The Australian Library Journal

Editorial

Dr Alan Bundy, at the time the president of ALIA asserted in the lead article in our previous issue (which largely comprised contributions from library technicians) that:

Whilst recognising the tensions about the respective roles of library technicians and librarians, it is also salutary to remember that very few countries have developed library competencies and the education and recognition of library technicians as far as has Australia, largely due to ALIA. Even fewer countries have a national professional association which has had the inclusive commonsense to endeavour to provide for complementary streams of the profession, although library technicians still do not contribute proportionate to their numbers. Library professionals - librarians and library technicians - who invoke cost, time and personal reasons not to participate in their professional association do need to reconsider their position objectively. Without ALIA their education and qualifications would have no standing, and without that ALIA there would be nobody arguing and resourcing the case for more and better funded libraries, and thus more library professional employment. Ultimately, library professionals who do not engage with their national professional association are gaining advantage from those who do. Such a limited perspective is not professional. (Alan Bundy 'Enabling the knowledge nation' ALJ 51 [2] p114)

Notice that librarians and library technicians are both referred to here as 'professionals'. This might surprise those who four decades ago argued for the creation of the category of library technicians on the grounds that they would perform all the, well, the 'technical' tasks, the 'para-professional' jobs, leaving the higher reaches of management, reader and technical services to the 'librarians'. Notice too, that Dr Bundy underlines the fact that although ALIA has gone to inordinate lengths over the past forty years to underpin and underwrite the education of library technicians and provide the raison d'etre for their existence, actual membership of the Association is not a prerequisite for their employment, recognition, nor education. The statistics bear this out and only a minority have joined ALIA. Curiously, however, those that do belong comprise one of the most energetic of the Association's many subgroups.

The ALIA website in referring to courses for librarians and library technicians [accessed 20/8/2002 at 3.15pm] advises:

If you have library technician qualifications and wish to become a librarian, you should enrol in an undergraduate course in library and information studies and seek credit for your technician studies. Librarians are professionals who manage and provide library and information services by analysing, evaluating, organising and synthesising information to meet client needs. The role of the librarian focuses on management, direction, policy formulation and application required to meet the information needs of clients. Library technicians work with librarians in the provision of library and information services. The role of the library technician focuses on the operational and technical aspects of the information or library service. (Emphasis added)

And this might be construed as the 'official' view of the relative roles of the technician and the librarian. The reality may actually be quite different. Nevertheless the extract does confirm the continuous nature of the curriculum from the technician to the 'librarian' level, and in fact, the cover quote by Mary Carroll in our May 2002 issue asked:

If it is now the case that these distinctions have now disappeared do we need to continue to draw them between professional and para-professional education? Does this mean that all sectors of the education community are in fact learning/teaching the same skills but at different levels so that no unique set of skills exists?. ('The well-worn path' by Mary Carroll ALJ 51 [2] May 2002 pp 117 ff)

It's a fair question: what are its implications? Does it reinforce the argument advanced in this journal last year by Professor Ross Harvey to the effect that a masters degree was now the appropriate level for the 'first professional qualification'? That assertion was hotly debated, but in the absence of the former Board of Education ALIA itself did not join the discussion and the debate was to that extent somewhat lopsided.

Carla Pilarski and Vicki Picasso also writing in the May 2002 issue of ALJ, in the course of an excellent article 'Morphing the technician: moving the line in the sand' (p127) powerfully underlined this seamlessness and its impact in one workplace, not, I suspect a unique one in this respect:

...we have developed a hybrid support team, where current activities have subtly blurred the roles [that is, of technicians and librarians], placing the focus squarely on the knowledge, skills, experience and abilities of individuals as opposed to distinctions made largely on the basis of qualification.

This was one of many excellent papers which had been presented at the 11^th National Library Technicians' Conference in Hobart in August 2001.

The standard of the papers although they were largely experiential in their approach and content, was unexceptionable - professional, in fact, further confirmation, if any were needed, that the 'technicians' had arrived. There is another phenomenon which bears on the fading validity of the gap or distinction between 'professional' and 'technician'. I had the pleasure of attending the national RAISS conference in Melbourne in October last year, and heard a number of accounts of very real and impressive enhancements in levels of service, mostly in an academic context (public reference and information practitioners being unaccountably absent). I think it is fair to say that every example of improved service to clients reflected an adaptation, implementation or exploitation of information technology, confirmation of our sustained (though often overlooked) capacity to adapt it in the same way as other cutting-edge occupations. The question which inexorably follows is: if we are now making our reputation on the exploitation and adaptation of the technology, are we then complicit in a developing public perception that our expertise is technical, rather than professional?

If this is so, what implications follow? We can continue to ignore the subtle blurring of the roles and the significance of qualification by taking a laissez-faire position, or we can engage with the issue. First: we might choose to acknowledge that we are all, in essence, very highly skilled information technicians. This would allow us to focus all of our energies on enhancing the advantages that this confers, abandoning the now apparently irrelevant distinction between librarian and technician, and concentrating all our membership efforts on bringing those of us who have so far not seen any advantages in joining ALIA into the fold, and consciously, realistically and deliberately exploiting the advantages implicit in the education continuum described by Mary Carroll. The second alternative would accept the foregoing scenario, but would carry with it the challenge to redefine what it might mean to be a 'professional librarian', that is, to first of all determine prima facie, what the current attributes of the word might be, then to adapt, apply and revalidate them in our context.

In this issue Glenn Giles examines the importance of information literacy as an element in the process of reconciliation; Margaret Prabhu, Stephen Crothers and Shirley Sullivan revisit an issue raised in these pages less than a year ago - access to electronic journals - and find little, if any, improvement in the shambles which publishers have created; Marilyn Chalmers reports on the apparent (and deceptive) simplicity residing in the application of metadata to pages on her institution's website; Russell Cope responds nobly to a challenge issued by the editor in his extended review (particularly relevant just now) of aspects of the American mindset reflected in Stephen Karetzky's attack on what he sees as left-leaning-librarians in the United States. Some famous names are in the dock. Don Barker reviews the erratic funding of mechanics' institutes in 19^th century Victoria (Ros Kelly's famous whiteboard is clearly foreshadowed). And twenty or so eclectic, one or two egregious, reviews of the best in library lit and its environs from Gary Gorman's spirited corps of reviewers. Pity about the 'Roos, though.

A question for you Do you ever wonder what our politicians read? Do you speculate about what book Alexander Downing is reading on those long flights on diplomatic missions? Or Simon Crean in the intervals between 50 kilogram presses? John Howard has presumably read all the biographies of Menzies: what is he engaged in now? As we speak? At this point in time? Any ideas?