Blatant Berry: The Experience Trap

“I do have limited experience.... I also have a glut of ideas, theories, and methodologies I'm anxious, yearning (zealous!) to put into practice. While experience is important, is it something that is gained through observation, experimentation, growth, and the subsequent accumulation of wisdom. These elemental steps can only occur when we, as fledglings to the field, abandon our reverence for the way things have been done and blaze a new trail we are eager to see reinvented by those who come after us!”

That enlightened comment came from Sarah Dribin, a student who is studying with Michael Stephens at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, River Forest, IL. Stephens quoted Dribin in a post on his Tame the Web blog (tamethewebberry.notlong.com) reporting on a talk I gave at a Dominican colloquium series in April.

I think it was Dribin who asked me after the talk what I thought about “experience” as a qualification for a library job. My response to the question “resonated” with her. “Experience is possibly the most overrated asset that an individual can possess,” I had said.

My own students complain bitterly when they find “experience” that they haven't yet been able to gain listed as a preferred attribute of candidates for entry-level library positions. My comment results from decades watching those in possession of that experience. Some are the great librarians of my era; others, however, have used experience to impede library progress in a host of situations.

I know this must ring discordantly, coming from someone with nearly 50 years of the stuff. But experience isn't just overrated. It is frequently, too often, a quick and easy way to block change. While change isn't always positive, it is wrong to use experience to prevent experimentation to see if a change might improve library service—and more common than it should be. Experience has stopped librarian reassignment, clogged upward mobility for the young, stifled new ideas and innovations, and stalled new services and approaches. “We tried that, and it didn't work,” has put an end to more good ideas than all the budget cuts in library history.

For those of us with experience, it is very hard to accept that an idea that failed once might work on the second or third try, especially given the rate at which circumstances differ. I've been around long enough to see that happen a hundred times. My favorite examples come from the long, slow process whereby we adapted the computer to library operations. When a few visionaries started experimenting with automated information retrieval, many great librarians, myself included, said, “It will never work.” I'm still surprised that it works so well in our libraries. It seems almost like magic the way a librarian can retrieve information using the new search engines. The phenomenon teaches us that it is not the ideas that work or don't work. It is their execution that makes for failure or success.

Very often, when the “new” idea is executed by the inexperienced new person who “invented” it, it finally succeeds. The energy, personal investment in its success, drive to prove to those who have experience that those without it have talent, and competence are enough to put the new experiment over the top.

So I am very grateful to Dribin for using Stephens's blog to articulate and bring deeper meaning to my facile answer to her question. She got it; indeed, she said it better than I've been able to say it all these years.

Sure, experience is worth having. But new ways to do things better in the library are what good administrators constantly seek, and experience doesn't always deliver that. Creativity, intelligence, and willingness to risk innovation are far more important in my book.