Roy Tennant decided to toot his own horn during a LITA-L thread about which tech trends to watch. Roy brought attention to an article he wrote over 10 years ago titled “The Most Important Management Decision: Hiring Staff for the New Millennium.” The article mostly focused on hiring people for digital libraries, but I do think Roy is right that his article still applies. In fact, it may apply even more as technology is evolving more rapidly now so focusing on a specific skill (or set of skills) when looking for a new employee for a digital library developer or other library technology position is even more dangerous. The traits Roy focused on in 1998 include:
- The capacity to learn constantly and quickly
- Flexibility
- An innate skepticism
- A propensity to take risks
- An abiding public service perspective
- An appreciation of what others bring to the effort and an ability to work with them effectively
- Skill at enabling and fostering change
- The capacity and desire to work independently
You can read the article to see why Roy thought each one of theses were important. While I think all of these are important, the two that I want to focus on today are “a propensity to take risks” and “an abiding public service perspective.” I think way to many librarians (and by extension libraries) are not willing to take risks. Without taking risks the profession is not going to go very far in this day and age. This does not mean abandoning core values and role, but it does mean to think outside of the box and to try new things. Libraries need to be willing to fail at some things and learn in the process. If we wait for new technology or methods to be perfect, we will be waiting so long that we will risk losing our relevancy. Again, this does not mean if it is new and shinny and full of buzz words that it is automatically the greatest thing ever and we most solely focus on it, but we have to be willing to spend some of our time experiment and trying new things. We also have to be willing to admit when something isn’t working and learn from our experiences. I know finding time to experiment can be tough, especially in small libraries), but if we want to give better customer service than experiment we must.
This leads me to the second item: “an abiding public service perspective.” With today’s library environment where many libraries spend a significant portion of our budgets on licensed content, libraries must add value to this information. This is not a new concept, but it is becoming more of a challenge as those outside of the library are under continuing budgetary pressures. As a librarian was quoted in a recent Tech Therapy podcast on Libraries vs. IT Departments questioned:
The real problem is that libraries are uncertain about their future role. The majority of academic libraries are in a particularly uncertain position as we have invested so heavily in licensed electronic materials that we never own, and to which we offer little added value. If all the library does is license materials, why not fold it into the institutions purchasing department.
I do not at all think folding libraries into purchasing departments will happen, but librarians should understand that if all we are do is providing licensed contain, we can be replaced. The Biology department can purchase their own biology database – all they need is a purchase order. Libraries create value-added services to this content and we must be able to articulate what that is. When everything was print it was more obvious the ways libraries did this to the outsider. Now, we have to market what these value-added services are. This leads me to Roy’s point about higher techies with an abiding public service perspective. Libraries need people at all levels, including techies, that understand public service. We need them to design, implement, and maintain systems with our patrons in mind – not just how the technology works. We need techies that will design things like LibraryFind and VUFind. For those libraries who choose to acquire software from traditional library vendors, we need more development on programs such as Primo and Encore. These programs that enable us to add additional value beyond the traditional reference role to the information we provide access to (licensed, freely available, or purchased) are one more tool that librarians can build upon to remain relevant in the future.
