University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Advocating for librarianship: The discourses of advocacy and service in the professional identities of librarians

Hicks, Deborah

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89854

Description

Title
Advocating for librarianship: The discourses of advocacy and service in the professional identities of librarians
Author(s)
Hicks, Deborah
Issue Date
2016
Keyword(s)
  • Librarianship--Core Values
  • Librarianship--Theory and Practice
  • Library Profession
Abstract
A dedication to service is often cited as a hallmark of a profession. Service is included as one of eleven Core Values in the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004). For librarians, service includes helping people find information resources to meet their educational, recreational, and work needs. Reporting findings from a larger study into the professional identity of librarians, this paper explores the centrality of service, with specific attention to how librarians advocate for their services and, ultimately, for librarianship. Using a discourse analysis approach, this study examines the roles that Service as a Core Value and advocacy play in the construction of professional identity. Three different data sources were used: professional journals, e-mail discussion lists, and research interviews. The data were analyzed for the discourses librarians use when describing librarians, librarianship, and professionalism and their connection to advocacy. When librarians advocate for the services they offer, they are in fact advocating for the value of the profession. Discursively, speaking or writing about advocacy positioned librarians as active participants in their own identity formation. By making advocacy a central activity of the profession, librarians not only challenged others’ perception of librarianship, they challenged their own understanding as well.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89854
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0007
Copyright and License Information
Copyright (2016) Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 64 (3) Winter 2016: Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and Practice PRIMARY
Library Trends 64 (3) Winter 2016: Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and Practice edited by Selinda A. Berg and Heidi LM Jacobs, University of Windsor.