Ten Reasons Why Professional Librarian is an Oxymoron

My, my, aren’t we the optimist
Points for admitting he’s trolling upfront, but here’s the deal.

Last week, I just worked with a class of 20 education program grad students, fresh from a school law class who could not, in their own words, describe the word “copyright.” Forget, “public domain” and “fair use.” This is stuff educators use daily too, whether they know it or not.

Six months before that, I watched this same, very tech-savvy class struggle with searching ERIC and created a list of “relevant” web pages to their profession using, well, kind of crap, actually. The other eye-opener? I did this assignment, looking specifically for resources for one student who has a field I don’t have as much background information in. It took me 15 minutes to create a professional webquest of resources for multicultural math. It took him two hours to find a hodgepodge of blogs, games, articles and some really good resources for *general* math.

Librarians Have No Monopoly on the Activities They Claim – Well, duh. That’s not our job and in fact takes AWAY from the job we’re supposed to have in passing along information. Given the right time, tools, and a modicum of reading skill almost everyone can perform up to moderate car maintenance and repair. A good mechanic is going to be able to do it faster, more effectively and with less stress on everyone’s part. Part of what you pay for is that expertise and – dare I say it?! – professionalism. Math Guy is always going to be able to crunch numbers better than I can. So what? I can find tools to help him do his job more effectively, thus saving us all time. Discovering copyright basics involves a little time on the internet and a modicum of information savvy. So what? That looking up process takes time the teachers could be spending on students, professional development or just on having a life. It’s easier and more efficient just to shoot me an e-mail or post me something in Facebook.

Librarianship is Too Generalized to Claim Any Expertise – No shit, and if we did, again, we would not be doing our jobs! Only librarians in specialty libraries can afford to become subject specialists. The rest of us live in multi-disciplinary land and need to adapt to whatever question the patron has about what they want. Information is a huge area. We can’t afford to be niche.

I’m getting to the rest.