Apply history and ethics to develop a professional LIS identity.
| Course: | LIS 610 Foundations of the Information Professions |
| Instructor: | Gwen Sinclair |
| Semester Completed: | Spring 2020 |
| Assignment Description: | LIS 610 Syllabus |
| Artifact: | Professional Philosophy Presentation |
*I did not address criteria #5 for SLO2 Professions in my reflective essay because I did not complete a historical research artifact.
Reflection
Prior to starting this program, I had nearly 15 years’ experience, mainly in higher education administration, and I hated the words “that is not in my job description”. I tried very hard never to say that throughout my career. I learned how the other departments worked I was able to help my students interact with them more efficiently which saved everyone time and frustration. Now that I am in this program, I have found that this carries over to my philosophy as a librarian. I want to be able to help my patrons in every way I can. Sometimes that might mean doing extra tasks that do not fall in my day-to-day job description, and sometimes it might mean being familiar with other resources so I can refer them to the right person/department/service that will be able to help them with whatever they need.
SLO2 addresses developing our personal ethics, values, and philosophy as librarians and our final assignment really helped me to do just that. We were told to pick any scenario and devise a solution to it that would help demonstrate our ethics, values, and philosophy. I chose technology for senior citizens in the public library, specifically eReaders, and how libraries were supporting them before COVID-19 and also present-day during the COVID-19 quarantine, when visiting the library was no longer an option. Even though I am on the academic track, seniors and eReaders are very personal to me because of my grandma, Mary. She was an avid reader her entire life and for years we would mail books back and forth to each other. In her later years, she had severe rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and macular degeneration. She eventually learned to use a Kindle because of her difficulty seeing and manipulating physical books and her inability to leave the house. However, Grandma was in her late 80s and was not good with technology and could only manage to select a book from the device menu and turn the pages, so I checked out books for her each week and returned what she had read. Not having to maneuver OverDrive and Amazon made reading eBooks possible for her. She has since passed but I still have an overwhelming concern for seniors coping with technology both before and during the pandemic.
Creating my artifact was difficult because so many of the resources I found were for seniors before COVID-19, like technology classes or one-on-one help in the library by appointment. I realized as I searched through the programs that librarians were creating during quarantine that seniors were being overlooked. Seniors do not really use technology so having online streaming knitting classes were not generally applicable to them. I finally found a Facebook group for librarians where they were sharing their solutions for their patrons during the lockdown and found some mentions of what they were doing for their senior populations (Programming Librarian Interest Group, 2020). Some of them were simply calling and checking in on their senior patrons every week and some others were discussing “party line” technologies that would enable their seniors to have book clubs over the phone. It was nice to know that they were not forgetting them, but it definitively demonstrated that there were inadequate programs in place for an already isolated population prior to COVID-19.
In the beginning of my LIS journey, I did not even know what being a librarian really entailed, so defining my professional philosophy and ethics was impossible. When I learned about the ALA Core Values of Librarianship (American Library Association, 2006) I agreed with all of them. Of course, Intellectual Freedom, Diversity, and Democracy are all vital, but it was not until this assignment that I realized the core values of Service and Access are what rank just a tiny bit higher to me. I wholeheartedly believe that I, as a librarian, should provide the highest level of service I can and that all library users should be able to use all resources. However, just making the information available is not enough in the case of senior citizens. In today’s world, so much information is only available in a digital format. The digital divide, or seniors’ inability to use the technologies necessary to connect to the information, is a glaring lack of access. If librarians fail to correct it, then we are failing to provide service to our patrons.
While this artifact focused mainly on seniors in the public library during COVID-19, the subject of seniors and the digital divide is extremely relevant to higher education as well. The age of the non-traditional student is increasing and older college students are also encountering difficulties in using the increasing variety of technologies required in the college classroom (Jesnek, 2012). As an academic librarian, I feel teaching the students how to use the technological tools they need to be successful students is what providing good service is all about, and we improve access to information by closing that digital divide.
References
American Library Association. (2006, July 26). Core values of librarianship [Text]. Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/corevalues
Jesnek, L. M. (2012). Empowering The Non-Traditional College Student And Bridging The Digital Divide. Contemporary Issues in Education Research (CIER), 5(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.19030/cier.v5i1.6780
Programming librarian interest group. (2020, April 28). Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProgrammingLibrarianInterestGroup
Mandi Hull 