Exploring Education for Digital Librarians: Meaning, Modes and Models

The premise underlying this text is that the education of information professionals should be informed by Myburgh’s conception of the information professional as an “information interventionist”. This, as explained in the Preface, places an emphasis on the information professional as a knowledge creator, connecting people and ideas so that they can “learn, be inspired and create their own knowledges and understanding” (p. 18). Set within the context of an increasingly digital environment, the book explores the argument that technology can replace libraries, other information centres and the professionals who run and manage them and suggests that while the work of libraries and librarians have been altered tremendously by information and communications technologies (ICTs), the development of digital libraries, in fact, offers the potential for a radical renovation of the information profession, rather than its demise. In this context, the authors argue in the Introduction, the information professional needs to become a more active and interventionist agent in the information communication and knowledge creation processes. The remaining 11 chapters of the book explore the implications of this shift for a range of aspects related to the education of information professionals within this digital environment, with Chapters 8-11 setting out the authors’ ideas on the design and content of a curriculum to educate digital librarians.

The discussion of the impact of the digital environment on libraries and librarians ranges widely, exploring many of the key debates associated with the role of the information professional in the digitised environment in a perceptive and engaging manner. An important point made convincingly a number of times is that the information profession has embraced and generally welcomed a huge range of technological change over the decades, and the key issue is not the introduction of technology but its implementation and, in particular, the ideology underlying much of the discourse surrounding ICTs which positions information as a commodity rather than as a social good. This ideology sits uncomfortably with the information profession’s commitment to societal responsibility, the authors argue, although they also suggest that the profession has not always helped itself by being slow to engage with the debates about the value of information and failing to clearly establish a clear philosophical position on the role of technology in its work. Overall, this book provides an extremely interesting and insightful overview of the variety of stimuli and theoretical perspectives influencing the development of the information profession and is both thought-provoking and illuminating in many respects.

One aspect of the book that jars slightly with me is the authors’ insistence that the profession must move away from its emphasis on the library as a space to focus on the information content of documents. Their suggestion that the focus needs to shift away from the library as a place seems to be in contradiction to international developments in both public and academic libraries. In the university library sector, for example, we are witnessing something of a renaissance in the way in which library buildings are conceived and designed, reflecting changes in the way students and academics are accessing, sharing and using information. Myburgh and Tammaro do not really address the way in which learning is increasingly “blended” – taking place in both the physical and digital space. An in-depth discussion of the “learning commons” and its implications for the education of librarians is absent. Similarly, local and national governments around the world are still investing in public and national library buildings, albeit alongside closures in some countries such as the United Kingdom, which the authors highlight. It is unlikely they would be doing so in such straitened times if they felt the future was completely digital. In addition, the authors’ suggestion that librarians are obsessed with technical tasks and physical objects in library buildings to the neglect of developing an understanding of how people engage with knowledge and information does not ring entirely true with my experience of information professionals in the workplace or as an educator of library/information students. On page 264, the authors describe their ideal librarian of the future,

This sums up the character of many young professionals I have taught and been in contact with over my years as a library educator; as the authors suggest in the title of the final chapter of the book, “The future is bright”.