A Professional's Progress

It is probably reasonable to assume that many, if not most of our number here today 'came' to librarianship by circuitous, and in many cases, serendipitous means. Few people are born to be librarians, and fewer still consider it, or are encouraged to make it their first career choice after school. It is, after all, hardly the role-play of first choice in kindergarten and preschool. And gender typecasting aside, surely only the socially dysfunctional child would forgo playing doctors and nurses to catalogue their picture books, search the internet for an authoritative Sesame Street web site, and play reader advisor to an elderly teddy bear looking for good westerns he hasn't read before? Consequently, I believe few people know deep in their hearts they have the attributes of a good librarian before they enter library school.

However, as I have discovered in library tea-rooms time and time again, nearly everyone knows what it takes to be a great manager! And yet, whatever we may think, it is a fact that most of us arrive in management, and worse still, leadership positions within our organisations with little or no preparation for the role, besides that which we may have brought from elsewhere - past working lives, past experiences, possibly the local P&C.

Like many of my peers, I fell into librarianship. Some in my family say it was an enthusiastic teacher-librarian at primary school who piqued my interest. We developed a mutual respect of sorts, she and I, perhaps because I was the only grade seven who declined to become a library monitor when asked. Maybe she could see my passion for libraries and books transcended the Masonic frippery of badges, and titles, and special privileges. Or perhaps she simply admired my pragmatism - after all, in mid-1970s Queensland, male library monitors attracted bullies as surely as open bottles of wine attract librarians! I may have consumed books at a frantic pace, but I was no wimp!

Later, as a young adolescent, my life's work was to be journalism - preferably the hard-edged, hard-drinking, laconic war correspondent style of journalism still practised at the time by those reporting from exotic locations in far-away South East Asia - places with deliciously decadent French colonial sounding names like Vientianne, Pnomh Penh, Hanoi, and Hue. From these distant steamy assignments I pictured myself filing terse copy by telephone to a distant editor in Sydney, returning to Oz years later with a clutch of Walkley awards, a case of duty-free scotch, and possibly an interesting scar or two.

Fortunately, two enduring role models intervened, gently removing the phrases coup d'etat and "behind us just hours ago - " from my teen vocabulary. Those catalysts were my father, a modest, compassionate, and profoundly sensible middle manager; and, the plain-speaking, eccentric 'junior' counsel, Horace Rumpole, of Chateau Thames Embankment fame. It was they who eventually set me on the road to management in libraries. And it is they, along with other mentors (real and fictitious) who still guide, sometimes subconsciously, many of my responses to the challenges of managing information services and libraries today.

Leaders and/or Managers?

In a recent article for the Harvard Business Review, Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones pose the question: "why should anyone be led by you?"ⁱ They pour scorn on the prevalence of "'recipe' business books" in which the traits of influential corporate managers are extrapolated to the masses, and the business leaders of tomorrow are fashioned by imitation, rather than sincere personal and professional growth. They identify a variety of qualities shared by inspirational leaders and summarise their effective use in the catchphrase, "be yourselves - with more skill." It is a motto I believe should be painted above the doors of every library school building in the world, and digitally reproduced on every library school webpage. Be yourselves, with more skill. It could also be the motto of every Auroran - past, present and future.

I was fortunate to graduate from library school in 1990, the year in which the Internet finally became a reality for many Australian universities. For the library historian, it was an interesting library education - often presenting a nostalgic snapshot of the best of library services in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It did little however, to prepare me for the advent of the Internet, or the occasionally spiteful institutional politics of a regional TAFE college - my first appointment on graduation. And although I was broadly well versed in the pro's and con's of zero base and program budgeting, the crucial skills of strategic leadership and change management were complete anathema. My 'mission', if I could stay awake to achieve it, was to graduate from library school and get a job!

In November 1995, after several years working in a regional university library, it was my great privilege to attend the inaugural Aurora Leadership Institute in Thredbo. As those who have written about the first and subsequent Auroras have noted, the experience is complex, intense, and at times exquisitely personal. It is many separate things to each person, with insights occurring at several levels. I must be honest - at the time, Aurora was not an Epiphany. However, for many in that first Aurora, I think the experience may well have been as profound as St Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. To some, I feel sure, it gave the personal permissions they needed to launch in new directions, both professionally and personally. For others like me, however, the changes occurred more slowly, and more subtly over time. But changes did take place, and they continue to this day - ensuring I continue to evolve as a manager, and a leader.

For me at the time, Aurora was ultimately about learning to separate the science of management, the elements and skills of which I had been taught superficially at library school, from the infinitely more subtle 'art of management'; specifically, the attributes of visionary and influential leadership. It was also about learning how and when to apply these skills and attributes, and in what ratio. I believe this discretion, once mastered, to be portable - a skill I can carry and apply beyond libraries. At another level, Aurora was also about learning to accept failure as a necessary part of personal and professional growth.

Educating future generations

Without doubt, library educators have always faced testing futures, regardless of the decade. And it is all too easy, with the advantage of hindsight, for the likes of me to look back and pontificate on those skills and competencies I believe should have been imparted to me and my peers in years past. Today the challenge is still about keeping ahead of developments in the profession, but it is complicated by economic realpolitik. On the one hand, library schools must respond to the articulated needs of the profession, for which they are producing the next cohort. And yet, on the other, they must work within the economic rationalist imperatives of modern tertiary education in Australia, and New Zealand. This rationalism, so called, Is exemplified at one Australian library school where I am told library students attend a single semester, generic Introduction to Management subject largely populated by business IT students. As the compromises continue, and the lowest common denominator in management training for information professionals is reached, so too in my mind is the standard of professional preparation diminished.

So what is the solution?

Specialist accreditation

Our first response may be to accept once and for all that the base-level library qualification cannot be all things to all people, and still provide the depth of learning and experience required to manage effectively from scratch. I believe library schools can only be expected to provide new professionals with a broad appreciation of the skills of management and leadership. To expect more is to ignore the realities of our rapidly expanding professional knowledgebase, and declining education dollar. At best, they can provide students with an entrée size helping of management training - the main course must necessarily come later. However, that said, I also believe course content could be more focussed on providing students with practical solutions to real problems, rather than esoteric theory.

I also believe more could be done to anticipate the needs of the future, and equip students with the necessary skills and competencies. No one in my year at library school was made to think through the change management implications of the Internet. We learned for ourselves on the fly, and now pass on our experiences as new graduates enter our workplaces. To a large degree it must fall to the profession to help library educators steer their institutions away from the lowest common denominator solutions of today, and move them forwards in terms of future-proofing their students for the real world beyond library school.

I also wonder if there is now good cause to review the practices of our colleagues in other professions, and build upon the new CPD grading offered by ALIA. I believe there is scope for ALIA to initiate and sponsor a new level of professional training for librarians and information managers - a professional accreditation in Information Services Management. This accreditation could be aimed directly at professionals of limited managerial experience who find themselves working in supervisory and management positions, or who aspire to these positions as part of their personal career plan. It would ideally recognise past learning and experiences, both within and without the profession, and incorporate a course of formalised casual or part-time study (as in the Professional Year undertaken by accountants). This course of study should in turn encompass a range of future-proof and demonstrably portable management skills of value outside the profession, and articulate with the Aurora leadership programs offered by AIMA, and similar programs offered by the AIM. Finally, any professional accreditation program should offer participants active mentoring for the duration of the process, and ideally, beyond. This aspect of accreditation could conceivably build upon existing programs offered by ALIA state branches.

In short, I foresee a formalised structure for the professional development of library and information services managers - one that opens doors beyond the profession, and extends the Aurora ideal: for individuals to lead as themselves, with more skill.

Footnotes

i Goffee, R and Jones, G. "Why should anyone be led by you?", Harvard Business Review, Sep-Oct 2000, pp 63-70.

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