A secret library in Syria. Photo by Lauren Mulcahy via Pixabay
that closely relates to their current situation, and don’t wish to challenge their existing prejudices. Libraries face continual competition for allocation of resources within the organisation to which they belong, but is it good enough to know how to reinforce what they have always done? Or should librarians try to discover whether there might be good reasons for changing what they do and seek out the evidence that would help to justify making those changes? Should they be interested in other people’s problems and how they have attempted to resolve them?
Tackling the challenges
The underlying reluctance to do so, it seems to me, is because many librarians suffer from a condition known as habituation. Habituation means that they have become so accustomed to the existing practices and the range and state of services offered by their library or information service that these begin to be accepted as an unchanging norm. That doesn’t mean that libraries and their services should not or could not be changed but, for me, begged the ques- tion about where the inspiration could be found that might lead librarians to the kind of innovation that would be acceptable and effective in transforming a library or information service (or in my case into a school of librarianship) into one that is seen to be progressive and becomes more highly regarded. Examining what other people do, why and how, is all part of being a profes- sional. It is the continual questioning that looks at the working environment and asks: What is this place? Why is it what it is? What should it be? What could it be? What should be done about it? How could it be done? As a President of the Australian Library Association once remarked, “professionalism is an
October-November 2019
attitude of mind.” Do librarians have the right attitude? Could they develop it?
Getting started
One starting point has to be to look at what other libraries have done, and to do so with an open mind. Libraries in other places have developed in different ways. Finding out what they have done and understanding why and how they did it is part of that process.
My interest in what other people were doing began when I was working as personnel and training officer in a public library in the 1970s. The difference between two of the Chief Librarians that I worked for was characterised, for me, by one who seemed unable to distinguish between growth and development, and the other who seemed to have been held back for many years by a staff (and the profession generally) who didn’t under- stand some of his progressive ideas. I had started a programme of train- ing and development for the Library
Assistants, which included sponsoring a selected few each year to take the Library Assistants’ Certificate course at a nearby FE College. At the same time, I was con- cerned to ensure that the professional staff did not become moribund and was running a development programme to keep the middle and senior managers aware of the latest developments that were being reported in professional jour- nals all over the world. These were likely to be familiar to members of our staff who had been recently recruited from ‘library school’ and who could become frustrated or at least demotivated if they weren’t able to implement progressive ideas that they had found interesting. This helped develop a widespread commitment to pro- gressive service developments. Some of the journal articles that were listed in the current awareness service that I circulated also made me aware that colleges in North America, Australia and several European countries were teaching courses for ‘Library Technicians’. Eventually, this led
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