ePortfolio — Jenny Olivera — Spring 2009

Competency B

Compare the environments and organizational settings in which library and information professionals practice

Information professionals can work in many different professional settings. In addition to public libraries, there are academic libraries and special libraries, as well as public and private archives. There are also digital libraries and archives, which may or may not be associated with a physical institution. All of these share the goals of preserving and organizing information and making it available for either public or private use, but each institution is different in the ways these goals are met, which means they put different demands on the information professional.

Public libraries are usually part of the city or county government, and serve the general public. Their collections and the services they provide are dictated by the needs of the demographic. Some books are ordered based on patron requests, and items that don't circulate get weeded from the shelf. Similarly, the information professionals working in a public library are focused on meeting the often diverse needs of the public. This can range from basic to in-depth help on the computers, to simple book searches, to complicated reference questions. Public library workers need to be flexible and versatile.

Unlike public libraries, special libraries are focused one subject area, such as arts, music, health, or science and technology libraries. These are often private libraries associated with businesses or institutions. Librarians in special libraries need extensive knowledge in their library's particular specialization.

Academic, or school libraries share some of the diversity of subject matter of public libraries, but their demographic is narrower. Most of the patrons are students and faculty. The collections are designed to meet the needs of the students. Often this is research for papers and projects. People working in academic libraries need to be prepared to assist students with their schoolwork for a variety of classes. In addition, teachers will often place materials on reserve for their classes.

Unlike libraries, the materials in archives tends to be unique, and much of it is unpublished. Security is of a much higher concern because so much of the collection is irreplaceable. Information professionals working in archives, both public and private, spend more time on collection development than those in libraries. They assist patrons by retrieving materials, but do very little in the form of reference help that takes up so much time in libraries.

Digital libraries and archives share many of the qualities of their physical kin, but with some significant differences. The user is on their own for most of their browsing and searching, so the organization and layout of the Web site is important. The times when the information professional does interact with the patron, it is done through text, which lacks much of the cues people are used to using in face-to-face interactions. The virtual librarian may have to work harder to seem as welcoming in online interactions as they would in the real world.

The first piece of evidence I chose is an evaluation of a public library. The purpose of the assignment was to do an observational analysis of the library and evaluate how well the library was meeting the needs of its community, and to offer possible suggestions for improvement. Before this assignment, I had only looked at libraries from the personal view point of my own needs and requirements, and had never really considered the broader picture of the library's demographic. One thing I learned is that public libraries are a series of compromises. There is no perfect solution that works for every group of patrons, and compromises must also be made because of limitations such as space, geography, and budget. For example, the library I observed had recently moved to a larger building to make room for its growing collection and an increase in patrons, but the larger building has had the unfortunate effect of making the library seem less welcoming and friendly. To make up for this, the reference librarians have one or two people at a time assigned as "rovers," who wander the floor and see to the needs of the patrons who don't come up to the desk.

Another side effect of the larger space is how spread out the staff are. The reference and circulation desks are far enough apart that the staff at one desk doesn't know what is going on at the other desk. The children's area is isolated enough that it has its own reference desk and staff. Technical services staff only get seen at the rare times they come out onto the floor. While this arrangement means people aren't getting in each other's way, it also means that communication between the departments is poor. The staff need to make a conscious effort to pass along information. When this doesn't happen, patrons can end up being directed from one desk to another until they find someone who can tell them what they want to know. The effect on the staff has been one of isolation.

The second piece of evidence is a comparison between a live reference interaction and a virtual one. While the virtual world presents information professionals with a new set of challenges as well as opportunities, at its core the job is not much different from the one librarians are used to. Virtual interactions lack the intimacy of face to face interactions, but what I found from this assignment was that a librarian can be just as friendly and welcoming over the internet as in person. The challenges are somewhat similar to the ones the rovers face in the larger facility; in both cases the librarians need to take an active role in engaging with the patron. However, while the rovers can use body language, expression, and tone of voice, the internet librarian has only text. In this environment librarians need to be very aware of the words they choose.

The third piece of evidence looks at an archival setting. For my class on vocabulary design, we had to visit an institution that has a collection that uses a controlled vocabulary or thesaurus of some kind. I visited the Livermore Heritage Guild, which collects and preserves historical artifacts, including newspapers, photographs, and legal records, as well as physical items. The controlled vocabularies they use were created and maintained for many years by a single person, and the Guild is now in the position of trying to pick up where she left off. While the Guild is open to the public, the focus of the people working there is mostly on the collection itself. Unlike a public library, which uses a standardized organizational system, the Heritage Guild is faced with the problem of maintaining a unique and ever-evolving system.

Although at their core the three environments of the physical library, the virtual library, and the historical archive are all about the preservation and presentation of information, each of the three presents information professionals with unique problems and opportunities. Communication and organizational skills are needed in all three, but each has its own balance and emphasis.

Evidentiary Items