Editorial- Certification: Is It Worth the Price?

Post-MLS certification of librarians may be the best idea since Cutter numbers, and proponents say it is long overdue. All the same, I'm not quite ready to endorse the idea. I'm not sure the reasons for certification given by proponents are valid. I'm not sure certification is worth the time and money librarians would expend to earn it.

Council Document 50.1 carried the certification proposal from the American Library Association (ALA) Committee on Education (COE) to the ALA Council at ALA Midwinter. We need certification, it said, to "keep our competencies at such a level that we will be able to maintain our credibility with those that[sic] hire us...." COE chair Mary Moore took the flack from a suspicious Council. Moore asked them to "consider" creating a new organization outside ALA to run a new certification program. The Council demanded details.

You can see some of those details on the ALA web site (http://www.ala.org) by clicking through to either PLA (the Public Library Association) or LAMA (the Library Administration and Management Association). On the menu of either, click on "certification" to see their joint proposal for a Certified Public Library Administrator.

Proponents say certification is common in other professions. I know of it in medicine, law, business, and even our sister field, knowledge management. Like Moore, many say it will improve our status with trustees and the public and buttress our claim to being "professional."

The Medical Library Association (MLA) struggled with certification for years, with mixed success. Ultimately, all the formal programs and a difficult examination were abandoned in favor of the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP). Membership in AHIP is now MLA's version of certification. The AHIP model is a less burdensome alternative to the kind of program proposed by the COE. To get into AHIP, you must provide evidence of your professional development through strictly defined continuing education (CE) and experience.

Professional schools in business, public administration, and other fields mount CE programs for working professionals. In our field such programs have actually declined in number. While that may be due to the focus of most programs on research and degree programs, it may also reflect the lack of a market.

At best there is confusion about the need for certification and the way to get it done. Some of it is obviously right there on the ALA COE. The Council was right to ask for details before it could approve the program. In the process, I hope the debate can put to rest my doubts about those more fundamental questions about certification. They need to be debated, too.

I'm not sure certification will deliver the improved status or image its proponents claim it will. I was shocked to realize that I know absolutely nothing about the level or currency of the certification of my accountant, lawyer, doctor, cardiac specialist, plumber, auto mechanic, or any other professional whose services I use. My perception of them is unaltered by their certification or lack of it and that includes my librarian. If my librarian were certified, I probably would never know. So much for improved image and status.

More important, even if these service providers were certified, and I knew it, that fact would not convince me that they are competent to practice. I'm not even sure earning certification either proves or improves competence at all.

To get support for an expensive certification program, the COE or someone else must come up with much more compelling evidence that it will deliver on the claims made for it. Are the benefits of certification real? Can we prove that they are worth the cost to ALA, to the profession, and to the individuals who seek certification? If not, we might want to try a less costly model.