At the Online Information Conference held in London last week, SLA Europe ran the European Librarians Theatre (ELT): three lunchtime sessions discussing various aspects of information management in Europe. The ELT was sponsored by EBSCO. Liz Blankson-Hemans reports on the discussion at the ELT on Thursday December 1st.
Panel:
Cherifa Boukacem, Lecturer in Info & Consumer Science, Uni of Lyon, URFIST, France
Tomas Baiget, Director, El Profesional de la Informacion, Spain
Brent Mai, President Elect, SLA
Hazel Hall, Director, Centre for Social Informatics, Edinburgh Napier University, School of Computing, UK
Hazel Hall chaired this discussion on the future of the profession.
The session began with a short video portraying a variety users from various professions (in France) featuring their opinions of the future of the profession: some stereotypes, some insights as to how valuable info pros are in disseminating info and helping to focus research. Some thinking info pros have outlived their use and could be replaced by an efficient search engine.
Each panelist then gave a short presentation that aimed to answer some of the preset questions:
1. What is the future of the information profession in your country?
2. Have any initiatives been taken by the information professions your country to help people become future ready?
3. What are the main qualities needed to be future ready?
4. How are professional associations supporting the information community?
5. What kind of support do you think Universities should be giving new information professionals to help them become future ready?
Hazel then posed a series of questions to which the panellists took it in turn to respond.
What is the future of the profession in your context?
Brent spoke first representing librarians of the association and globally. The view of academic libraries important to him, as an academic librarian himself. Some libraries are all online, like the university of Phoenix, Arizona. SLA is trying to bring together all the constituents of the industry – the creators, the users and the finders.
Cherifa thinks the “one” profession has many “futures”. For her the future can be safeguarded by:
- Keep the user as central to the future of the profession
- Join the international debate
- Be more explicit about the added value
Her university believes that their student users need to be more competitive to succeed in the global economy.
Associations should lobby strongly in areas such as information commons.
Universities should stick with the reality and help students and future info pros by offering appropriate training, and helping them to become embedded librarians.
Tomas said that librarianship is ” communication”. Libraries will not disappear if info pros are more:
- proactive
- good communicators
- cooperate
- absorb other activities before other people do
A huge strength for SLA is that it is the only global professional association. How do we make sure that we are future ready across all four languages/geographies represented across the panel – English, Spanish, French , US?
Brent – language may be much less of a problem now. Yes, much of interaction by SLA is in English.
Cherifa – experiences and trends are universal across language barriers, so sharing experiences can help bridge language differences. Technology also makes the language barrier better because everyone is speaking “computer language”
Tomas – Social networks cross language barriers
What is the most important issue to be addressed in each country for “future readiness”?
Brent – need flexibility and agility to be “future now”, to be ready for opportunities as they come up
Cherifa – switch from paper to computer world and to articulate our value to our users.
Where should we respond to demonstrate our expertise?
Tomas – building awareness and learning centres
Brent – integrate technology into classrooms
Cherifa – mandated to use technical tools for teaching.