What do reference skills look like today? by John Taggart

What do reference

skills look like today?

The 21st century librarian

Meredith Farkas

Basic

Tech

Competencies

1. Ability to embrace change

‘Change should be looked upon as an

exciting thing — as a positive thing. We

should fear not providing the best services to

our patrons much more than we should fear

change.’

2. Comfort in the

online medium

‘More important than knowing specific tools

is a general comfort in the online medium.

You just can’t provide reference services

without basic Internet and search skills.’

Hackcollege.com

3. Ability to troubleshoot

new technologies

‘Librarians should be able to play with the

technologies in the library, to learn what

problems commonly come up, and to fix

them if necessary, because it is often our

responsibility to fix them.’

4. Ability to easily learn new

technologies

‘The best way...to learn...is to play with it.’

‘Learning about technology is definitely a

skill. People need to learn how to learn

about new technologies without having to

ask other people for help all the time.’

5. Ability to keep up with new

ideas in technology and

librarianship

(enthusiasm for learning)

‘We need to be able to keep up with what’s

new in technology and what libraries are (or

could be) doing with it. And we need to be

able to keep up in the shortest time possible

because we are busy’

greader

Basic Tech Competencies

1. Ability to embrace change

2. Comfort in the online medium

3. Ability to troubleshoot new

technologies

4. Ability to easily learn new technologies

5. Ability to keep up with new ideas in

technology and librarianship

(enthusiasm for learning)

Higher Level Competencies

1. Project management skills

‘People need to be able to take a project from

an idea to the finishing touches (training,

marketing, and ensuring sustainability).’

2. Ability to question and

evaluate library services

‘Question EVERYTHING...it’s important to keep

asking why we’re doing the things we do and

how these things affect our patrons’

3. Ability to evaluate the

needs of all stakeholders

‘With any change, librarians should create a list

of all of the different stakeholders and actually

discuss how it will affect each of them...not only

our patrons but staff, IT, and administrators.’

4. Vision to translate

traditional library services

into the online medium‘How can we provide equivalent services to

people who only access the library from online?

Librarians need to know how to capitalize on

the technologies out there...to provide these

services online to their patrons.’

5. Critical of technologies

and ability to compare

technologies‘It’s how we use them that matters. Technology

should always fill a need and we should think

realistically about what technologies are

actually needed in our libraries and what are

just things we personally think are cool.’

6. Ability to sell ideas /

library services

‘No one told me that I’d need serious marketing

skills and salesmanship to be a librarian.’

The sales pitch:

what do you want,what does it cost? who benefits?

when and who's responsible?

what are the outcomes?

knowing your audience and how to tell the story.

Higher Level Competencies

1. Project management skills

2. Question and evaluate library services

3. Evaluate the needs of all stakeholders

4. Vision to translate traditional library

services into the online medium

1. Critically compare technologies

2. Ability to sell ideas / library services

Thank you

t:@keithsuburban

e:[email protected]

e:[email protected]