VALORES EN LA ADMINISTRACIÓN

librarians do, how they work, where they work, how they are perceived, and what competencies they need to succeed in this new environment. This transformation can be viewed from two perspectives. The first perspective speaks to internal changes—the way the library and librarians work. The second perspective considers how changes in the external environment shift the role of librarians and information professionals. Both perspectives take the intellectual capital of librarians and information professionals as a focal point. This chapter describes the intellectual capital assets of librarians, and walks through scenarios that demonstrate how that capital can be leveraged in a knowledge society. The use case scenarios demonstrate the range of value librarians contribute to the knowledge economy.

II. Transition from an Industrial to a Knowledge Economy

reputation and brand. Individuals have intellectual capital. Communities and organizations have intellectual capital, but only as aggregations of the intellectual capital of individuals. In order to succeed in the 21st century knowledge economy, cities, communities, organizations, households, and individuals must invest in, manage, and grow their intellectual capital (Amidon, 2012; Bontis, 2001, 2002; Bonfour & Edvinsson, 2005). In the 21st century, knowledge and intellectual capital will be the most important asset an organization can possess. This will be as true for libraries as well as for any Fortune 100 company. A library’s intellectual capital is an aggrega-tion of the intellectual capital of all of its employees. What does a librarian’s intellectual capital consist of?Kostagiolas and Asonitis (2009) also leverage Andriessen’s (2001) three categories of intellectual capital. In their work they provide a mapping of the intellectual capital assets of libraries to the three high level categories: human capital, structural capital, and relational capital. The work described in our chapter builds upon that work in three ways. First, it breaks intellectual capital assets down into the finer grained categories that are in use today in the intellectual capital discipline. Second, it focuses on the intellectual capital of librarians rather than libraries.

Finally, it focuses on intangible intellectual assets rather than the mixture of tangible and intangible assets listed by Kostagiolas and Asonitis. For illustrative purposes Table 1 provides a breakdown and examples of librar-ians’ intellectual capital assets. By taking a finer grained approach and focusing on librarians, a much richer picture of assets emerges.Table 1 pro-vides examples that are referenced in the intellectual capital literature (Bedford, 2011, 2013a).

What is notable about these examples is the scarcity of references to the collections of information resources that librarians manage. That is because those resources are not considered to be the intellectual capital of libraries, but rather the intellectual capital of the individuals who created them. The explicit and encoded resources that libraries manage fall into the Explicit Knowledge category in the Intellectual Capital profile of their authors or creators. This view represents a significant shift in the way we think about libraries and librarians. The intellectual capital of a library then is not its physical or digital collections, but the aggregation of the intellectual capital profiles of all of its staff and employees.

Because the primary value of a library in the knowledge society will shift from the library’s resource collections to librarians’ intellectual capital assets, libraries and library science education should consider the nature and level of intellectual capital investments. The intellectual growth of library profes-sionals should be the primary focus. How libraries work and how they are managed should be aligned with the new knowledge economy. We cannot

83 Librarians in a Knowledge Society

Table 1

Examples of the Intellectual Capital Assets of Librarians Types of intellectual

capital assets

Library and information professional asset examples

Tacit Knowledge Answers to questions, knowledge of sources, knowledge of subject domains, knowledge of information behaviors, knowledge of publishing industry, foresight

Skills Analytical skills, coaching and mentoring skills, communication skills, critical thinking skills, facilitation and negotiation skills, high digital literacy skills, interviewing skills, knowledge creation,

knowledge capture, knowledge preservation, knowledge sharing, knowledge elicitation, narrative intelligence, privacy practices, research skills, strong organizational skills, teaching and training experience, technical skills Attitude Adaptability, advocacy, attitude to universal access,

coaching, continuous learning, creativity, collaborative attitude, eager to learn, emotional intelligence, engagement, knowledge sharing, mentoring, pro-literacy attitude, learning, motivation, self-reflection and review, service attitude, situational learning approach, social intelligence, visioning, willingness to work in teams

Explicit Knowledge Collection development policies, collection guides, conference proceedings, formal educational credentials, frequently asked questions, information standards, presentations, professional publications, reading lists, webinars, workshops

Procedural Knowledge Acquisitions and selection knowledge, budgeting knowledge, cataloging knowledge, circulation knowledge, facilities management knowledge, information finding strategies, knowledge of sources, literacy training knowledge, personnel management knowledge, program planning knowledge, reference service knowledge, search strategy formulation knowledge, storytelling knowledge, system design knowledge

Culture Collaborative, community-oriented, fair rewards and recognitions, service orientation and attitude, learning culture, mentoring and coaching culture, open mindedness, open to different types of learning experiences, open to experimentation, strong community culture

84 Denise A. D. Bedford et al.

simply assume that the way we as librarians and information professionals’

work and what we do will continue along a predictable trajectory. Such an assumption significantly underestimates the magnitude of the shift that is transforming our external environment.

A key question arises. Are we preparing librarians and information pro-fessionals to play facilitation roles? Are the professional schools and continu-ous education providing opportunities to acquire or develop the intellectual capital assets that are needed for knowledge facilitation? What does this mean for professional competencies, codes of ethics, and most importantly, for library science education? A review of the professional standards and competencies published by a range of library associations reveals two pri-mary types of intellectual capital and knowledge. The first type focuses on functional or core competencies. Functional competencies align with the procedural capital competencies referenced in Andriessen and Amidon’s Intellectual Capital frameworks (Table 2). These are the competencies which allowed industrial era brick-and-mortar libraries to function. These are also the competencies taught in professional library science education programs.

The second type of competency (Table 3) includes professional and behavioral competencies what we have referred to in our Scenarios as Knowledge Facilitation methods. These competencies are valued and high-lighted by professional associations. However, they are not generally taught in the library science education. They are learned on the job and gained through experience. These competencies map to the five of the types of intellectual capital identified by Andriessen and Amidon, including atti-tude, skills, tacit knowledge, network capital, and procedural capital.

Table 1 (Continued) Types of intellectual capital assets

Library and information professional asset examples

Networks Author networks, citations to other works, library science community, public sector community, publisher networks, religious community network, social networks, subject matter networks, voluntary sector Reputation Business relationships of the individuals, connections to

civic organizations, connections to public sector agencies and departments, political connections and affiliations, professional association reputations of individuals, reputation for service, reputation in the subject domain, satisfaction rate with library service

85 Librarians in a Knowledge Society

Finally, we observe that there are gaps in the competencies needed for the knowledge society and those currently addressed by either professional functional or behavioral competencies (Table 4).

In preparing for the knowledge society, there is an opportunity to reconsider which competencies we teach and how we learn these competen-cies. Let’s consider why and how these competencies will be important for librarians in the knowledge society.

Table 2

Functional Competencies of Library and Information Science Professionals Cataloging

Collection development Collection maintenance Collection management Fiscal management Fundraising

Instructional behaviors Learning theory and styles

Materials circulation and access services Outreach

Planning and project management Program

development Promotion Public relations Reference and

referrals

User services

Resource preservation Resource selection

and acquisition Strategic management Tacit knowledge of

economic

Legal and social issues

Table 3

Behavioral Competencies of Library and Information Science Professionals Intellectual

capital asset

New competencies for knowledge society

Skills Creative thinking, knowledge architecture, knowledge capture, knowledge creation, knowledge preservation, narrative intelligence, social intelligence

Attitude Adaptability, emotional intelligence, engagement, self-reflection, situational learning, visioning

Culture Fair rewards and recognitions, open to experimentation, open and collaborative organizational culture

Reputation Business relationships, connections to civic organizations, political connections and affiliations, reputation management

Networking Author networks, public sector networks, religious networks, social networks, subject matter networks, voluntary sector networks

86 Denise A. D. Bedford et al.