Library Journal - Ruminations After Retirement

Library Journal - Ruminations After Retirement.

Ruminations After Retirement
By Herbert S. White — March 15, 2006

For those of you who’ve ever read anything I wrote or heard me speak—and I’ve done a lot of both—you know that I have always been a great follower of the recently deceased management guru Peter Drucker. Drucker predicted fearlessly that the profession with the most promising future was that of “knowledge worker.” Isn’t that supposed to be us? What happened?

What’s happened is that we, as a profession, haven’t protected the boundaries of our field as we should, even as less formally educated practitioners like plumbers and mechanics do. I only had the opportunity to work as a reference librarian for about ten years before I moved into full-time administration and teaching. But I still recall what I’d say when patrons would ask me how I had successfully answered their reference question. “Why would I want to tell you?” I would say. “I want you dependent on me whenever you have a question. That is my job security, isn’t it?” Everyone understood, nobody ever argued.

Professional suicide?

Today, however, we seem determined to teach our clients everything we know, and I find that suicidal. Shouldn’t we instead be teaching them what they shouldn’t try to do on their own? Shouldn’t we let them know where their brimming self-confidence, especially among students, is misplaced?

When I was dean at Indiana I was once urged to discipline one of my library students who was apparently earning a little extra money on the side by doing computer research for other students. “Was her research good or inferior?” I asked. I was told it was excellent, indeed so excellent that it led the professor to be suspicious of his student. Whether the work was original or not was his problem, I told that professor. As for me, I was proud of my student and intended to tell her so, because what she did is exactly what librarians do.

Excellent food for thought, by still one of our best and brightest lights.. if you're just discovering Herb White, welcome to the enlightenment.. I always enjoy his perspectives.. though on this one, I'm not 100% sure we can put the genie back in the bottle.. can we teach our users to "fish" their own (less complex) needs, while we do the heavy lifting for them? That would be a more comfortable middle ground, for me personally.. thanks to a posting to the Special Libraries Association (SLA) mailing list, Leadership & Management Division, for the alert on this one...