Competency B: Introduction
Describe and compare different organizational settings in which information professionals practice.
The various organizational settings in which information professionals practice can be categorized in two ways: those that are publicly funded, and those that are privately funded. Each of these settings have their own benefits and concerns. Libraries, being a prominent subset of informational institution, can be found in both the public and private spheres. While library types can often overlap, one can often identify the library setting by what kinds of patrons they attend to.
Definitions:
Public Libraries: public libraries are libraries that, as the name implies, are available to use by the general public and are funded by the public themselves. Because of this, public libraries tend to have the greatest cultural and socioeconomic variety in patrons. As such, information professionals must match an array of needs, and be able to balance the interest of many different shareholders.
School Libraries: these are libraries that are integrated into k-12 schools and have collections and services catering to patrons between the ages of 5-18 years old. Such libraries place a particular emphasis on educational, age-appropriate collections as well as tutoring and after-school programming.
Academic Libraries: academic libraries are those that are part of a higher education facility, and prioritize students and faculty. Databases and other research resources are a prominent part of the library’s collections, and information professionals are often expected to have working knowledge of higher education learning standards and FERPA requirements.
Digital Libraries: Digital libraries exist primarily or solely in digital space, and require the use of an electronic device to access. With the increasing ubiquity of the internet, other library types such as academic and public libraries often incorporate digital libraries into their services to provide for those outside their physical range. Some digital libraries, such as the Internet Archive (link), exist independently of other institutions. Information professionals in this setting are required to be digitally skilled and have an understanding of the software and hardware frameworks that keep a digital library running.
Special/Private Libraries: special libraries are those that are specialized towards a specific subject or process. These libraries can exist as part of an academic institution or even a private corporation.
In order to better understand the behaviors that encourage patron engagement with reference personnel, our professor instructed us to reach out to a reference librarian and observe how they operated within their library. I had already had the pleasure of interning with “Steve”, while at College of Marin, and so between that experience and performing a small interview, I was able to observe how he as a reference librarian utilized his time and skills in an academic library. Ultimately, I focused on Steve’s use of outreach to connect with students and encourage them to utilize the library’s reference services. However, taking so much time to approach students also had a drawback, in that he was often not at his desk when students required his assistance. In the end, it showed how a librarian’s time and effort must be held in a delicate balance in order to serve the patron population effectively.
As reference services are an invaluable interface between library patrons and information resources, reference services and reference personnel can be found across a variety of library environments. This assignment was meant to simulate some of the reference questions one would likely encounter in a school or public library by focusing on questions posed by children and young adults. It introduced me to several different free online resources I was not previously aware of, and also illustrated how sometimes one must adjust their method of explaining concepts depending on the type of patron one is working with.
My time at SJSU has shown me how incredibly diverse information professionals’ working environments can be. Before engaging in this program, I considered libraries to be entirely in their own sphere, independent of other information science settings. It is a welcome discovery to learn the sheer breadth of opportunities that are available to information professionals in this day and age.
Moving forward, I plan on using this knowledge in order to better understand the relationships between libraries and other information institutions.