Nicola in the Library

I’m worried..will my job exist in 2020?

My professional organisation CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) is undergoing a “conversation” with its members about what the job of the Librarian will look like in 2020.   This has been brought into sharper focus by a report commissioned by the new Coalition Government suggesting Public Libraries could be run by volunteers. KPMG Report – Payment For Success And if Public Libraries what about School Libraries? Could they be run by volunteers too?

Volunteers good, no Librarians bad

"The Library lady" from Rochell.et.al (Flickr)

In my opinion there are many things that volunteers can do in community libraries but there are a lot more things they cannot do and without the supporting skills of professional librarians everything  soon falls apart.   The problem is that the “collective unconscious” image  of the librarian  lady with the bun and the glasses still dominates in our society.

Can “One Minute Messages” make a difference?

CILIP have pointed out in a new PR initiative called “One Minute Messages” that Librarians have “a unique combination of skills”  some of which are to:

help others find and interpret information
assist others to develop information handling skills, i.e. information literacy
provide knowledge and access to all available resources

Our unique skills  mix looks like..?

But words alone don’t have the impact that real people’s stories do.  So I’m asking my colleagues to help me “crowdsource”*, through Twitter and this blog, the wide range of skills that librarians use in their jobs.  This gives us 140 characters to describe a skill and add a picture or a link to show how it works in practice.  I suggest we use the hashtag CILIP1 (for one minute message)  i.e #CILIP1

I’m a librarian [Information Professional] and I …. #CILIP1

Here’s my first offering:

I’m a librarian and I teach students how to use information sources on the Web #CILIP1

Please join if you are an Information Professional or Librarian in any sector. This isn’t just about Public Libraries. It’s about all our futures.  I’m planning to make a one minute “animoto” about the skills I use in my job as a school librarian.

Add a skill to the comments box below or on Twitter.  Pictures, videos and links are very useful so too.  We can let CILIP staff at HQ read our tagged list of skills and use them to tell our stories.

I’ve never tried a crowdsourcing thing before so fingers crossed it works!

Thank you

*BNET’s definition of crowdsourcing