2026-09-22T16:10:08Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/24280 2023-07-10 col_2142_5131 col_2142_16325 com_2142_5130 com_2142_16324 com_2142_16323

Lammers, John C. Lammers, John C. Poole, Marshall S. Finnegan, Cara A. Wright, Trina J. Garcia, Mattea A. 2011-05-25T14:52:38Z 2011-05-25T14:52:38Z 2011-05-25T14:52:38Z 2011-05 Institutions can be powerful influences on our personal and work lives and can constrain and enable our behaviors. It is through communication that institutions are created and sustained.Professions, institutionalized occupations, are one example of institutions that play an important role in organizations. Terms like profession and professional evoke certain expectations about types of work and workers. Organizational communication scholars, however, often treat professionals as non-distinct from other organizational members or uncritically employ the terms profession and professional. This study explored the meanings of profession and professional identity for librarians. Specifically, this research analyzed librarians’ rhetoric about their work. Interviews with public and academic librarians were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using modified grounded theory approaches combined with rhetorical analysis. Librarians’ rhetoric revealed insecurity about the stereotypes and misconceptions held by the public. Librarians actively defended their professional status by delineating certain activities as truly librarian and aligning their activities and professional identities with the profession of librarianship’s values and standards. By aligning their activities and professional identity with the broader practices, values, and standards of the field, professionals add meaning to their work, defend their professional status, make sense of their roles, and (re)constitute the profession. This work suggests that professional identity can be usefully seen as tied to activities as much as to social membership. The research also guides our understanding of communication’s role in creating and sustaining institutions and providing coherence and meaning to work. Item withdrawn by Mark Zulauf (zulauf@illinois.edu) on 2011-04-21T13:28:17Z Item was in collections: University of Illinois Theses & Dissertations (ID: 1) No. of bitstreams: 2 Garcia_Mattea.pdf.pdf: 727442 bytes, checksum: 9fe2e90e8dc61fac712e7c556528e5c4 (MD5) Garcia_Mattea.pdf: 727442 bytes, checksum: 9fe2e90e8dc61fac712e7c556528e5c4 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-25T14:52:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Garcia_Mattea.pdf: 727442 bytes, checksum: 9fe2e90e8dc61fac712e7c556528e5c4 (MD5) license.txt: 4063 bytes, checksum: 65e066d4d81bd80bc9cab5f82db8ced6 (MD5) http://hdl.handle.net/2142/24280 en Copyright 2011 Mattea A. Garcia organizational communication profession professional identity institution constitutive rhetoric Ask a librarian: The profession, professional identities, and constitutive rhetoric of librarians Communication 1489 Communication 5164 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D. PHD: Communication (LAS) -UIUC 10KS5164PHD