Describe and compare different organizational settings in which information professionals practice

Introduction

Information professionals practice in a variety of organizational settings. The most recognized of the profession, librarians, can work in four types of libraries (public, school, academic, and special) that have a multitude of sub-settings (ALA, 2007). Each of these settings require the librarian to operate in unique ways to serve their particular user populations. Non-library information professionals, like those working for museums, must also accept this responsibility.

These criteria are often determined by user needs, institutional necessity, and obligation to personnel. Libraries are becoming less referenced-based and developing more into creative and collaborative places (Lippincott, 2015), meaning users want to do more than simply gather information from published sources. Appropriate learning programs must be created and provided for this end.

Museums often publish the catalog to their holdings online for their users’ research or browsing needs. Each institution’s specific requirements for these databases will determine which cataloging scheme it uses, which will define the search options available for users.

And finally, quality leadership is essential for information environments seeking to develop and thrive with their ever-changing users. To understand this goal, librarians must define for themselves what leadership is and realize that it is different from management.

Learning programs in public libraries

Above all, users need librarians willing to meet them where they are. This way, there is no reason for the latter to fear any loss of control over the former’s changing approach to resource catalogs (Kenney, 2015). Instead, librarians can see it as a chance to rebrand the library as a creative classroom, a place of mindfulness and user-directed planning based on research (Stephens, 2014). These criteria in hand, libraries can create learning programs, or collaborate with other professionals to provide the hands-on lessons users ask for.

Food enthusiasts have realized to keep up with their community’s information trends, they must move on from simply collecting cookbooks and recipes online to doing food preparation. Vlogging (video + blogging) on social media platforms have become the most popular way to share food-related ideas. Libraries –particularly public ones- should establish for their branches what makes an effective food learning program in order to meet the intensifying appeal of honing one’s cooking skills.

Schemes used for museum online catalogs

Catalogers choose the scheme they feel appropriate for the collection they are tasked to organize, though sometimes they may create a bespoke one to better fit the stakeholders’ or intended users’ needs. This process most often becomes contentious over how many and which elements to include in the scheme, because extra details can mean less search results, which can quickly discourage users, and more time and money required to build the catalog. However, some users need search options that quickly give close to what they need, and institutions who want to create such a system may have the required funds.

Most museums follow these guidelines while implementing schemes for their online catalogs. These schemes can include only some of the elements of an established scheme, or adhere fully to one recognized as an industry standard, like Dublin Core, so it can also be cross-reference-able with catalogs and archivists from other institutions. Thus, information organizations must decide their own criteria for online catalogs specific to their resource capabilities and user needs.

The third Library, Leadership and Management Association’s (LLAMA) Foundational Competency

The LLAMA has established 14 Foundational Competencies to support leadership and management development in libraries (ALA, 2016). The third, team building (personnel), defines leaders as those who rally others to a common goal through communication, self-initiative to uphold the team’s mission, and support for each other’s successes. For each library’s leader to achieve these things, however, there must be a site-specific reinterpretation of how management relates to leadership.

Though hiring supervisors often think they are the same, managers are control and results-oriented while leaders motivate and inspire their teams toward collective goals (Albright, 2018). This distinction must be made in establishing leadership criteria so that there could be no mistaking which staff programs are developed for maintaining the status quo or promoting change management.

Evidence

INFO 200 – Information Communities – Learning and programming opportunities

This was a blog post for INFO 200, Information Communities, on how libraries, businesses, and government organizations collaborated to create food learning programs across multiple public library systems. I discussed how because libraries were beginning to be less of a space for reference and more like a lab for doing (Lippincott, 2015), resources could be diverted from collecting cookbooks and culinary magazines to creating programs for addressing gaps in food literacy and meal availability. A chef developed cooking classes for children to be taught at libraries and farmers markets. A city’s Free Library created the Culinary Literacy Center, teaming up with a nonprofit to teach a four-day training course to those who want to teach others how to cook. A state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development gave a $59,000 grant that contributed to a mobile Food Service Creation Station for a County Library System’s eight libraries.

Libraries shouldn’t launch programs carelessly, however. Criteria must be met for safety, accessibility, and social responsibility; children will be protected, patrons of all capabilities will be able to participate, and allowing community, government, and local business involvement will strengthen and expand such ventures beyond a simple library program.

This blog post is evidence I understand how separate public libraries aim to achieve similar goals through different means according to resources and user needs.

INFO 281 – Metadata for Digital Databases – MARC, MODS, and VRA

This was an assignment for INFO 281, Metadata for Digital Databases, where I compared three museums’ online catalogs’ search functions to determine which schemes they had implemented, then discussed how well such catalogs could respond to user needs. Between a natural sciences museum, an Asian art museum, and an air and space museum’s websites, the first had the most advanced search options. Its scheme has 15 elements that made it similar to Dublin Core, and uses values found in the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), which means it can be cross-referenced with catalogs and archivists from other institutions. The Asian art museum’s catalog has 10 elements that looked to be culled from the Visual Resources Association (VRA) cataloging scheme, but uses values that are not AAT-compliant. The air and space museum’s also has only 10 elements that are nearly identical to the Asian art museum’s.

These differences are likely due to the museums’ perception of their users’ needs. The natural sciences museum researches and stores their artifacts, and thus could expect their patrons to be interested in their findings, and so catalogs their information to be accessed more easily. The Asian art museum and the air and space museum only have basic searches and browsing categories because they do not expect patrons to want to do more than see the artifacts’ images and basic information.

This assignment is evidence I can discuss and analyze the differences between museums’ approach to user needs by the schemes they use for their online catalogs.

INFO 204 – Information Professions – Librarian leaders and their LIS literature-identified skills

This was an infographic I created for INFO 204, Information Professions, to discuss leadership in libraries. Analyzing peer-reviewed articles, I saw the common theme was how leadership and management have been treated as the same though information professionals in library settings have expressed that they were not. The most colorful explanation to this was from a small sample of South Asian librarians who said “the central element of a manager is cruelty” while “a leader is never cruel” (Ashiq, 2019). This article and others then discussed their sampled librarians’ favored leadership competencies. In a Southeast Asian country, librarians in general believed leaders should have good customer service (Goh, 2018). Asian academic librarians felt leaders should develop staff loyalty through support and professional training (Huynh, 2017), communication skills to build creativity, innovation, and collaboration (Wong, 2019), and vision and innovation to anticipate staff development (Ashiq, 2019).

Each region and library type championed different competencies in their leaders, but the populations researched in those papers do agree that leadership style is only as effective as it promotes change management (Albright, 2018), understandably towards remaining ready and available for users’ evolving needs.

This infographic is evidence I can compare and contrast libraries by their opinions and experiences concerning leadership that could speak to how well they welcome and adapt to organizational transitions.

Conclusion

Taking the courses recommended for SJSU’s Special Librarianship track has brought me to understand a broad menu of information environments and many of their less-significant, but still important details that figure into their day-to-day operations. I believe my ability to compare and contrast information centers even by these more modest features shows I can bring much value in diverse perceptions to organizations I work in in the future. To maintain this edge, I intend to frequent the ALA’s webpage for Public Programs Office Programming for library programs the ALA offers, subscribe to the Library of Congress’s BIBFRAME site that boasts conversion tools between schemes, and join the ALA to volunteer for its LLAMA project teams.

References

Albright, K. (2018). Leadership skills for today’s global information landscape. In Hirsh, S. (Ed.), Information services today: an introduction (2nd ed., pp. 465-475). Rowman and Littlefield.

American Library Association. (October 3, 2016). Leadership and Management Competencies. Retrieved by September 9, 2022, from http://www.ala.org/llama/leadership-and-management-competencies. Document ID: 1c1ef45d-de79-a9f4-5565-33fd59b705ad

American Library Association. (March 29, 2007). Types of libraries. Retrieved by September 9, 2022, from https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/careers/librarycareerssite/typesoflibraries. Document ID: 8a214212-9885-b7c4-c90c-97f8e2bc0c2b

Ashiq, M., Ur Rehman, S., & Batool, S. H. (2019). Academic library leaders’ conceptions of library leadership in Pakistan. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 24(2), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.22452/mjlis.vol24no2.4

Goh, S. B., & Kiran, K. (2016). A Comparative Study of Leadership Competencies of Academic Librarians in Malaysia. International Journal of Information Studies and Libraries, 3(2), 1-8. http://www.publishingindia.com/GetBrochure.aspx?query=UERGQnJvY2h1cmVzfC81MDY1LnBkZnwvNTA2NS5wZGY=

Huynh, T.T. (2017). Library staff recruitment and retention for managerial positions in Vietnam. Information and Learning Sciences, 118(7/8), 354-363. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-05-2017-0048

Kenney, B. (2015, September 14). Where reference fits in the modern library. Publishers Weekly. 262(37). https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/68019-for-future-reference.html

Lippincott, J. K. (2015, February 26). The future for teaching and learning: Librarians’ deepening involvement in pedagogy and curriculum. American Libraries. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/02/26/the-future-for-teaching-and-learning/

Stephens, M. (2014, May 15). Library as classroom. Library Journal. 139(9). https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/library-as-classroom-office-hours

Wong, G. K.W. (July 2019). A Tool for Academic Libraries to Prioritize Leadership Competencies. College & Research Libraries, 80(5), 597. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.5.597

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