LibChat is a weekly twitter event that is, in a way, a crowdsourcing of brainstorming. Someone poses a question about their job, the field in general, or a specific topic to the moderator, who then reposts it to all followers of the hashtag (#libchat). Suggestions, commentary, discussion and really bad jokes are then made. I usually participate, even if just to lurk (if I am brain dead or busy doing something else), because there is always useful and enlightening stuff shared. This is information science professionals at their best, helping each other.
I raised the question on the 4/19/12 LibChat concerning the acronym “LAM”, standing for Library/Archives/Museum professionals, which I’ve seen used around but not extensively. I was curious about people’s reaction to it, because I like the idea of having an encompassing term to use in addition to our functional job titles, but honestly I thought LAM was not quite up to the task.
The majority agreed, in fact I don’t think there was one genuine supporter for the term, at best there was indifference. Most people downright hated it (and, admittedly, it is too close to the word “lame” to be comfortably used in a positive way!) and there was much grousing about adding yet another acronym to our already heavy larder of them.
In particular, @pnkrcklibrarian took me to task to trying to find an umbrella term to use, and we had a very lively conversation about it. She was very concerned that such a term could be used to identify InfoSci professionals as generalists, with the result of making it appear as if we are all interchangeable.
I had not quite thought that out from that angle and was disturbed by it, because with all the cutbacks on budget going on everywhere, that really does seem to be the case. The Florida State Archives, for instance, cut their preservation archivist a couple of years ago under the misapprehension that the job could be covered by other archivists, and if not then easily outsourced. Well, yes, outsourcing is certainly possible — for a cost much greater than keeping a preservationist on staff. (DOH.) The Legislature then merged the physical locations of the State Archives and the State Library under the totally misguided assumption that library and archive reading rooms are essentially the same (very, very not the case, if you don’t know; archives by their nature need much tighter security than libraries).
On the other hand, the issue of job blurring also came up which is something I also see happening in a lot of places — a university special collections library such as FSU is an environment that is part library, part archives, and part museum to start with, and with cutbacks staffers are expected to wear every hat. Many librarians are being put in charge of local “history collections” that include not just books but personal papers because the library cannot afford a staff archivist.
So the cornerstone of the issue is acknowledging that yes, our jobs do have a lot of overlap in concept and purpose, thus having a high-level term recognizing that is important; while keeping in mind that different jobs function very differently and require different training. A systems librarian, a school librarian, a museum archivist, a digital library project manager, and a state archivist all have vastly different duties, responsibilities, and skill sets. I would even argue they have different cultures, in the main. But we are all still information science professionals, with the mission of “improving society through facilitating knowledge creation in our communities” (Lankes, 2011).
Maybe if we reversed LAM to MAL, we would at least get the super-cool Firefly reference?
Or we could just circumvent all the fuss and call ourselves Brown Coats!
…yeah, obviously I’m kind of at a dead end. You will note I continue to use the unwieldy “InfoSci Professionals” for now.
#
