Deconstructing librarianship

One of the bonuses of spending this week at the Eureka Leadership Institute is the opportunity to spend time with my fellow mentors, who bring diverse perspectives and backgrounds but share a common passion for our profession.  OVer lunch yesterday a conversation with Joan Frye Williams (consultant/futurist/librarian) and Cheryl Gould (of Infopeople, the organizers of the Institute  and no relation although we joke about it) about a workshop Joan is developing on the Restructuring Reference.

Joan talked about her view that what librarians call "reference" is really a bundle of activities that we need to desconstruct in order to find the best way to delvier that particular service to our communities.  For reference the activities might be seen as

• "Directional" - either helping people find there way to somewhere (the restrooms, the biographies, etc.) or helping people find a particular item ("do you have this book and where do I find it?")
• "Coaching" - helping people become more effective problem-solvers/information seekers (this would include what we traditionally call "information literacy", teaching people to use our online resources, etc.)
• "Advising/Consulting" - recommending reading material or resources, recommending solutions to a particular need or question
• Research - actually digging out sources and finding information on behalf of the customer

As Joan points out, we try to provide all of these activities at the "reference desk", when the customer would probably be best served if we consider each individually and figure how best to provide each in terms of staffing, location, design of the access points, etc.

The conversation got me thinking about the language we use for other core professional activities and how the terms we use obscure the richness and importance of the activity.

For example we talk about "programming", but in my mind (as I've said to some of the staff) that is really a code word for the critical activities of providing lifelong learning opportunities and finding ways to connect the library with the community.

"Collection development/management" has an "order fulfillment" element (all of the logistical systems that go into meeting customer demand from standing orders for bestsellers through the ILL and holds processes) but it also has a "discovery" element of creating those serendipitous connections between people and books that they might never have otherwise found (so it includes the use of professional judgement to select materials that might be outside the mainstream, as well as thinking about how we make those items available so people can discover them...the "connecting people and ideas" part of our PVLD vision).

That fairly brief conversation with Joan and Cheryl over lunch has helped me see what we do with new eyes....and I think will have a big impact on how we approach the design of PVLD's services going forward.  That alone is worth taking a week of my time to participate in Eureka!