Repertorios de Acción Colectiva

To develop further librarians need to be professional in the broadest sense of the word. Traditional views see being professional as acquiring a set of qualifications to show one understands the profession’s common body of knowledge, a code of ethics and conduct which one follows to ensure one fulfils one’s duties to the “public good”, overseen by a professional body. The well-schooled professional then delivers solutions for clients based on their expertise. The professional

knowledge is often assessed through competency standards, focusing in detail on what professionals do. We have seen shades of this approach in a number of the standards frameworks we investigated in section 12 and appendix 11. Changes to the common body of knowledge happen slowly as academic research filters down and the primary focus of professional work is solving problems (Lester, 2010). The way librarianship has changed particularly in the more technical aspects of the role reflects this, for example, the slow and steady way cataloguing and classification rules change. It is also still important that legal changes such as copyright are carefully dissected and acted upon, so this approach remains a valid foundation for professional practice (Lester, 2010, p.6).

However many authors argue this approach to professionalism is simply not responsive enough to be useful anymore. Lester argues that as professionals are shaped by the complex society and uncertain environment in which they work, then there is a need for a more reflective-interpretive model to be placed on top of the “technical-rational” model described above (2010, p.4). Lunt combines these qualities thus:

Page 184 of 306

 Competence: Working reflexively, so we, as professionals, are aware that our own views influence what we learn from our work, learn from our mistakes, with the humility and courage to admit when we are wrong.

 Respect: Empathy for our clients, not a “doctor knows best” attitude.

 Integrity: Derived from reflective practice.

 Responsibility: Using evidence based practice. (2008 p.90-93)

Barnett (2008) argues professionals must also show creativity:

“…professionalism lies in discursive creation. For this the thoroughly modern professional will not rest even with critically deploying discourses and placing her own stamp on them but will become so energised that she will be discursively creative. She will find ways of so engaging with

contending audiences in energising her projects that new social

relationships, new networks, new groupings may be formed.” (Barnett, 2008 pp.205-6)

If all of this can be achieved, the professional will become higher performing, rapidly evolving their practice and changing it as they apply it in different contexts. They will have become knowledgeable and knowledge-generating practitioners (Lester, 2010). However, Lester argues there are further additional steps professionals must take to become collaborators rather than expert solution providers. Professionals need to work with the client or stakeholder to produce outcomes owned by the latter (Lester 2010). In librarianship the classic example here would be an enquiry where the librarian can either respond by simply finding the journal article or having a more in-depth discussion with the client so they understand how to frame their search, where they should look for information and how to pick out the best results. Or as a student once told Adam, the Good Prophet says “Don’t catch me a fish, teach me fishing”.

Page 185 of 306

It is also vital that professionals draw on knowledge and ideas widely. Just as the transdisciplinary researcher is able to create solutions to large problems by

breaking out of the silo of a single discipline and its norms, so a high performing professional should be able to learn from and adopt ideas gleaned from many other professionals and practices. Vieira (2014) describes this hybridization process as cultural metissage, from the French for cross fertilization between species of plants, or more controversially the interbreeding between races, which comes with a baggage of colonial history. The concept, developed by Laplantine and Nouss (1997), is however now used to describe the ongoing and active mixing of ideas and knowledge across boundaries. This cross-fertilisation process is never finished and is something actively sought to discover the new knowledge it will bring to those seeking it (Vieira, 2014).

Our professional has thus not only learnt from reflecting on their own practice, but also has actively sought out the ideas of others to inform and influence what they do. This expertise and wider knowledge enables Lester to see our ultimate goal as becoming “a capable practitioner able to apply a repertoire of abilities in roles and situations that cannot be predicted in advance” (2010, p.6). Schön (1990) sees such high performing professionals as going beyond professional practice into professional artistry using reflection-in-action i.e. intelligent, skilful and spontaneous reflection often in conjunction with ‘on the spot’ experimentation to make new sense of uncertain, unique or conflicted situations by going beyond the available rules, facts, theories and operations.

We have already heard the view of academic colleagues that becoming academic is a way for librarians to become effective professionals and that this means separating themselves from the clerical and routine parts of our work, so that they can focus on research, publishing, teaching and understanding (Jackson, 1999, p.105). This may ultimately result in a system Martin (1993, p.24) describes as a “two-track approach to librarianship”, encompassing both those who want simply to be “Occupational Librarians”, evaluated on their “9-5” performance, and what she calls “Professional Librarians” who “work until the job is done”, collaborate with others and engage in research and publication to advance the profession.

Page 186 of 306

Commenting on Martin’s paper, Jackson (1999) goes further suggesting such new professional librarians would need to demonstrate; “...high expectations for

themselves and certainly engage in the type of "risky" thinking and behaviour needed to reinvigorate the profession. The payoff would be higher status, more respect from the academic community, and the beginning of the creation of a

galvanized, new professional class of academic librarians” (Jackson, 1999, p.112). As Martin concludes:

“Just as we used to say that libraries had to change in fundamental ways to avoid becoming museums, librarians must now transform themselves to avoid being relegated to museum caretakers.” (Martin, 1993, p.24)

We would argue that in our professional working lives we have already gone a long way down this road. As we saw in section 7, our work as librarians means we are now largely uninvolved in the operational management of the library. This leaves us free to concentrate on working collaboratively with willing academic staff to deliver our training and support for research. However, what has been largely missing from our work until now has been a research element.

This Doctorate has been a chance to reflect on our work as experienced teaching librarians and research its intellectual rationale. We know from the way we have created our public works and been engaged in this statement that we meet both Lunt (2008) and Barnett’s (2008) criteria for professionalism as we work reflexively, creatively and responsibly. Indeed we would argue that we are moving towards the professional artistry described by Schön (1990). This has repositioned us professionally from a ‘traditional’ library role, seeing ourselves as ‘on the margins’ of the research process, to conceptualising our role as being at the interface of different domains. Librarians will move to proactively embracing a participatory role as skilled navigators and translators, filling gaps between knowledge,

experience and practice, in fully collaborative ‘researchship’ (Maguire, 2012). The librarians of the future will be working in a fully participatory transdisciplinary manner, with the academic community, as co-synthesisers, co-creators and co- producers of new knowledge, working to bridge the gaps between knowledge

Page 187 of 306

production and the demand for new knowledge to solve complex real world problems (Russell, Wickson and Carew, 2008, Mobjörk, 2010).

If librarians embrace this new vision we have described, the next developments for such a professional could be:

 A deeper understanding of what we have described as ‘researchship’, at a time when support for research is a key institutional driver.

 Enhanced professional practice as they develop what they do, as has been our experience.

 Higher professional performance as they engage in effective participation as transdiscipinary translators, navigators and co-researchers with their peers in the academic community, leading to greater mutual understanding and deeper embedding of their work.

But can the academic community itself see this happening?