PNLA Quarterly, Vol. 63 No.1 Fall 1998

Will the Center Hold? Core Values in a Changing Information Environment

Presented by Mark Alfino and Linda Pierce, Gonzaga University

The changing face of the library world provides an opportunity to discuss what values and priorities the profession will carry with it into the next century. During this program three issues currently under debate and discussion in the library press and among librarians were chosen as places to begin the dialogue about what are the core values of the profession and what changes if any are taking place with those values. What follows is the background information provided for each discussion, some of the key questions asked of the audience, and some of the responses.

Participants in this session shared personal and professional views regarding each issue and, while no conclusions were reached, the issues were developed, and the importance of asking the questions and hearing the wide range of responses was stimulating and informative.

Outsourcing/Corporate sponsorship

The first issue discussed was outsourcing and corporate sponsorship. While acknowledging that outsourcing in some fashion has been around for a long time the question can still be asked, is there a basic difference between outsourcing card production to the Library of Congress and Wright State University outsourcing its entire cataloging department in 1993? What made the Hawaii outsourcing decision such a controversy in 1997, and how do all of these compare with the decision by Riverside County, CA to outsource the entire library to a private corporation? Does this evolution and growth of outsourcing have anything to say about the core values of the profession?

James Marcum, in "Outsourcing in Libraries: Tactic, Strategy or Meta-Strategy" (Marcum, 1998), discusses the distinction between tactic and strategy in outsourcing. He proposes that outsourcing as a tactic to assist with providing additional areas of expertise or to meet a short term goal is different than the use of outsourcing as a strategy or meta-strategy where outsourcing replaces key library activities on a permanent basis. He proposes that outsourcing as a meta-strategy results in the loss of knowledge to the organization, a loss of organizational competence, loss of flexibility and dubious cost savings.

If Marcum is correct, you can only outsource what you know you can afford to lose. But, as session discussants were quick to point out, if no discussion has taken place on what the core values and services of the library are, it becomes impossible to make good decisions regarding what, if anything, is appropriate for outsourcing. How do libraries determine what knowledge and expertise they can afford to lose?

We also discussed the related issue of corporate sponsorship. When libraries or library organizations take money or resources from an outside party is there any danger that the values of the library will be marginalized by those of the outside party? Examples include the uncritical acceptance of computers, support from the Gates Foundation, and the growing link between corporate entities and library web pages.

Participants seemed less concerned about the effect of corporate influence on libraries than the effect of outsourcing. It seemed to be easier for many to be comfortable with the acceptance of money from a third party than to give up the management of core services to a third party.

Library Internet Policies: filtering vs. access

The problem of unregulated access to the Internet is one that is occupying the minds of many librarians, community activists and constitutional law experts these days. In presenting this topic for discussion, we wanted to see if there was any other ground for discussion other than the need for intellectual freedom in our libraries and the fact that the Internet is an unregulated collection over which the librarian has exerted no collection development authority.

The history of intellectual freedom in the profession is a fairly recent but increasingly strong one. The Library Bill of Rights is celebrating it's 50th anniversary this year but prior to the end of the 1940's the library profession was a willing censor of information whether it was sexually explicit, too radical or, in times of war, counter to the military position of the United States government. Of course, during the first half of this century, the library was just one of many social agencies that felt that censorship was necessary to protect the individual and the country. The professional stance radically changed in the 1950's and developed through the 1990's. Now intellectual freedom has become for many a core value of the profession. The arrival of the Internet calls into question for many our unwavering acceptance of unrestricted access to information.

While the stance of the American Library Association has been unwavering, various other voices have called into question the ALA stance against web filters. Lee Hisle, past president of ACRL, asks whether libraries are appropriately responding to community concerns regarding internet access by falling back on the intellectual freedom stance (Hisle, 1998).

The Internet also brings us to the subject of shared governance with our community. Is the role of the library to guide community standards or reflect community standards? With the Internet perhaps the public is asking for a larger role in determining what is valued and worth keeping in the library. Historically libraries have reserved for the library professional the right to make collection development and other decisions. Does this new medium call into question the current view of professional responsibility?

For many in the audience the question of Internet filtering is a "no-brainer." For some it is obvious that filters must be installed. For many, it is equally obvious that filters are just not acceptable if one has a commitment to intellectual freedom. This lack of agreement is one of the first times in the 50 years of professional support for intellectual freedom that there is such a division of thought about what should be done in individual libraries. For many though there is a need to move beyond the intellectual freedom defense and find other compelling arguments to keep filters off of their internet terminals.

Dumping the Library

An article by Bill Crowley provided the theme for this section. Crowley puts forward the idea that some library programs are dumping the word library from their program titles and, in some cases, courses in order to gain status and prestige (Crowley, 1998). Whether or not that argument is valid many do feel that traditional library education is changing too much and that the ramifications of this change will affect all libraries. The closure of long established library schools like the University of Chicago and Columbia University and the migration of library programs to departments such as Communications or Information Science provide examples of the changing face of library education. The audience was also asked to respond to anecdotal evidence of the shortage of librarians in fields such as children's librarianship and an explosion of interest in training information technologists to work in industry and for profit enterprises.

The University of California - Berkeley was cited as a program that has radically recreated its library program. The new program did not solicit accreditation by the American Library Association and appears to deliberately not use the word library in any discussion of the program. The new program, the School of Information Management and System (SIMS) was developed in conversation with employers in the information industry who felt the information revolution created a need for a new kind of profession. The program is market-driven and does not attempt to change librarianship but seems to eliminate it in favor of a new paradigm for workers in the information revolution.

The question was then posed, in light of these shifts in curriculum, what are the core values, skills or subjects that need to be a part of a library school curriculum? Are there some areas that are so intrinsic to the profession that without them you are no longer teaching librarianship but some new hybrid like the SIMS program at Berkeley?

The rationale for these changes that is often heard is that the new students entering the library programs are the ones driving the curricular change. They don't want to take cataloging. They want to take Web page development. Is it appropriate for the professionals entering the field to determine the course of the profession?

These questions were addressed by the audience and we offered the view of Andrew Abbot, who presents the concept that perhaps librarianship is becoming part of a federation of information professionals within which there is interchange and codependence on a variety of professional issues such as the Internet, reference work, cataloging, and management. On Abbot’s view, the specialization we see in new information science programs is a symptom of the emerging new federation of information professions within which librarians are but one group. But even accepting that point of view, the question still remains, Are there core values and skills that all member of the "information federation" must possess?

On this question, some suggested that the common denominator in librarianship was the provision of information and that this fundamental activity was enough to qualify as a core value of the profession. Others felt that that the process of assisting the patron, helping with question definition, and going beyond the basic question was part of what a librarian must do. On this view, the core professional values of librarianship are much “thicker” and they involve a commitment to the well-being of the patron. Are the new programs training people to be just technicians or is there a higher level of knowledge and response that is a part of the library profession?

Conclusion

Resolving the issue of core library values is, not surprisingly, not something that can be done in an hour and a half at a PNLA conference. But in that time we did encourage individuals to examine their professional values and their organizational values. The changes that are coming to the profession need to be interpreted and acted upon only after librarians and libraries have adequate time and opportunity to discuss with each other and their user communities what values and services libraries must maintain as we move into the next century. What are we willing to lose and what must be kept to remain true to our profession? Our hope is that those discussions are lively and ongoing throughout the profession.