http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1188 20th Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (1983). Edited by Linda C. Smith http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1223 The Role of the Association in Developing Professional Competence Virgo, Julie Carroll I would like to begin by reviewing what it is about an association that shapes the special role it can play in developing professional competence. To begin with what is perhaps the obvious, a professional association consists of a group of people who identify with a particular profession. The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences1 defines a profession as an occupation requiring intensive and continuous preparation. In searching back in my memory to library school classes, I remember the characteristics then cited to describe a profession: 1. it has a body of knowledge that describes the field and some consensus about that body of knowledge; 2. it requires extensive study or preparation; 3. there develops a commitment to training new entrants and extending the knowledge; 4. it develops a body of literature and the publication of scholarly journals to disseminate the information; and 5. groups are formed to advance the goals of the profession in other words, the development of associations. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1222 The Public Librarian of the Last Years of the Twentieth Century Sweeney, Richard This paper addresses two major questions. First, what is the schizophrenia that is afflicting the library profession in general and public librarians in particular? Second, what knowledge and skill competencies must public librarians possess to survive in the remainder of this century, particularly in utilizing information technology? In the latter part of this paper I will suggest six competency areas that should be emphasized both for public librarians and all professional librarians. Most public librarians have difficulty thinking of libraries as just one type of information technology. The general public thinks of public libraries primarily as a collection of books or a room or building where a collection of books, periodicals, manuscripts, or even possibly videocassettes are kept. Clearly, to meet their needs, people go to many other information resources than just the public library. Today, the emergence of videotex, teletex, autodial tape services, electronic banking services, electronic publishing, laser printing on demand, and many other technologies are expanding the information user's options. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1221 Competencies for Library Networking and Cooperation Segal, Jo An S. Since Sunday evening we have enjoyed outstanding papers on the competencies required for the use of the new information technologies in librarianship. We have looked at the needs for using technology, the kinds of competencies needed in different types of libraries, and training and education needed for developing these competencies. The final section of the program has included Julie Virgo's paper on the association role in developing professional competence. I would like to present an argument which I hope will both offer some new material and provide a framework for summarizing many of the ideas presented during the course of the clinic. I will discuss competencies needed by librarians from the point of view of the cooperative library agency. I see two major needs. The first is for a body of professionals to work in such agencies and the second is for an enlightened clientele of librarians who are familiar with the role of those agencies and able to take the greatest advantage of what they can offer. I believe that the secret of these competencies lie less in knowing how to perform certain tasks than in a values clarification process which identifies values such as cooperation, humanism and ethical behavior as foremost among the characteristics needed by librarians in cooperating for the use of library technology. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1220 Competencies Required of Public Services Librarians to Use New Technologies Nikecki, Danuta A. The classic dichotomy within librarianship roughly divides the profession's functions into two the technical activities of acquiring and organizing recorded information on the one hand and on the other hand the public assistance to interpret and disseminate this stored information. ' Within this setting, the main function of public services librarians is to help library users to acquire needed information. To do so involves personal interactions, interpretation of needs, retrieval of information, and delivery of documents, facts or directions. Does the utilization of new technologies which are appearing in libraries demand the development of new competencies among public services librarians to peform their function? Are we in the midst of a revolutionary change whereby "the availability of online bibliographic searching has created demand for librarians with new skills and expertise." Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1219 The New Technology and Competencies for "The Most Typical of the Activities of Libraries": Technical Services Henderson, Kathryn Luther At a library conference in 1940, William M. Randall called technical services the "most typical of the activities of libraries" "they are..." he said, "the things which librarians do that no one else does the secrets of the craft." 1 In those intervening forty-three years much has been written and uttered in defense and derision of these "secrets of the craft." These most typical of library activities have changed the name Randall used, technical processes, to technical services. They have moved from being sneeringly derided as "backroom," "basement" or other dreary location activities to being enthusiastically hailed today as "where the action is." They are, fortunately, no longer the "secrets" that they were in Randall's day. They have been moved into, moved around within and even moved out of the organizational charts. Regardless of all these attitudes and activities, the functions of acquiring, organizing and preserving library materials persist and the competencies necessary to carry out these three functions will be the focus of this paper. In the paper, reference will frequently be made to the "technical services librarian" meaning any librarian who works in that aspect of librarianship. The emphasis is on no particular type of library. The term library will be used as meaning also information center. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1217 Competency Requirements for Library and Information Science Professionals Griffiths, José-Marie One of the paradoxes of the phenomenal growth of the information community is that librarianship, one of the oldest and most respected of information professions, is experiencing great difficulties as a profession at a time when it should be experiencing its greatest growth. There are many hypotheses as to why this is happening. One is that the environment and new technologies are changing the patterns of distribution of the work force and the ways in which information is being communicated. There are many who feel that librarians as intermediaries will cease to exist. It is my contention that these changes will increase the importance of librarians, albeit in possible new roles in addition to their existing ones. Another hypothesis is that the changing environment and new technologies are not being fully met by educational institutions. A likely reason for these needs and demands not being fully met is a lack of communication between the employers of information professionals and the institutions that educate and train them. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1216 Special Librarians Face the New Technology Griffin, Hillis L. As I tried to define the role of the special librarian for these proceedings, I recalled an experience that happened during a recent visit to London. We were walking through the tunnel under Oxford Street to Hyde Park at Marble Arch. As we emerged into the daylight we heard a terrible din, and we saw a busker shuffling along the path with instruments hanging all over him. Cymbals were between his knees, a drum on his back, a harmonica on a wire frame on his chest, and more besides ! He was a one-man band. He was the whole show. The sweat was dripping off him, and he was doing his best under his heavy burden and the warm afternoon sun. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1215 Technology and the Academic Library Staff Gray, Carolyn M. This clinic program announces that I intend to address the human factors involved in library automation in academic libraries. It is tempting to begin this talk by discussing the impact of technology upon academic library staff with a lead into the competencies that idea assumes. If I began in that way, I might begin with certain assumptions. Some of the assumptions held by many attending this conference might include: 1. that the application of technology in libraries will result in benefits to staff and users; 2. that technology is the inevitable wave of the future; and 3. that as librarians, if we do not embrace technology, we will be left to fade into oblivion in our museums full of books. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1214 Education Matters Daniel, Evelyn H. We have heard an interesting mix of practitioners and educators. My task today is to speak for library/information education in general. I hope you will consider my title, "Education Matters," to reflect both possible meanings. My comments will, no doubt, reflect certain personal and institutional biases, but fortunately there is in the audience a dean or two from other schools and a number of other educators who can leap in to contradict if I veer too sharply from the common path. First, a digression. Dick Sweeney cautioned us not to let ourselves be defined by an institution or by a medium (as the book, for example). I agree with him. Clearly we are an information profession. We work with information in various ways and forms, with many different media, and in many kinds of organizations. We work with formal information systems and we create informal ones. The new information technology provides us with powerful tools that allow us to do these things more efficiently and also allow us to provide new services as well. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1213 Training Staff to Use Computers Baskin, Linda Spencer, Mima Until recently, those who worked with computers were commonly thought of as having special knowledge or technical background not commonly known to others. In libraries the computers were likely to be managed by data processing staff only. Today, the idea of a single group "in the know" / about computers is being replaced by the expectation that most of the staff in libraries and information centers will deal with computers in some form Las a regular part of their work. Advances in library automation are coming so quickly that administrators find that they are not able to wait for a new generation of staff trained in computer use or for the gradual spread of home computers to familiarize current staff with computers. The reality is that librarians and information specialists in the work force today will have to be trained to use computers on the job. Libraries --Data processing Online data processing Information technology Library education