A stealth librarianship manifesto

Of course, while I agree with almost all of your comments, I would make the argument that this is the opposite of stealth!

Our goal is to be where our patrons are (virtually and physically), using the language that they use, speaking to them on their terms, making our selves as visible and noticed as possible.

I might argue that many traditional librarian activities (publishing in the library literature, presentations at library conferences, etc.) are actually stealthy to our patrons because they will never hear our ideas when they are presented that way.

Thanks, Bonnie. Point taken. After all, I seem to have gotten a rep as a "feisty librarian" at scio11.

I guess I use stealth in the sense that we're sneaking into their spaces whether they want us there or not.

I'm coming to this from just about the opposite side of the spectrum - public librarian, readers advisory/services emphasis - & I am nodding my head off. From the public end, this means to stop flogging our own lame platforms so much, and start being a part of other peoples' - the mass media, the social Q&A and expert sites. My own mentor Nancy Pearl is a great example of this, having become one of the most famous librarians in America by thinking beyond the library media, the library box. Which is where we all should be.

Hi David,

Thank you very much for your comment. I'm really glad to hear that my post resonated with you. I very specifically tried not to generalize my comments beyond the world of academic libraries, not because I don't think the core concept is more broadly applicable, but because I really don't know that much about the specifics and was afraid I just get it all wrong.

Thanks for the great post! I think that in some ways this is similar advice to what I heard repeatedly in my MLIS classes: "Go where your patrons are." Librarians can offer better service if they know as much as possible about their patron communities; the most effective communication channels to interact with patrons, the issues that patrons find most pressing, etc. That has to be grounded in real knowledge, however, and that you get by spending time with the patrons.

For the record, I'm a recent MLIS (May 2010) who is currently in the throes of changing careers and hunting for her new library/archives job.

Hear hear! I hope to co-author an article (about faculty-librarian teaching & collaboration) with a faculty colleague. So I'd add this to the manifesto:

*We must look for opportunities to collaborate with our faculty colleagues in publications in the literature of their discipline.

After all, many disciplines have journals called _Discipline and Education_; these would be a natural outlet for our collaborative efforts.

Hm, people who sneak into places where they are not expected and change the environment for a cause? Guerrilla fighters. Guerrilla librarianship. I like it. =)

Very nice idea for renaming the "movement." We'd get to wear cooler clothes too. Sadly, I can see faculty mounting a surge to keep us under control ;-)

Thanks, Stephanie. That's a great addition!

Finally, a library-related manifesto that doesn't make me feel like I just drank curdled milk.

Thanks, Emily. I appreciate it. That's certainly what I was aiming for.

This can work really well. We had a library liaison once who found out what we needed and set up a special session to show us how to create automated medline searches.

I think this sort of outreach is much more effective when librarians come down to the department and do it than when faculty come up to the library and are given an update. As member of the library committee, I never know which parts of the update my division really needs me to report on.

So much I agree with here, but I had a very strong personal reaction against the idea of completely separating ourselves from our own professional networks. I've explored this a little more in my own blog http://www.chuukaku.com/blog/2011/02/a-stealth-librarians-manifesto-some-thoughts.html

Thanks, Pat, I appreciate your input.

Katie, thanks as well. For those that are interested, I responded to some of Katie's points at her blog post.

I think librarians forget that faculty are people first, patrons second. By taking an active interest in their professional and campus lives, the relationships become more natural and many of the later manifesto points come about without prodding or force.

Thanks, Michelle. I guess I'm just trying to emphasize the need to be proactive. After all, faculty sometimes forget that librarians even exist at all.

Many important ideas and practices generated by librarians are wasted on libraries and their administrators who have too much red tape/bureaucracies to implement them. I agree that we should unleash our ideas in our subject areas or in the greater, more general world. Thanks for sharing your manifesto.

Rebecca, you're welcome.

I've been considered a feisty librarian within the pollution prevention technical assistance community for nearly fifteen years. :-) I work at a non-regulatory environmental agency that became a part of the University of Illinois three years ago. Before that, we were a state government agency.

I'm now almost completely embedded in our organization's technical assistance program. As a result, I've had an amazing opportunity to influence the direction of a national pollution prevention information network. I've also been able to stretch professionally by developing and teaching practical workshops on going green to non-profit organizations (including libraries) and businesses.

I'm a librarian by training and title, but my current job extends way beyond working at a reference desk. For the people I work with, I've also changed what they think of when they hear the word "Librarian".

Thanks, Laura, for your story. I'd love to hear more about the challenges of infiltrating your user networks.

Hi. One of the best outreach librarians I know is a teacher-librarian in a secondary school. She puts out a newsletter twice a year that is completely teacher directed - what the library can do for the faculty and includes contests to engage them (win chocolates). She has an open coffee pot in the back room and while they're there for a coffee, may discuss how she can help the teachers with teaching research and literacy skills or with learning new computer program skills . She partners with faculty to check and mark bibliographies. She meets with the various departments to discuss changes in the curriculum when appropriate and what the library can provide in terms of teaching or materials to purchase to stay current. The library puts out emails to faculty with new books lists directed at that department. When weeding, the applicable department is often called in to vet the weeded materials making them more familiar with what is actually in the collection.
Her faculty patrons know her and what she does for them. Over an 8 month period (this includes school holidays), this library books in over 700 classes - all optional and all booked by the faculty.
Outreach needs to be done by all [academic] librarians. This librarian has judged her market and found what works with her patrons. Mostly, it is the regular contact. How can they (the faculty) know what you can do for them aside from the traditional research questions if they don't see you or hear from you about what is available for them. And from what I've seen - it needs to be regular, personal contact; not just another piece of paper for them to read, or more likely - recycle.

Hi Jill, thanks so much for your colleague's story.

Radical "librarians" or even ordinary "librarians" should also start looking at the non-librarian staff they work with as teaching partners and partners in service provision. As long as "librarians" think they are special, they really aren't.

Hi pshan,

My manifesto certainly doesn't preclude collaborating with non-librarian staff. In that spirit, I guess there should exist a Stealth Non-Librarian Staff Manifesto. And I guess you could be the one to write it.

I'm late to this game, but I'm PSYCHED to see this, and its various iterations! Thank you! I'm a recent MLIS grad who works at a university doing research and research support outside of the library. I haven't gone totally native (yet), but I do consider myself to be a deep undercover librarian. I continue to call myself a librarian, even though I love my official "Research Specialist" title, because my special skills derive from being a librarian. I bring a certain librarian touch to the workings of our department (a research center) and, when I get more settled, hope to build a bridge between our center and the library. I've also been lucky enough to build a professional support network of friends in similar librarian-in-a-non-library-setting position and can't recommend that enough (whereas I consider my ALA membership to be a waste of my money--sorry ALA-lovers, I'm sure it works for some people, just not me).

I'm a big advocate for MLIS holders to look for jobs outside of the library--our skills are not just needed, they're deeply appreciated in research settings! My theory is that the more librarians that are embedded in the research/faculty workflows, the easier it will be to bridge the gap between faculty and the library, not to mention giving librarians a good name.

Thanks, Jessica. I really appreciate your comment. You should write more about your situation so we can all benefit from your experience.

Apologies if this is a sort of repeat, but I commented and I think my browser killed it, so I'm re-writing:

I'm also late to this, but excellent read, and thanks - I know you said academics, but I think this is applicable to the profession as a whole. I'm about to grab my MLIS in May, and have been working as an ontologist/content strategist (whatever that encompasses) in large enterprise-esque settings. One of the biggest issues I've faced is how people view and handle digital information - just because it's digital doesn't mean it's not still good old-fashioned information. I'm part of that network that previous commenter Jessica (hi hi!) mentioned, and it's been a fantastic support system. I think we've all discovered similar hurdles in our workplaces, but I don't think it's a bad thing. We're all rethinking, remixing, and discovering some pretty cool stuff.

I've been very very lucky to have some autonomy at work, and I've been able to reach out to my colleagues - designers, program specialists, developers - and we've done some great work together. I want to high-five everyone when someone really gets what I do....but there's also the rub - they're usually surprised when they learn it's my lib toolkit supplies that supplied the skillz. I think it's our challenge (a good one!) to push this movement forward. So yeah, I'm a stealthy librarian. And now I have a manifesto.

The 'informationist' model of biomedical librarianship, which builds on the clinical librarianship model, goes back a decade (and from there, back to 1970). Some of us have been doing this, studying it, and describing our results in the professional literature.
Would you advise an immunologist to concentrate on blogs?
Next month I participate in a highly specialized meeting, that of vision librarians (www.avsl.org). Then I attend the American Academy of Ophthalmology, where I will teach a CME course on genetic resources.