First Intro LIS Class

I just finished my first week of Library Science school and I am filled with optimism and excitement. In our introduction class, we discussed the various ways to define librarianship. Our professor focused on three different ways to define the profession: by what you do, by where you've been, and by your mission. Librarianship as defined by what librarians do is to define their function: acquiring books and other works and materials for cataloging and distributing them to the general public. The profession as defined by where librarians have been encompasses the traditional view of librarianship. This definition is tied to the historical view of librarianship, as seen in Krummel's "Seven Ages of Librarianship." The third way to define the librarianship is by its mission. Our professor defined the mission of librarians as "to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities."

Personally, I found this third definition of the mission of librarianship to be particularly enlightening. Even though I am pursuing the profession, I often found myself defining librarianship by the first two more narrow-minded definitions. This way of thinking can be very discouraging to a new-comer to the profession. If librarians are defined by what they do currently, and by what they have done in the past, we are failing to define them accurately. For example, if you define a librarian as someone in a building who provides you with books, your definition is fleeting. With the age of Kindles and iPads upon us, the need for physical books is waning. Just as the traditional newspapers are dying, so may the hard cover and paperback books that I love. I must admit that I was one of those who was clinging to the traditional views of the profession. (I would often find myself saying such things as "How could we ever replace books?" or "I need to be able to turn the pages!" or "I hate reading off of a computer screen!") Despite my feelings, the world is moving in the direction of the fast-paced electronic need for information, and librarianship must move to reflect this direction in order to survive.

However, we traditionalists need not be afraid and fear that the loss of books equals the loss of librarianship as a profession. If you define librarianship by its true mission, "to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in communities," then it is easy to see that librarianship will never die. Librarians and libraries are not books, materials, and buildings. Librarians and libraries are knowledge, conversation, and understanding. Your librarian does not merely provide you with the right article to cite in your research paper. Through conversation, your librarian facilitates knowledge by giving you the tools necessary to understand the topic thoroughly and create your masterpiece. Can a Kindle help you do that? Can Google even help you do that? I think not. Who else but librarians can navigate the current influx of information and make it easy for you to get what you want, understand what you want, and create what you want? Who else but librarians wield such power? Take that, e-books and Internet databases. You won't steal my job anytime soon.