Veteran Librarians Q&A Part Two

Jenna Freedman, Coordinator of Reference Services and Zine Librarian at Barnard College Library, New York -- Library Journal, 7/9/2009

Inspired by Scott Carlson's article, "Young Libarians, Talkin' Bout Their Generation" in The Chronicle of Higher Education (10/19/07), but feeling that the youth perspective has been somewhat privileged of late in librarianship, I asked a number of librarians with at least 20 years experience to answer Carlson's questions and a few of my own. See the introductory post of this four-part series for more background and links to each section.

Carlson Question: Does the library profession need to diversify and draw from different populations?

CORBY: America has tried over the years of my life to make interest in and knowledge about different cultures a positive value. It is hard for me to narrow this to just a library perspective. It really is a common good.

I think diverse librarians help assure that all students will feel welcome and comfortable asking for help in the library. They contribute so much to public interaction decisions we make, so that we don't unintentionally impose a cultural element in our message, whether it be web page, in person interaction, chat reference, whatever we do.

The power of this was brought home for me by Loriene Roy at the Midwinter meeting. Council II promised to be long and contentious, with items left over from Council I and fairly last minute resolutions about Kenya and Iraq and ADA access at ALA. Loriene welcomed us to the meeting by having a young man, I believe it was one of her students, offer a traditional Native American chant/prayer—there was a name for it that I can't remember—asking for peace and harmony among all the participants in the room. It was beautiful and moving and we got done with the agenda early.

FAGAN: We are beginning to draw people from the IT field. But care needs to be taken that future librarians understand that there is a human being at the end of the process. Techies tend to forget that. Some, anyway.

Freedman Question: Were there generational issues (i.e. generation gap) issues when you entered the profession?

SCHUMAN: Absolutely. I entered the profession in 1966—by 1968 the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) was founded. We were the "young" people. The first program SRRT put on (I was program chair) was called "The Failure of Libraries: A Call to Action."

TOBIN: By 1980, when I received my MLS and took a librarian position in public services, there were issues separating the younger and older librarians, especially issues around the use of new tools (primarily online searching). At times, it was like the Katharine Hepburn movie, Desk Set, pitting computers against experienced librarians. Often the experienced librarians got better (more inclusive) answers, but slowly that changed as more databases became available via Dialog and other vendors. It certainly taught me respect for the depths of the print world and the knowledge held by the experienced reference librarians, even while I was trying to use the new tools to speed up the more mundane research processes.

CORBY: Drexel for example very deliberately assigned the younger librarians to learn and execute the online searches. And of course the older librarians were still stodgy and the new librarians we more hip and energetic, those kinds of generation gaps are inevitable.

BLOCK: I was already 32 when I became a librarian. One of the younger librarians who came on board was probably the first of the-figure-the-technology-out-by-playing-with-it types I ever encountered, while I was a read-the-manual or get-somebody-to-show-me-how-it-works type.

WOLVEN: I don’t think older librarians felt as threatened by the generational differences as we are led to believe is the case today. That is, the common wisdom today seems to be that the behaviors and attitudes of the younger generation will persist and dominate the future, and older librarians had better adjust to fit. Thirty years ago, I think there was more of an expectation that younger people would move closer to the older generation as they themselves aged.

Also, while the younger generation in both the 60s/70s and current times were inclined to question authority, it seems to me ... they looked toward a different alternative. In 1970, individual freedom of thought and expression was paramount ("do your own thing"). Now, the emphasis is on the wisdom of the crowd, socially constructed knowledge. So, the nature of the generation gap is different, and once again it seems to me the conventional wisdom is that the younger generation is "right" and the older had better adjust. 

Also see:
Part One (July 2)
Part Three (July 16)
Part Four and Conclusion (July 23)