Heritage librarianship

As a mid-career librarian I was particularly struck the other day by David Lee King's post on the Library of Congress's efforts to trim its workforce by letting go of 'traditional' librarians unwilling or unable to adapt to new library technologies. (For both of us this came via Michael Casey's LibraryCrunch). I forwarded King's post to my junior library colleague, herself a newly enrolled library school student, suggesting that I felt as if I was but one step ahead of the library grim reaper.

To his credit King takes this news as a point of departure to emphasize the importance of honing ones core competencies, and on the obligation of both the employer to develop and provide and the employee to avail her/himself of such educational support.

I confess to having bristled slightly at having what I was taught in the dark ages (ca. 1984) called 'traditional librarianship'. My tongue firmly in cheek I suggested to David that we needed a new term to describe what came before whatever it is we have now -- much as the guitar became the 'acoustic guitar' once the electric guitar arrived on the scene. Taking a leaf from museum nomenclature, I humbly offer heritage librarianship as the new term of art for the old way of (library) life.

The same library colleague has also been working on assembling in a lower desk drawer what she calls 'The Museum of Library Science' from among all the discarded tools and equipment in our library. (Electric erasers, anyone?) I think she should consider taking this one step further, by providing interpretive displays of heritage librarianship in re-enactment. Of course, this will mean retro-educating the new librarians to play the parts ... or perhaps pressing newly idle senior librarians into service.

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[nbm]

I may be able to locate some exhibition-worthy material for the Museum. There's this cabinet under the stairs . . . .