In a study, Re-Envisioning the MLS, the University of Maryland iSchool’s MLS program in conjunction with the Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC) determined that libraries in the Maryland, D.C., and Virginia area were less likely to seek and hire professionals with an MLS due to funding uncertainties or the need for professionals with other skills and qualifications.[1] In my experience moving up the professional ladder, I have noticed an increased need for professionals in instructional design, community outreach, fundraising, marketing, and social work. I often feel frustrated that a very qualified employee cannot be included in succession planning without a degree that sometimes feels arbitrary for the realities of the position. Some raise concern that if we were to relax our grip on the MLS we’ll lose the professional status associated with libraries. I counter that we’re losing that already.

The need for innovation in libraries is no secret. Many libraries have the funding, enthusiasm, and cultural ethos to weave innovation throughout their ranks. Many do not. The huge disparities in access to innovation opportunities could potentially be mitigated if we were to look outside of our industry when hiring. The Harvard Business Review states,

“Bringing in ideas from analogous fields turns out to be a potential source of radical innovation. When you’re working on a problem and you pool insights from analogous areas, you’re likely to get significantly greater novelty in the proposed solutions, for two reasons: People versed in analogous fields can draw on different pools of knowledge, and they’re not mentally constrained by existing, “known” solutions to the problem in the target field. The greater the distance between the problem and the analogous field, the greater the novelty of the solutions.”[2]

Often it is not only the hiring manager who needs to be convinced of the need for cross-industry hiring, but also a Board of Directors. The more we talk about the need for changes to our MLS programs as well as reflect on the usefulness of professionals from other fields, the better equipped we’ll be to compete in our ever-changing environment. While Re-Envisioning the MLS concludes that there is a future for the MLS and posits many recommendations for its refinement, I don’t believe that is solely where our future lies.

References

[1] https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2016/01/re-envisioning-the-mls-the-future-of-librarian-education/

[2] https://hbr.org/2014/11/sometimes-the-best-ideas-come-from-outside-your-industry

The post The MLS Catch-22 first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Throughout the years, I’ve found these ‘methods’ are always little more than a variety of helpful steps or formulas to help owners and managers formulate a direction for an organization, or person, for the future. A Boeing engineer once asked me what skills potential recruits will need to learn for the future aerospace industry. Researching the futurist literature, the only thing seemingly pertinent was something I read (irretrievable) in The Futurist Magazine over twenty years ago. The late Robert Theobald, economist and futurist author, commented on future education ‘…twenty years from now, one will learn what one needs to know when they need it,’ and now we are doing exactly that. Theobald was repeating the scenario he wrote about in 1967 about the future in 1994¹.

We have been inundated by articles about the future of the library, yet little has been said about the future of librarians; those bastions of information and troughs of information and experience people rely on. Like the oft quoted proverb from Africa “When a knowledgeable old person dies, a whole library disappears,” librarians are surely as much the library as the brick and mortar buildings they work in.

More recently I was at home with our thirteen guests at Thanksgiving, and we played a little game of getting to know each other. We passed around notes from which each person read and told us about their favorite book, their favorite activity, also, my note, “What would you like to be known for?” Well, when I was younger, I was in charge of a youth group and they started calling me “fearless leader.” I kind of liked that. Since then, I’ve come to know that a leader is not born, is not, by education nor effort, a leader. A leader is someone others ascribe that title to; usually because they have already done something significant to help or change the lives of others. This is what I find most librarians do, and thus are leaders, and that won’t go away because a building or printed books aren’t available.

As a recruiter and speaker for organizations, I try to talk about “Options and Opportunities.” What we chose as our role(s) in life, lays out our options and opportunities we may have. I believe librarians must decide to choose their role(s), and when they (we) do, we will survive all things of the future which come to pass.

Back in the 70s we heard a great deal about methods for “creating the future.” Here is another planning method; a book to help us with a range of future possibilities, probabilities, plausible options, and opportunities in creating our future:

It’s YOUR Future… Make it a Good One! by Dr. Verne Wheelwrite, 2012. This tome takes the strategic foresight and scenario planning tools utilized successfully by some corporations and scales them down for the individual.

References

1. Tegs Nineteen Ninety-Four: An Anticipation of the Near Future – June, 1972, by Robert Theobald, Jim Scott.

TEG’S 1994, written in 1967 and published in 1971, was 30 years ahead of its time. It is a portrait of the world in which we live today.

The post The Future of the Librarians first appeared on Public Libraries Online.