Don't Call It Apprenticeships: Teaching Libraries in Library Science Education

Abstract

This article is a thought piece on the needed changes to library science education brought on by a fieldwide transition to centering the library in the community. It presents a number of examples, and then lays out the need for library science education, across topics, to be participatory, action oriented, constructivist, and incorporating innovation from beyond the field. Finally, it presents two models for future library and information science (LIS) preparation, the hybrid classroom with students and in-the-field professionals working together, and the teaching library based on medical training.

Community Engagement Is Different

Teaching community engagement, in either formal library science programs or in professional development, I argue, is fundamentally different than other topics. The reason is simple. Communities lie at the heart of the modern library. Therefore, engaging them is not an additional service nor an isolated activity by a designated librarian (or staff); it is instead, fundamental to the preparation of librarians, and must be done in accordance with how libraries should engage those whom they serve.

The metadata that catalogers generate is based on knowledge of the community in addition to the resource being described. The work of reference in answering a question is no longer matching library resources to a query but connecting a person to the larger resources of the whole community. The collections of the library are tied to the art of the museum, the parks of the city, the lectures of the university, and fellow library members.

Communities and Libraries

There can be little doubt that over the past decade, many libraries have transitioned from collection and institutional foci to community-based organizations (Lankes 2016). From work to tie library services to student outcomes in academic libraries (Oakleaf et al. 2020), to the blossoming of library services unique to individual communities in public libraries (Let's Move, n.d.), to ongoing models of inquiry-based instruction in school libraries (Buchanan et al. 2016), to integration of library professionals into the functional units of special libraries (Lankes et al. 2008), librarians have been centering not only the needs of communities in their work, but inventing new ownership models with community members.

Take the San Giorgio public library in Pistoia, Italy. The physical building was built by the city to revive the idea of the piazza, or public square, in the city after many public spaces had been developed or privatized. The library not only includes a large open square, but traditional piazza amenities like a café, and outdoor space. However, the inclusion of the community is not just a set of additional services, but the library offering community-led programs. Art critics lead movie showings. Iron workers demonstrate welding. The small staff of librarians is joined by an army of community experts that use the library as a point of connection and education throughout the community.

The City Library San Matteo degli Armeni, a modest collection situated in ancient ruins and surrounded by gardens, lies 190 kilometers to the east of the city. The gardens, a crucial part of the library, are planted and maintained by the community. The library itself hosts concerts, lectures, and weddings. It is a library because librarian Gabriele De Veris facilitates the work of the community and focuses the work on increasing the knowledge of the community at large.

In South Korea, the Gusan-dong Village Library was created by the social action of citizens. Community members (many of them single mothers) petitioned their local government to create this library. The citizens of the area then created their own library school to plan the library through meetings, visits, lectures from invited speakers, and shared readings. The library building was constructed from existing buildings to be no taller and no grander than the apartments around them.

I could go on listing libraries—public, academic, school, and special—that demonstrate how collections, even buildings themselves, emerge from the mission of librarians, not the other way around. However, all of these examples would focus on a single concept: participation.

Participation

This concept of focusing on community participation over institutional or fieldwide norms, is informed by many areas and should also influence LIS instruction. Participatory design is a set of methodologies to not simply determine the needs of a group, but to empower the group to build services and institutions (Simonsen and Robertson 2013). Academic librarians meet with students to discuss new spaces, designing open places of collaboration with white boards and power outlets over quiet carrels and stacks. The new space is used and inhabited because students feel ownership as well as utility.

In research, participatory action research (Singh 2020) uses multiple methods to develop an understanding of a topic as a group, with little distinction between observer and observed. In seeking to have a positive impact on community health, librarians work with community leaders to design nutrition programs. The group tries distribution of healthy food. However, working together to gather and analyze data, the research team sees the need for cooking classes to show how healthy food can be prepared. Participatory action research is an iterative cycle of reflection, planning, and action.

Constructivism is an approach from education that looks at how individuals and groups build understanding of the world together. In the modern school, subject classes are driven by outcomes and standardized curriculum. In the heart of the school, the library becomes a place where students can guide their own learning and use their own passions to improve their reading and critical learning skills.

These three areas (among others) show that if we are to prepare students for a long and dynamic (and largely unpredictable) career in librarianship—librarianship focused around communities—our preparation has to be participatory, action-oriented, constructivist.

The New Apprenticeship?

It would seem a natural call to bring back some form of library apprenticeship model. After all, learning by doing in a real-world situation is participatory, action-oriented, and provides the authentic learning environment required in constructivism. However, there are several reasons such a throwback won't work.

Skills instilled in tomorrow's librarians must be broad to allow for innovation from outside of librarianship. For example, while linked data and the push to interoperable metadata was informed by long library practice, it also required understanding of the semantic-web and tools from computer science. Likewise, the evolution of reference from matching patrons to library resources to instruction and information literacy took knowledge of pedagogy and communications. We cannot simply go back to a time of apprenticeships that simply pass on existing practice.

Think for a moment of a librarian who retires in the summer of 2023 after forty years of service. Over the course of their career, this librarian would have had to adjust to mass adoption of the personal computer; the wide-scale availability of the internet; a wireless revolution that moved telecommunication from a wire on the wall to a device in a pocket; a fragmenting media landscape that introduced four hundred channels and 24/7 news networks; the rapid transition from born analog to born digital materials; an information marketplace shift from purchase to subscription to data-monetization; and of course, if they are retiring today, the light-speed evolution of artificial intelligence (AI). The scale of these shifts in the information age is daunting; the increasing speed and frequency of these shifts are oppressive.

Personal computers allowed individuals to directly manage information in the form of files and applications. The internet wasn't simply a large space for an individual to organize information (think bookmarks), instead it allowed people to connect (think emails and posts). The telecommunications revolution not only allowed these connections to occur anywhere (from the office to the beach) but brought a world of information into every interaction—no more forgetting a date or a phone number. The media landscape resulted in tailored and streamed media experiences; personalization where algorithms began to organize born digital information, and contacts, and media around individual behavior. All this monitoring of behavior has resulted in a marketplace that exchanges data and attention for service. And now AI promises to push personalized algorithms from ads and posts to conversations.

These information shifts are, however, only part of the picture. Today's library science students are already wrestling with the aftermath of a pandemic, global conflict, climate crisis, challenges to democracy, and a culture war that would oversimplify societal debates pitting parents' rights against book banning and woke versus a dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

Every step has shifted attention, capability, and responsibility to the individual and the community that the individual inhabits. And our now retired librarian had to shift their focus and functions throughout. How do we prepare librarians for the future of more rapid seismic shifts in the information landscape?

The Hybrid Classroom

What is needed is a recalibration in library science education. One that is lifelong, but also at its start, truly connects fieldwide practice with structured learning. Many library science programs, of course, already offer some of this in the form of internships or capstone experiences. However, just as all aspects of a library operation are touched by community engagement, so should all aspects of library science education.

What is needed is a different kind of hybrid classroom. Not one defined by method of delivery (online versus in-person, or synchronous versus asynchronous), but defined by the role of the participants. Hybrid in hands-on versus conceptual, and preservice versus in-the-field professionals.

Each class needs to have both a symposia component (theory, conceptual) and a practica component (practice, application, project). Students need to understand an idea, and to explore the idea unencumbered by the limitations of the situational. They then need to apply it in a context and see where and why compromises are made and see if the idea holds up to application. Finally, students need time to reflect, synthesize, and debrief on the ideas being presented.

The current model for this type of work is combining elements of continuing education and formal courses. Library students work on projects and explore topics in the same classroom as in-the-field librarians. Practicing library staff gain new and broader perspectives while imparting their lived experience with preservice students. This work also allows for bringing current topics and challenges into the realm of education.

So, in a class on collection development, say, the very real and pressing cases of materials challenges and ideologically motivated censorship is brought into the discussion. The instructor, meantime, is not forced to constantly identify and develop coursework around cases, as the in-classroom librarians will be living the issue and can raise them. In this model the role of the instructor shifts from orchestrator of the full classroom experience to facilitator of community learning. The learning community, in this case, is the students, professionals, and indeed, the instructor. This kind of multistakeholder learning is well covered by Bird and Crumpton (2014).

This approach, however, is not solely dependent on real-world experience. Preservice librarians need special structures to ensure success. For example, whereas many projects in libraries emerge out of immediate needs, from long-term planning, or are developed on the fly, students require some structure to ensure learning outcomes are met. Further, projects must be able to deliver these instructional goals within a set time frame (like a semester). Also, students meeting periodically (weekly) simply cannot provide public-facing service in a functioning library. Reference questions don't wait a week.

The other aspect that must be accommodated in the hybrid environment is failure. In apprenticeships the learner is working in real environments. Failure here means some library service is either compromised, or some professional has to "fix" the situation. However, learning is fundamentally a cycle of attempt, failure, reflection, attempt again. Failure can't be solely defined as an inability to perform a task but should mean encouraging students to reach past their current limitations. If they are unable to succeed at first, the role of the instructor is not to point out the failure but provide guidance for future success.

The hybrid classroom must be a place where failure is accepted, and even encouraged. And the student then gets a clean slate moving forward into practice. So, the hybrid classroom to be truly effective always has to have an artificial aspect. Artificial where the consequences of failure don't directly impact a library member. Artificial where dynamic projects are brought into scope for a semester course or project.

The Teaching Library

The hybrid classroom is only the first step toward preservice preparation of librarians focused on the library as a community. These classes need to be put together. A sequence is needed where skills are not simply added to a portfolio, but students progressively gain greater access and impact upon a community. Here the medical model may be of use.

While preparation of physicians might seem a stretch from librarianship, there are many similarities. Both are fields with comprehensive academic preparation and a practice full of professionals. Both fields must prepare professionals for long-term careers in dynamic fields, full of change. Both fields represent an array of specialties, such as surgery and oncology versus cataloging and reference. Professionals will work in a wide array of environments, for example, hospitals and family practice versus academic and public libraries. Both fields have strong ethical codes, a strong service component, and the need for conceptual and hands-on skills.

There are obvious differences as well. Aside from the content area, there is the important difference of anticipated cost of education and future income. This means that while solutions may have some aspects in common, adaptation is needed, not simple adoption.

Central to medical education is the teaching hospital. After courses, medical students must do between three and seven years of work in a hospital under the supervision of certified doctors. It is in this environment that concepts are applied, skills refined, and a transition is made from student to practitioner. Can a similar idea work in a library setting?

In the United States, all but two LIS programs (The University of Texas at Austin and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) are available online. This means that students can be learning in working libraries that best match their circumstances versus proximity to a given university. This can be as simple as working in a nearby library, but it can be taken so much further. Imagine a student interested in medical librarianship studying in a medical library. Students interested in urban public libraries can learn in outstanding libraries in Austin, or San Francisco. They would be taking classes online, but meeting and studying with librarians in their preferred sectors.

This is done already through a variety of postdegree fellowships. North Carolina State University has a very successful academic library fellowship. The University of Texas has a Diversity Residency Program.

More such programs begun in the second year of an LIS education in public libraries would go a long way to answering concerns of public library directors hiring graduates with usable skills (Huggins 2022). Such partnerships would also allow new models of faculty. Where many programs do not have the resources to hire faculty in all areas of librarianship, schools could develop networks of mentors and facilitators in libraries throughout the world. Throwing aside the uncomfortable adjunct model, these library clinicians can work with and advise teams of future professionals, all while developing their own skills.

The Need for Evolution

How do we prepare the next generation of librarians for their thirty- to forty-year careers? What seismic shifts will they encounter? What is the next telecommunications revolution? Next technology shift? Will they be faced with new frontiers in biomedicine? New crises brought on by the climate and an unstable atmosphere? The answer is we can't. No one knows what the next four decades will look like. Instead, we must continue to change professional preparation to be responsive, continuous, and founded on the principle that communities (and their changes) lie at the heart of everything a library does. We must look to our own community of professionals and preprofessionals and instill in them the same thing we seek to instill in communities: participation, agility, and responsive service.

References

Bird, Nora, and Michael A. Crumpton. 2014. "Real Learning Connections: Questioning the Learner in the LIS Internship." Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 55, no. 2 (Spring): 89–99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43686973.

Buchanan, Shelly, Mary Harlan, Christine Bruce, and Sylvia Edwards. 2016. "Inquiry Based Learning Models, Information Literacy, and Student Engagement: A Literature Review." School Libraries Worldwide 22 (2): 23–39. https://doi.org/10.29173/slw6914.

Huggins, Melanie. 2022. "MLIS Required? Rethinking the Skills and Knowledge Necessary for Managing in a Public Library." Journal of Library Administration 62 (6): 840–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2022.2102384.

Lankes, R. David. 2016. The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lankes, R. David, Derrick L. Cogburn, Megan Oakleaf, and Jeffrey M. Stanton. 2008. "Cyber-infrastructure Facilitators: New Approaches to Information Professionals for e-Research." Paper presented at the Oxford eResearch Conference, Oxford, UK, January 1, 2008.

Let's Move in Libraries. n.d. School of Education. University of North Carolina Greensboro. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://letsmovelibraries.org/.

Oakleaf, Megan, Ken Varnum, Jan Fransen, Shane Nackerud, Cary Brown, Bracken Mosbacker, and Steve McCann. 2020. Connecting Libraries and Learning Analytics for Student Success. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Simonsen, Jesper, and Toni Robertson. 2013. Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. New York: Routledge.

Singh, Vandana. 2020. "Applying Participatory Action Approach to Integrating Professional Librarians into Open Source Software Communities." Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 52, no. 2 (June): 541–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000619836724.