the Research Data Librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University, she supports research literacy, data literacy, and managing research studies. She concentrates on graduate student and faculty support through teaching, data consultations, and collaboration with sponsored research professionals. Her own research interests center around the organizational and information effects on developing researchers.

Ann Glusker is Librarian/Research & Data Coordinator for the Pacific Northwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, based at the University of Washington Health Sciences Library. She has also worked as a Medical Librarian at Group Health (now Kaiser Permanente-Washington), as a Reference and Consumer Health Librarian in the Business/Science/Technology department at The Seattle Public Library, and as the Data Request Epidemiologist at Public Health – Seattle & King County. Her current interests include research data management, public health data informatics, health numeracy and literacy, and open data and data literacy.

Matthew R. Griffis is Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Library and Information Science, where he teaches the foundations of librarianship, archival studies, research methods in library and information science, and the history of books and print culture. His research interests include the library as place, libraries as community spaces, the history of public libraries, and the history of library buildings. He is particularly interested in how libraries as built environments influence actor perception and behavior and how library design can support a library’s role(s) and purpose(s).

Amy Hatfield Hart is Assistant Professor of Library Science and Metadata Specialist at Purdue University Libraries. Working in Research Data @ Purdue Libraries, Amy provides metadata development, data management planning, data curation, data consultation, data quality control, and education. As a member of the Purdue University Research Repository team, she designed a metadata schema specifically for the repository inclusive of preservation metadata for long-term preservation. Amy is also Co-Chair of the DataCite Metadata Working Group. Amy received her Master Degree in Library and Information Science from Indiana University in 2000. Her previous academic position was at the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Ruth Lilly Medical Library as Digital Initiatives Librarian.

Noah Lenstra is Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Department of Library and Information Studies, where he is also an Affiliated Faculty member in the Gerontology Department. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 2016. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Public Library Association’s Initiative to Advance Health Literacy and Consumer Health Information in Public Libraries. His research focuses on how public libraries support public health through programming and partnerships. Past work has focused on how public libraries support digital literacy among older adults. His website is http://www.noahlenstra.com/.

Elizabeth A. Martin is Head of Professional Programs with Grand Valley State University Libraries. She leads a team of six faculty librarians and one professional librarian who is contracted to work for the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Elizabeth earned her MLIS from Wayne State University and has been in the profession since 1998. She has worked in archives, school, public, and academic libraries. She has been in leadership roles for most of her career. Elizabeth resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband and two teenage sons.

Lynn A. Sheehan recently retired from Grand Valley State University (GVSU) after serving as Interim Associate Dean, Research and Instructional Services and Co-Interim Dean, University Libraries for the past two years. Prior to filling interim roles she was the Head of Liberal Arts Programs, leading a team of eight faculty librarians, also at GVSU. She earned her MLIS from the University of South Carolina in 2000 and worked in academic, public, legal, and school libraries since embarking on a career in librarianship.

Introduction

This volume is of particular interest to me and is timely in its attention to the seemingly ever-changing role of libraries of all stripes. I am excited to be a part of a work that incorporates a variety of possibilities into one corpus that encourages us to reflect on what it means to be a library and how do we best accomplish that.

These chapters challenge the modern tradition of status-quo librarianship. Beyond not being your grandfather’s or your mother’s library, to many librarians, the roles suggested in the following chapters may make you think it isn’t even your library. Some chapters are scans, others are deep-dives, covering primarily academic and public libraries, but with ideas that can be considered for school and special libraries.

For future reflection, if you agree that any or all of these roles are appropriate for your library, how do they relate to the modern interpretation of our primary purpose of providing access to information? If any of these roles resonate with you, but don’t fit into the current interpretation of the library frame, what does that mean? Does it mean the new role doesn’t belong? Do we need to look at the current frame from a new perspective? Or, do we need to create a new frame for what is a library?

This book can be a call to action on four levels. First, at the personal level, what can I learn and incorporate into my planning, actions, and thinking from these chapters? Second, at the institutional level, which of these align with our situation and how can we take advantage of the opportunities we have? Third, for library schools, how can we prepare librarians for these current and future roles in a way that creates appropriately resilient professionals with skillsets that can be adapted to our evolution? Finally, at the professional level, it is time for us to consider, phenomenologically, what a library is, why it exists, and then determine which roles are most appropriate for it?

I hope that, at a minimum, this volume makes you sit back, take a moment, and reflect on what roles librarians are masters of.

George J. Fowler

Volume Editor

University Librarian

Old Dominion University