NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 28 number 2 - Winter 2007

Wanted: A New Generation of Librarians

By Kathy Brown, Planning and Research

Looking ahead to the next decade, the library profession will soon confront a monumental challenge. Denise Davis, director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Research and Statistics, estimates that 45.4 percent of practicing librarians will reach the age of sixty-five between 2010 and 2019. Replacing them is a daunting prospect. Add to that the need to attract people from diverse backgrounds to the profession, and the challenge is even greater.

Why is diversity an issue? Consider the environment here at NC State. Minority and international students currently make up approximately 25 percent of the student body, and that number is expected to grow. Minorities, however, comprise only 12 percent of the Libraries' professional staff, a figure in line with the 13 percent average reported by the Association of Research Libraries.

Organizations at both the local and national levels are trying to tackle the multifaceted problem. The NCSU Libraries recruits aggressively, offers numerous training opportunities for staff, and targets the best and brightest library school graduates for its highly regarded Fellows program, initiated in 1999. In 1998 the ALA established its Spectrum Scholars program, which provides a one-year $5,000 scholarship and $1,500 in professional development opportunities for minority students to attend an ALA-accredited graduate program in library and information science. The ALA awarded eighty scholarships for the 2007/08 academic year. The federal government has recognized the importance of replenishing the nation’s supply of librarians. In 2006 the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded the School of Library and Information Sciences at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) a grant that will support up to twenty minority students as Diversity Scholars. Students receive free tuition and fees as well as a $5,000 annual stipend.

Two of the Libraries' staff members, Judy Allen Dodson and RaShauna Brannon, are NCCU Diversity Scholars for 2007/09. Allen Dodson holds a B.A. in communication from Western Michigan University and works twenty hours a week in the Special Collections Research Center. Brannon, who double majored in English and African American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and works forty hours a week in the Acquisitions Department, is also an ALA Spectrum Scholar for 2007/08. Both recently marked their one-year anniversaries with the Libraries.

Kathy Brown sat down with the pair in early October for a wide-ranging discussion about their graduate program, the profession, and diversity. The two share a passion for service, and their pursuit of the master's degree in library science is changing their lives. Allen Dodson and Brannon will, in turn, be changing the face of librarianship.

What attracted you to NC State?
RB: I knew that the library had a wonderful reputation, and I was transitioning out of a role as a reading teacher in a charter school. I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in library science. It was just a natural fit for me, and I'm glad to be here. . . . Looking from the outside in, I wasn't aware there were so many different levels and departments within the library.
JAD: What drew me was the library. My [two] kids usually come to NC State for summer camps, and we always come to the library. I said, "I’m going to work there one of these days," and my kids were like, "Yah, right." I had tried to get in for two years, and nothing. I saw an ad for an opening in Special Collections and said, "That's my job." People never know all the different departments that are in a library. And now that I know about academic special collections, I go into public libraries, and they have special collections as well. I didn't really notice that division of the library before, until I started working in special collections.

How did you learn about the Diversity Scholars program?
RB: I had been searching for funding opportunities as early as the summer of 2006. I went to NCCU's Web site. They had the news there that they had been awarded the IMLS grant and to apply ASAP. That’s what I did.
JAD: When I came on board, my goal was to be a librarian, and everybody knew it. . . . Wendy Scott [Organizational Design and Learning] said, "They have a great program at North Carolina Central. You'd better jump on it." Greg Raschke [Collections and Scholarly Communication] and Linda Sellars [Special Collections] both told me that they knew it was the best opportunity for me, and that I was an ideal candidate [laughs].

What courses are you taking?
JAD: We have a diversity seminars class, which is very good. I knew I was going to like that class. We are African American women. We do want diversity in our field, so that course helps us see the trend of how it used to be to where it is now.
RB: We've had several guest speakers, including Dr. Mark Winston from UNC-Chapel Hill. He's in the field of library science. But we've also had several professors from NCCU from the psychology department, and that's been a pleasure to hear how you can incorporate all of these ideologies from other fields to help you progress.
JAD: With this course we have four professors teaching us. We have the dean, we have the assistant dean, we have Dr. Bracy and Dr. Ballard. So we get the cream of the crop. . . . And that’s an honor--to have Dean Owens teaching us, investing in us, saying, "You are going to take the wand next, you are going to pick up and run with the wand. . . ." When I walk into the library, any library, I'm a totally different person. I'm studious, my brain is open for learning, and I'm excited. Every day my kids ask me about my day at work. I say, "I had a GREAT day at the library."

Four courses is a heavy load on top of your jobs. How long does the program take?
RB: Two years. It really helps that there are evening classes. It's very friendly for the library professional.
JAD: They want you to be active within your library, whether it be public, school, or academic. . . . Dean Owens does not leave until after the 6:00 P.M. classes start every night. She wants to be able to see all of her students, not just us. Her door is always open. That's another thing that gives us a really good feeling about the program. Not only are the professors available for us at any time, we have a sense of community because we’re all in the same courses together. . . . We do pretty much everything together. It makes it more of a family, when we know we have somebody else to lean on.

How would you market our field to get people interested in it as a possible profession?
RB: If we could focus on the variety. . . . As I've already said, you can find your niche in the library field: digital libraries, working one-on-one with patrons, archives. . . . If we could showcase the diversity as far as the options available, that's one way, especially the new innovations toward the electronic. The Learning Commons is an advertisement as to what's to come and what is now. We have to remember that we are a public face, and we need to keep ourselves thriving.
JAD: That's really good. With any profession, you need to hook them as young as you can. . . . It has to start in elementary school. Once they even get to middle school, they're already looking at other fields. . . . I think librarianship needs a video game--something to get our message out there to say look at us, look at our new libraries. We're not the stale, stiff, quiet place any more. We're where it's happening. . . . We need to have librarians from all fields doing career networking or career talks with children, to go in with some kind of advertising tool to hook the kids. If you're just sitting there holding a book, these kids are like, "No, it's not moving and it's not doing anything for me." You've got to be hot and exciting.

You've both been academically successful. Are there things that we should be doing as an academic library to reach out to students of color?
RB: If students of color can see librarians of color and identify with those who have similar cultural backgrounds . . . no matter what cultural background the librarian is, just remember to provide excellent service to anyone, no questions asked.
JAD: Before my diversity seminars class, I used to think of diversity as being a race, a color. And it's not that. . . . The class brings different aspects into the diversity pool, and I'm constantly fishing from the pool. Now I know that it's not just about race. It's not just about color. It's also about the patrons or the employees who have disabilities. Of course, you're going to feel more comfortable if you see somebody like you. Historically, the librarian has been the white older female . . . you don't see that many men, Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans, or people with disabilities. . . . When you see the ad online, you see "equal opportunity employer." But what does that really mean? Are we actively pursuing diversity? And I'm on the Libraries' diversity committee. We are actually doing a lot more. I shouldn't say a lot more, because this is my first year, but we're keeping up with the trend. There's always room to grow as far as promoting and actually recruiting for diversity.

You've mentioned the complexity of modern library organizations. What else has surprised you about the field?
JAD: I've been surprised at the complexity of the digitization of our field. . . . Libraries have always been on the cutting edge, whether it be technology or serving the community. . . . We have to be there with the coffee houses, as well as being open and free to have a commons area so people can talk and do their schoolwork together and not feel that they have to be shushed. The competition is pretty stiff out there, but I think library as place will always stand the test of time.

Do people who access remotely realize what the library does to organize all of that information? Do we have to worry about branding and conveying the library stamp of approval?
JAD: Do you mean what makes us any different than Barnes and Noble? I do know that people prefer to come to our Web site over any other Web site or catalogs, because we do have the best catalog. I've heard that from TRLN, from other librarians. That's a brand to me. That's our brand.
RB: Our services . . . the information is free of charge to the patrons, to our students, to our professors, to whomever. That is a brand. . . . [But] Information is rather costly. There's a lot of value in the library. We are the brand. How do we market ourselves?
JAD: That's a good question. You have to put a face on it. As librarians we've traditionally waited for people to come to us. . . . We need to be out there in the schools, in the communities. There's an election coming up. We need money for libraries. We need librarians standing out there saying, "Look. This is the value that I'm holding up here." When people think, "Oh, library--that's just a bunch of books." No, It's a lot more. That's the brand. We need to be out there more. Not just academic librarians. All librarians. The North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) is coming up next week. That's a good time for us to network with other librarians.

Will NCLA be your first conference?
RB: We attended the Black Caucus of the ALA in Fort Worth, Texas, at the beginning of August. We were able to network and learn more about the field. There were public, academic, special, and school librarians. It was good to be in that interaction. We will probably be going to the ALA conference next summer. I will be going to ALA as a part of Spectrum, also.

From your perspectives, do you have a message for readers of the Focus?
JAD: What I would like the readers to know is that for us to meet the needs of our patrons now and in the future, we need to make sure we have diversity in all facets of the library, from administration all the way down to Special Collections. That’s what I would like the readers to know. . . . We are honored to have been selected for this diversity scholarship and to be able to take that charge and diversify the field of librarianship.
RB: That's beautiful. I love what you said.

Let me play devil's advocate. Do you have an unfair burden? There's a mission component to your program that the typical library student doesn’t encounter.
RB: I like to think of it as "To whom much is given, much is required." As a Diversity Scholar, I have this opportunity. I'm going to do my best to take in everything that I can and produce it back to the university or whatever setting I find myself in. . . . I'm thankful for the support from the institution, my department, and my co-workers. All the way around, it's just a great opportunity. It's going to be a wonderful experience for us. I don't think that it's an unnecessary challenge. We knew the expectations going in; we knew that we were going to be expected to be full-time students. It's all about stepping up to the plate and hitting those home runs.
JAD: It's also to plant that seed. To bring us in, so that we can reach back and bring in the next generation of African and multicultural librarians. The face of librarianship has to change, because patrons want to see people who look like them. We want to be of service to everybody, but we want people to feel comfortable coming into the library and seeing a diverse group of staff.