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Library technician programs: skills-oriented paraprofessional education - includes appendix outlining a course of study
Library Trends, Wntr, 1998 by Frances Davidson-Arnott, Deborah Key
INTRODUCTION
Formal programs for training library technicians have existed in Canada since the 1960s predominantly offered through colleges and leading to the awarding of diplomas. The early history of these programs has been thoroughly documented (Moriarity, 1982; Nettlefold, 1989).
The Library and Information Technician Program, the official name of all such programs in Ontario, is a two-year program mainly offered at Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAAT) and leads to a diploma upon graduation. It is offered at four colleges both full- and part-time (i.e., Algonguin, Fanshawe, Sheridan, and Seneca Colleges) and two colleges part-time only (Georgian and Mohawk Colleges). (One university, Lakehead University, also offers this diploma program on the same basis as colleges, rather than as a standard university degree program.) Students are accepted after graduation from Grade 12. Standard undergraduate degree program entrance at universities requires successful completion of a designated number of OAC subjects (formerly Grade 13).
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CURRICULUM AT SENECA COLLEGE
The Library and Information Technician Program offered at Seneca College is the largest of such programs in Canada with enrollments of approximately seventy students in each of the two years of the program. Students complete four semesters in the two-year program; each semester consists of five to seven fourteen-week courses within a semester. Each course is held three hours per week. The courses prepare graduates to work in all types of libraries (for a list of courses, see Appendix).
The curriculum objective of the Library and Information Technician Program at Seneca College is to train library technicians to perform the skills required for the day-to-day operations of libraries. Consequently, the majority of course time is spent learning skills. The types of skills that are acquired take library technicians far beyond the work of the library clerical staff. In some areas, library technicians are better able to perform library tasks than are librarians. At the same time, the emphasis on skill acquisition is balanced with a modest amount of knowledge-based learning. This learning provides a context for the skills that students are learning, socializes them into the profession, and helps them understand their responsibilities. Not only is the amount of knowledge-based learning limited, the complexity of the knowledge is at a low level. Thus there are tasks in libraries that library technicians have not been prepared to perform hence the paraprofessional status. These tasks include establishment of policies, selection of materials, and tasks requiring analysis of complex information.
Reference
There have been numerous discussions about the role of library technicians in the delivery of reference services (e.g., Murfin, 1988). Many have argued that such services should only be delivered by professional librarians with a graduate library degree. At Seneca College, prospective library technicians take a course called "Ready Reference" in which they are prepared to answer ready reference questions using typical resources found in a reference collection as well as Internet resources. By the end of this course, students are able to: (1) analyze ready reference questions to identify the category of information needed; (2) identify the appropriate category of ready reference source to answer questions; (3) describe the features of categories of ready reference sources; (4) use effectively and efficiently representative titles from each category of sources, focusing on content of the sources; (5) describe the components of a reference collection; and (6) describe ready reference in terms of definition, points of service, sources, and examples of questions.
Dedicating an entire course to ready reference illustrates that it is considered to be a type of reference service that can be delivered by library technicians. It is possible to teach someone without a post-secondary education to use directories or encyclopedias to find information and to know different types of these standard sources. It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to teach those without post-secondary education to conduct research in such areas as medicine or law.
The learning outcomes of the ready reference course also illustrate the nature of the reference work that technicians will perform. They will be able to identify, to describe, to use. They are not expected to select the best encyclopedia to buy for an academic library or discuss the merits of using one directory over another. This higher-level decision making is not required for the day-to-day operation of a library.
The emphasis on day-to-day operations is also evident in the teaching of other reference services. In the course "User Information Services," students learn about, and how to perform, reference services such as user instruction, document delivery, and current awareness. This means that, in user instruction, students are taught how to explain the use of the library catalog to users or how to produce pathfinders; in document delivery, they learn to order documents from suppliers; in current awareness, they learn to create automated saved searches. The time is spent learning to do these activities, not discussing, for example, individual versus group instruction; inhouse versus vendor saved searches; UMI versus ISI. Students are not taught to make decisions about what services to offer but to perform services that are in place in a library.
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