FutureLibrary

It’ll have to wait till I get off the desk July 4, 2009

The life of a systems librarian is a perplexing and unique one. Does one become an IT professional first and then move into libraries? Or does one become a librarian first and learn IT? My guess is the latter.

The important word here is “librarian”. Even though you may be totally imersed in PCs, networking, training, installations, troubleshooting and maintaining websites, you will also be asked to do your daily shifts on the circulation and reference desks as well, returning, issuing and answering phone renewals. You are still a librarian, not an I.T. Pro, even though it is expected all systems are running perfectly.

Having a foot in both camps can make one feel like an imposter. Having none of the I.T. qualifications,  but doing all the work. The question arises, “why should we train up this librarian in I.T. when we have an I.T. Department?” And that’s a fair enough question.

Future Libraries will demand all staff to be computer literate. I don’t envisage an I.T. librarian as such. Sure,  there may be the person who has a greater knowledge of networking, or the guy who is a whiz on the web, or the dude who does installations.  Broadly speaking, all future information professionals will be “I.T. Professionals” in their own right.

The library, as the focal point of the Community, will demand a greater share of I.T. budgets. I.T. professionals who once never thought of working in a library, will be entised by greater salaries and state of the art facilities. Although it will be important to drum into them the public library ethos. Until then, I think it is feasible for a library to have a dedicated and qualified I.T. employee who is not a librarian. Those libraries will leave the others eating dust.