Professional Philosophy

As I got older, and after Nana was gone, I never lost my love for the library.  Perhaps it was in part because it was a place that reminded me of my grandmother, but I know it was also because I felt so comfortable there.  I stopped there several days a week when walking home from school, sometimes just to peruse new magazines and sometimes to load my backpack with new books.  The library, like my hometown, was small and run by one librarian.  But the contents of that library offered me the world.  Even during the long, cold winter months, I could visit anywhere in the world by entering that library and losing myself in a book.  The library truly was my second home and the books it contained were treasured family members.  And while I was enjoying myself by reading anything and everything I could find in the library, I was learning:  learning how to critically think, learning how to write, learning about other places and people and ideas.  I credit my success in high school and college to my early introduction to reading and the library.

Until I began college, at the age of 40, most of my library use was in public libraries.  They continued to be a place of refuge, a place to relax, and, eventually, a place to take my children.  However, once I entered the life of academia, I became intimately familiar with another type of library: the academic library.  From early in my first semester of college, I was a library habitué.  Once I was introduced to the wonders of online databases during a library orientation session, I was hooked.  As any of my instructors will attest, I became a research junky.  Any homework assignment or research paper became an “excuse” to begin hunting through databases in search for the right sources to support my arguments.  This continued all through my undergraduate years, when majoring in English Language and Literature meant I was writing a lot of papers.  I am not one of those people that looks for enough research to meet the minimum requirements set by an instructor; I am the student who must keep researching lest I miss finding the “key” source that perfectly supports my argument.  My upper-division English professors noticed this and began suggesting that I think about pursuing a degree in Library Science.  They encouraged me to talk to one of the librarians at the university who was a recent graduate of the MLIS program at San Jose State University.  Needless to say, I spoke to her and quickly realized that pursing an MLIS degree and becoming a librarian was what I was meant to do.   Now, as I complete the requirements for an MLIS degree, I feel even more strongly that I made the right decision, and that my whole life has been directed towards a career in librarianship.  Now, I am about to realize that dream.

Conception of Librarianship

One reason a career in librarianship appeals to me is because the core values and principles of the profession align so closely with my own.  I firmly believe that reading is essential for building critical thinking skills, writing skills, and language skills.  Therefore, it is critical that all people have access to reading material that offers a wide range of ideas and perspectives.  It is critical that people be able to access this information without the fear of judgment by others, whether it be librarians, other patrons, or covert forces that, under the guise of national security, believe they have the right to monitor what people read and make assertions about those people based on their choice of reading material.  It is essential that libraries embrace diversity and reflect it in their collections.  A value-oriented collection supports these goals as it is meant “to better the collective intelligence of the community and improve its emotional, educational, and cognitive levels” (Disher, 2014 p.53).  As the American Library Association’s (ALA) Democracy Statement asserts, “an informed public constitutes the very foundation of a democracy; after all, democracies are about discourse—discourse among the people.”  Discourse necessarily requires taking in information (reading), processing and assimilating that information (critical thinking), and output of new information (writing and language skills).

I believe that an important concept relating to the discourse that is the foundation of democracy is information literacy.  Most one-shot library orientations offered in academic libraries reflect a behaviorist attitude in that learners are vessels that can be filled with knowledge.  In other words, these sessions generally offer step-by-step instructions that students are to emulate in order to demonstrate how to successfully locate information. Students are given technical skills for finding information but, as stated in the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, “information literacy . . . has broader implications for the individual, the educational system, and for society.”  Information literacy entails the ability to determine how much and what type of information is needed, the ability to locate that information, the ability to evaluate information sources and to assimilate their information into “one’s current knowledge base” (reading and critical thinking), and to “use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose” (writing and language skills) (ACRL).  To accomplish true information literacy, I am an advocate of curriculum-based integrated information literacy instruction.

My advocacy for curriculum-based integrated information literacy instruction is based on my undergraduate work in the area of the importance of dialogue in the development of literacy as well as my observations and experiences in classrooms as both student and instructor.  During one of my classes at SJSU, I read McMillen and Hill’s (2005) paper arguing the merits of teaching “‘research as a conversation’” (p. 3).  This concept is based on Kenneth Burke’s (1941) assertion that “having a quality conversation requires careful listening/reading before speaking/writing, learning how to effectively research or tap into the conversation” (McMillen and Hill, 2005, p. 6).  In other words, students participating in this type of class would learn and hone the very skills necessary for “an informed public constitute[ing] the very foundation of a democracy” (ALA).  Pablo Freire (2000) states, “true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking—thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity between the world and the people and admits of no dichotomy between them—thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly emerges itself in temporality without fear of the risks involved” (p. 73).  With curriculum-based integrated information literacy, by the time students earn their degree, reading, critical thinking, and discourse are habitual, thus strengthening our society and ensuring its people’s freedoms.

Strengthening our society and ensuring its people’s freedoms is also at the heart of correctional librarianship.  The difference comes in recognizing that the stakeholders of a correctional library are not also its patrons: the stakeholders are the citizenry in the “free world” (i.e., those who are not incarcerated).  This is not to say that the core values and ethics of librarianship do not apply in correctional libraries because they absolutely do.  A value-oriented collection is still critical “to better the collective intelligence of the community and improve its emotional, educational, and cognitive levels” (Disher, 2014 p.53).   While the freedoms ensured by the core values and ethics of librarianship must be considered in providing library materials and services to the incarcerated, consideration must also be given to the special circumstances of those patrons.  There are two schools of thought regarding inmates’ rights to information access.  On one hand, many librarians believe correctional libraries should follow the public library model and its “all for all” philosophy regarding information access.  This side believes that denying any type of material, despite its content, is censorship.  I align myself squarely with the other side of this argument.  Correctional librarianship is unique for a number of reasons:

• The patrons are not the stakeholders, so consideration must be given to the often-opposing demands of each group,
• Correctional librarians are bound to uphold and support the mission, vision, and goals of the DOC, foremost of which is security and,
• Correctional libraries and librarians are invested members in the overall socialization effort provided by the other departments of the prison.

As you will note when reading the explication for Competency A, I am strongly opposed to censorship.  However, keeping certain materials out of the hands of prison inmates is not censorship; it is good sense.  By the very nature of their being incarcerated, it is clear that inmates do not make good decisions or behave in a way that is safe for society.  Or, as Mongelli (2009) concludes, “when it comes to people with problems, common sense dictates certain limits.”  The maladaptive thinking and behaviors that inform and result from the criminal thought process make it unsafe for certain types of reading materials to be put into the hands of inmates.  Rehabilitation of inmates requires the support of correctional libraries and librarians.  Just as in any other type of library, the materials and services should promote life-long learning through development of reading, critical thinking, and language skills.

Community Well Being

As a librarian, I look forward to working for an organization that contributes to the cultural, economic, educational, and social well-being of our communities.  While all libraries make these contributions to some greater or lesser degree, I think primarily of public libraries as primary contributors in all of these areas.  Many public libraries maintain special collections of cultural significance to patrons, such as documents, newspapers, yearbooks, maps, photographs, sound and video recordings, and artifacts pertaining to a town or city’s history or the history of a particular group of people that populate the patron community.  For example, the “Heritage Collection” at the public library I frequent keeps among its artifacts a collection of citrus labels. These articles allow users to learn about the history of the area which often fosters a greater sense of belonging and pride.

Libraries contribute to the educational well-being of communities in many ways.  First and foremost is by maintaining a relevant and varied collection that provides patrons with a wide variety of ideas and perspectives.  Providing access to newspapers, government documents, research, scholarly publications, and industry information allows people to make informed decisions about issues that affect them personally as well as issues that affect a wide range of people.   I also think it is important for libraries—particularly public libraries—to offer programs that support and encourage learning for people of all ages.  These programs may range from after school homework sessions for school-age children to literacy services for adults.  As previously stated, I believe that reading is the foundation upon which learning is based.  One thing I would like to see more of is public libraries offering some type of organized information literacy instruction.  In our information-saturated world, the only way to alleviate information anxiety is to teach people how to navigate that information.  The current election cycle has made it clear to me that most people have no real idea about what bias means and how it influences our information choices and ultimately our knowledge.  Without the skills and knowledge required to efficiently and effectively locate information, Zipf’s “Principle of Least Effort” has people running to social media sights such as Facebook for “knowledge.”

I think the last several years of economic instability has underscored the importance of public libraries contributing to the economic well-being of the community.  In addition to resources on how to construct resumes and cover letters as well as career exploration materials, libraries offer access to technology which is critical to securing employment in today’s world. Providing access to career enhancement materials and job opportunity resources is particularly important to our lower-income and minority patrons.  The Pew Research Center reports that as of 2015, more than 53% of job seekers in households earning less than $50K are likely to use library resources to help find jobs.  Furthermore, over 60% of black and Hispanic job seekers turn to the library for job opportunity resources and training.  According to a study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “low-income adults are more likely to rely on the public library as their sole access to computers and the Internet than any other income group.”  In today’s world, even if a job does not require any technical skills or computer knowledge, just applying for the job may require those skills.  Job seekers need computers to fill out and submit applications online, and to create resumes and cover letters which also must be submitted online.  Just as important, they need regular e-mail access in order to communicate with potential employers. Providing the tools that help patrons find and secure employment is an important function that not only benefits the individuals themselves but the community as a whole.

I think social well-being is the product of providing the aforementioned services.  Society benefits from well-informed, literate people being able to make educated decisions about issues of policy, laws, and certainly well-informed decisions when voting for those who will represent the interests of the citizenry.  Society benefits from libraries helping people find and secure jobs because as employment rates rise, quality of living increases and crime rates decrease.

Professional Goals

First and foremost, my goal is to gain employment working in a library.  I would be equally happy working in a public library, an academic library, or a prison library.  If I were able to pick my dream librarian job, it would be in either an academic or prison library.  I have already outlined my area of interest with regard to academic libraries.  People have questioned why I would consider working in a prison library.  The answer is simple: because I have an interest in helping people.  That is, at the very heart of it, what librarianship is all about. Correctional librarians have to have the desire to help inmates change their lives.  Part of this comes from developing a collection of materials that aids inmates in self-directed rehabilitation and supports their education efforts. But it does not and should not end there.  Correctional librarianship’s aim is not just to inform but also to correct.  Mongelli (2015) states, “the librarian, offering a structured socialization program, helps those who see need for change, with the encouragement of staff, fellow inmates, and the DOC.”  Other programs that aid in helping inmates making a positive change include those that address literacy, work and employment opportunities and job-seeking skills, as well as housing, health and family matters.   “Being able to obtain and hold jobs is a crucial factor in achieving successful reentry” (Lilenthal, 2013).  If the ex-convict is able to support himself/herself and his/her family, that goes a long way towards building a sense of responsibility and pride.  If the prison library can partner with an outside agency or public library to ensure inmate access to these types of services after release, it may further reinforce an inmate’s resolve to change his/her life and become a productive member of society.  I see providing opportunities for “a change of heart here, an epiphany there,” as being a rehabilitative agent for positive change in an inmate’s life as being an exciting and rewarding challenge.

Another goal is to continue learning and growing as a librarian.  I am an advocate of life-long learning not only for others but also for myself.  I plan to take advantage of opportunities that allow me to learn about new materials and programs that will benefit my library’s patrons.  If I do end up working in a prison library, I want to learn more about the use of bibliotherapy as a rehabilitation program, particularly the THINK FIRST method developed by Cynthia Blinn and widely used by librarians in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections.

Conclusion

My conviction to become a librarian has only been strengthened by my studies in this MLIS program.  I feel that my understanding of what librarianship involves and what it adds to the community as a whole as well as to the lives of individuals has grown and deepened.  As I prepare to embark on my library career, I do not know exactly where I will end up or what kind of library I will work in, but one thing is for sure: working in a library is my destiny and has been since the first time my Nana took me to the local public library.  In a library is where I belong.

References

Democracy Statement. (n.d.). Retrieved November 8, 2016, from http://www.ala.org/aboutala/governance/officers/past/kranich/demo/statement

Disher, W. (2014). Crash course in collection development. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.

Horrigan, J. B. (2016, September 9). Libraries 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2016, from Pew Research Center website: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/09/libraries-2016/

Information literacy competency standards for higher education. (2000). Retrieved November 8, 2016, from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency

Lilienthal, S. M. (2013). Prison and public libraries: Programming for prisoners–current and former–helps fight recidivism. Library Journal, 138(2), 26.

McMillen, P. S., & Hill, E. (2005). Why teach “research as a conversation” in freshman composition courses? A metaphor to help librarians and composition instructors develop a shared model. Research Strategies, 20, 3-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resstr.2005.07.005

Millions of people rely on library computers for employment, health, and education. (2010, May). Retrieved November 8, 2016, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2010/03/Millions-of-People-Rely-on-Library-Computers-for-Employment-Health-and-Education

Mongelli, W.  Lecture 8: Library therapeutic programming, the MCI-Norfolk way. [MP3 Audio file]. Retrieved from http://amazon.sjsu.edu/html-mongelli/lecture8_Early_April_musings.mp3 (Links to an external site.)