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Are librarians IT professionals?

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by bill drew

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I'm curious. I just joined TR and am wondering how and where librarians fit into the IT continuum. I am a systems librarian at Morrisville College in New York State. I do everyhting from training and teaching our users (students, faculty, staff) to managing our Integrated Library Management System (ILMS). Any thoughts?

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by txbluebonnet

I consider myself in the IT continuum although I am not in the IT department because my job position is, in many aspects, just as technical. Sometimes, I am in position to know more than some general IT folks on specific types of issues and softwares because I specialize in that arena.

by g. berger

I have struggled with the same question from a resource management point of view and from a departmental responsibility point of view. We call our library people Information Resource people. I think that librarians have a mission that overlaps what might be thought of as an IS related mission. It used to be that IS was reports on manufacturing, sales, and financial information. Of course this assumes that these are the focus of your business. However, given that we are in the "information age" and the focus is more on professional services, the information that is managed in these areas is more similar to what librarians are used to managing. I think that areas like knowledge management, demographics, etc etc are what has traditionally been thought of as a librarian's domain. In short, I see an overlap if not a merger of the roles.

by - a. -

and to take the concept a step further - many offices have lost their librarians without even realizing it. The move to individual administration (email, e-filing, faxing done by each employee) vs traditional admin (typing, fixed files etc. done byone or two people) has had the effect of decentralizing information. In the past, admin assistants were a valuable source of knowledge - if they didn't know the answer, they often knew who did.

As IT progresses, the ability to categorize information so that others can find it will become invaluable. To capitalize on knowledge, companies will have to recentralize it. In the future, we'll find a librarian disguised as an 'IS knowledge worker' in most successful companies.

by charley

I database is the digital equivalent to a brick and mortar library. When you take that concept to the extreme we call "Data Warehousing", the similarities become even more astounding, although the skillset is a bit different.

To answer the original question, though, I would have to say that a Librarian is not a technology worker, per se. On the other hand, I have found that in many companies, one's daily responsibilities do not necessarily overlap one's job title. For instance, a friend of mine has the job title of "Librarian", but she deals entirely with the library's public systems, the electronic catalog, etc.

The short version is that your job title does not, necessarily, define your field of expertise. If your job centers around technology, then you can probably call yourself an IT worker.

On a final note, it's not like we will kick you out of TR for not being a techie. There's something here for everyone, from the most technical (Support, NetAdmin) to the not so technical (CIO, IT Manager). If you find this interesting, read on and enjoy and don't worry about your job title.

by lordinfidel

You need to define the IT Professional's role and the role of a Librarian. You will find that they are 2 seperate beasts.

While it is true that librarians are generally regarded as the instutions "technical point". If you look harder these are places that generally lack a true dedicated IT professional.

I make no claims to being a librarian as much as I do being a mechanic. All because I know a few things about organization and where my fuel filter is, does not automatically qualify meas either.

I take Great pride in being an IT profesional and dedicate every waking hour, to the dismay of my wife, to my profession.

I understand that cross training is sometimes neccessary due to budgets. I have been to companies where a lay person is their Net Admin because that person knows how to turn the computer on. An IT Professional they are not nor should they call themselves one.

I do applaud those who are thrust into these positions by their companies and somehow manage to make it work. But again that does not qualify them as an IT Professional.

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