Issue 29 Autumn 2000 ESME GREEN MEMORIAL LECTURE 2000 A Future for the Profession; A Professional for the Future Professor Judith Elkin, Dean of the Faculty of Computing, Information and English, University of Central England in Birmingham Paper presented at Under the Covers: celebrating books and libraries for children and young people. Joint SLA, YLG, SLG conference for the millennium, 6-9 July 2000

Collections under which this       article appears:       Libraries       Management Other Articles by Judth Elkin

Introduction
I am honoured to be here to address this millennium conference of SLA, YLG and SLG. But I am also deeply honoured to give the Esme Green memorial lecture for the second time.

I first gave the memorial lecture in 1996 at a Youth Libraries Group conference. I paid tribute to Esme Green whom I had known well as:

a great pioneer and inspirational leader at a time when I was starting my career. She was a tough, though kind-hearted, visionary in the post-war years and her influence on children's and school library services in Nottinghamshire can be seen to this day. Indeed, her influence on school library development and children's library services particularly in the shire countries is inestimable. She was always a true professional. 1

In the Esme Green lecture in 1996, I drew upon research for Focus on the child: libraries, literacy and learning 2 conducted by myself and Ray Lonsdale, from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, to look at the current state of children's librarianship in the UK in the mid 1990s. I contrasted the then rather gloomy findings with the recent statement from the newly formed Library and Information Commission, 2020 Vision. 3 2020 Vision predicted unequivocally a significant future for libraries in the twenty first century.

I want to use this lecture to move forward from there, following a similar pattern linking changes over the last four years of the century to research findings from A Place for Children and Homework Clubs, picking up some later Library and Information Commission policy statements Libraries: the life-force for learning 4 and Libraries: the essence of inclusion. 5 From this, I shall attempt to outline what I see as a very significant role for the profession and the skills required for the professional in the twenty first century.

Reminiscing
But before I do that I wish to be self-indulgent and reminisce a little. Karen asked me to introduce one section of the Keith Barker awards this evening for the period 1960-1979. We rather got our wires crossed and I thought I was being asked to say something about children's and schools librarianship during that period. I fell to musing on my own experiences working as a children's librarian in Birmingham and my early days with YLG. I found an article I had written for YLG News in 1973, about Birmingham's new central children's library opened in June 1973 and the forerunner of the Centre for the Child. The article was entitled Why the hell shouldn't they have the opportunity of walking on carpet 6 (a less than academic title). It reminded me that this was the first real library for children in the centre of Birmingham and catered for children from many poor and deprived areas. The quote came from playgroup leader from an inner city area who expressed surprise that such children were allowed to walk on carpet! A healthy reminder of some of the battles we fought to ensure that all children got the best quality environment, as well as stimulation for the mind.

Also a reminder that some of these battles, not least the ongoing value of libraries and the special role of children's librarians is still being fought twenty five years on!

But enough reminiscing - back to the turn of the century and the new context within which we are working:

1997: a new government
The agenda set by the new government over the last three years has provided a golden opportunity for a new role for library and information services of all kinds. Two key documents underpinned the early years of the government and a number of initiatives have grown from these: Our information age: the government's vision 7 and The Learning age: a renaissance for a new Britain. 8 They set out the Government's intention of enabling people to take advantage of the new information age, concentrating on five key areas:

• transforming education
• widening access
• promoting competition and competitiveness
• fostering equality
• modernising government

• to increase employment
• to reduce crime
• to improve health and welfare of communities
• to achieve higher standards of educational attainment

• the new culture of learning
• in countering social exclusion
• in contributing to the knowledge economy
• in economic regeneration

Library and Information Commission
I want to start by looking at some of the more recent work that has been undertaken by the Library and Information Commission, to underpin this. The Library and Information Commission was set up in 1995 to be a focus of expertise and source of advice to the Government. One of its earliest priorities was the production of a research strategy and one of its fundamental themes was impact and value of library and information services. It was a working group of the Commission, which produced the report, New Library: the people's network 9.

The approach of the Commission has always been cross-sectoral, in other words recognising that many of the strengths of library and information services pervade all sectors, whether academic, public, government, commercial, special. I would like to emphasise this focus in this audience today.

One of the earliest policy statements issued was the aforementioned 2020 Vision 3 which laid out the vision for library and information services in the twenty first century, totally cross-sectorally. A follow-up policy statement Libraries: the lifeforce for learning 4 laid out the role for library and information services again cross-sectorally in support for lifelong learning.

I would like to spend a little time looking at this. It underpins the current value of librarians in a changing and developing environment.

It stated that libraries and information services of all kinds are catalysts for learning. They offer quality learning places in their many different environments through providing:
gateways: via connectivity and access to information, advice, guidance and quality assurance
opportunity: via content and its availability, sustainability, fitness for purpose, quality and range capacity: via personal support, championing learners in developing individual competence

• are the learning places of choice for many people
• are the places where knowledge occurs
• place the learner at the centre within their traditional role in underpinning learning
• are inclusive and familiar
• offer an accessible, neutral learning space where people feel secure within a shared value system
• provide a socially inclusive cultural and creative environment
• engender a sense of community for their users
• are networked to other learning centres and work with other agencies, at local, national and regional levels

• managed strategically, locally and co-operatively
• offer a range of dynamic, renewable resources, both print and media
• relevant to their community of users, anticipating and meeting future user needs
• select, collect and preserve resources, offering a seal of quality and kitemarking
• organised for access and use
• add value to the learning process by packaging and mediation
• offer the creation of new learner-centred resources

Social Inclusion
The second recent policy statement from the Library and Information Commission, in fact published on the last day of their existence, 31st March 2000, is Libraries: the essence of inclusion. 5 The LIC's replacement, Re:source has yet to establish its position or spell out its strategy.

Libraries: the essence of inclusion provides perhaps the clearest definition of both social exclusion and social inclusion and recognises that:

by their very nature libraries and information services embody the values necessary to contribute to a socially inclusive society.

• a socially inclusive cultural and creative environment for everyone, regardless of age, gender, background, ability, ethnic origin or wealth
• a place where everyone meets on equal terms

Libraries:

• are necessary to the well-being of individuals, communities and society
• have a long-term, sustainable impact on a child's quality of life into adulthood
• engender a sense of community within places and organisations
• empower the individual by providing resources and information for particular user groups, especially children and young people
• are a place of sanctuary, a secure risk-free social place that is welcoming to all
• are non-judgmental, non-competitive, non-accrediting places

Libraries epitomise inclusion in their values and activities and by their presence in local communities.

I would like to use the context of learning and inclusion to consider two recent pieces of research conducted in my research centre at UCE.

Research
I want to emphasise some of the reality of this by quoting two pieces of research carried out by my department, Place for children 10 and Homework Clubs. 11 I think they reinforce the value of libraries for children. They also highlight the significance of research feeding into and building from practice. A number of the research findings are crucial in terms of the future profile and development of children's libraries in the Government's broadening agenda. They also underpin the huge range of skills needed by today's and tomorrow's librarians.

A Place for children
A Place for children was funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (subsequently LIC) and ran from November 1996 until June 1998. It was conceived as a collaborative piece of research by the three principal institutions teaching and researching in the field of children's library provision, namely University of Central England, Loughborough University and University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

The research began with the view that library services for children and young people were a key national asset in supporting children's reading needs. In focusing the study on the public library's role in supporting children's reading, the research emphasised that reading development was key to children's success. The special place of the public library in reading development provided the title for the study and summarised the intention of trying to demonstrate a continuing role for children's public libraries into the next millennium. The case studies provided some inspirational examples, with particular evidence of social impact and libraries as a safe haven. A full report of the research is published by the Library Association as A Place for children: public libraries as a major force in children's reading. 10

The research emphatically revealed the vital role of the public library in supporting children's development, improving their reading skills and helping them to grow intellectually, socially and culturally. Many parents, children, librarians and teachers believed this. But it was a message that had not been trumpeted. The policy makers and politicians at local and national government levels had failed to grasp the hugely significant role of libraries in shaping the nation's children.

The research found that libraries contributed to the child's reading development in terms of:

• quality of life
• citizenship: libraries offer children a first right of citizenship
• social development
• social inclusion
  • libraries can have a long-term sustainable impact on the child's quality of life: a social space in a pretty desolate area: roaming dogs, broken windows, peeling paint characterise the landscape…library as social space and the security to meet their friends on neutral, well-regulated territory
  • welcoming environment: library as a warm, safe place where children learn a sense of ownership.
  • promoting literacy: You only have to look around to see the need of a library ... There is no home environment of books, there is low educational aspiration…there is no bookshop and no book buying tradition. Here they have access to a free source of information and information...The children have good listening skills and we connect with these roots by myths, legends and poetry.
• family support: family reading groups, family literacy groups, advice to parents

[NB: italics used here to denote quotes from the research]

Homework Clubs
The Homework Clubs research (funded by LIC) demonstrated very clearly that homework clubs in libraries had been very successful, particularly for children without adequate resources at home. In many cases, parents had become much more involved with the child's learning as a result of the homework club and this seemed particularly true for parents who had learning problems themselves and parents whose first language was not English.

The research reinforced many of the findings of Place for Children in terms of the social inclusion and safe haven agenda. Again, the library was seen as:

• a comfortable, welcoming, safe place where staff would be supportive and helpful: The atmosphere in the library is important, the public library is open for everyone to use, so the children learn to maintain quietness and discipline
• a neutral ground for those disaffected from school
• developing social skills: to make them feel part of the community and this ties in well with citizenship education
• providing self-development and education on children's own terms
• providing independence, giving children confidence to do things on their own
• supporting reading development and encourage love of books and reading
• developing ICT skills
• complementing education offered in schools ... a chance out of the cycle of poverty

I must say I'm pleased that the libery is highering intelligent and qualified people to help us in are studies in the homework clubs, my only complant about is that they only come in twice a week, it should be everyday of the week…I came to the homework club last week, and I was so pleased with the help and the performance of the helper that I decided to come this week, they really do their job well..I must say Im pleased and proud to be part of such a libery, a libery that would go out of their way to please their customer. Thank you for everything and I pray you keep up the good work.

Skills
Overwhelmingly, both pieces of research demonstrated the huge range of skills, knowledge and expertise required from librarians; skills, knowledge and expertise often much applauded, during the research, by children, parents and teachers but rarely recognised or exploited by librarians themselves. What is demonstrated quite clearly, though, is a growing rather than a declining role for the professional who has the right blend of skills and expertise and is sufficiently flexible to cope with the demands of a rapidly changing environment.

What are the skills required for librarians and information professionals in this rapidly changing environment?

Higher Education
The Fielden Report 12 on human resource management in academic libraries, published in 1993, highlighted four key areas where the competences of existing staff would be most challenged in future and where new sets of skills would be required:

• Subject librarians with an understanding of teaching/learning skills;
• Almost universally, staff will know how to access/navigate in electronic databases ("tailored navigational support") and show others how to do so;
• Customer care and service attitudes: a greater focus on delivering a system more responsive to the needs of customers leads to a need for more sensitive delivery of services;
• New forms of team working to help build commitment to the basic goals of each LIS.

The major areas of training needs identified were:

• Development and updating of IT skills and competence;
• Customer service skills and associated questions of interpersonal behaviour;
• anagement skills, especially financial
• Team working skills;
• Leadership;
• Strategic thinking skills

School and public libraries
School and public libraries have been much slower to adopt IT universally than higher education and in many ways these early messages from higher education hold true for present changes within school and public libraries. School librarians have, of course, always been part of a learning culture but not always recognised for their central role in learning.

It is interesting to note that the five new roles identified for public librarians in the New Opportunities Fund training for the Public Library Network identifies:

• net navigator
• IT gatekeeper
• Information consultant
• Information manager
• Educator

- really not dissimilar to what was called for in 1993 in university libraries!

Public libraries have undergone huge change in recent years. From a point of considerable decline just a few years ago, there has been a tremendous burgeoning of new initiatives, alongside the huge opportunities afforded by the People's Network. The current round of NOF funding for IT training for public librarians, school librarians and teachers will be hugely significant in terms of refocusing and re-aligning skills and specialisms.

Alongside this, we need to put some of the issues I raised earlier in terms of the significant role of children's libraries in social inclusion, in educational, cultural, social development, in family reading and learning groups, in homework clubs, in Bookstart-type initiatives. These all require parallel skills.

As always, conferences such as this one highlight both the professionalism of children's librarians and the continued and vital significance of book knowledge to underpin children's learning in the twentieth century. Neither of these must be lost, but there are other skills required of the librarian in the future.

Summary
To summarise, the librarian and information professional is at the gateway of a new age, as

• mediator,
• interpreter,
• guide,
• navigator,
• intermediary,
• educator to more diverse media, technologies, resources.

So, in addition to social, cultural, educational skills required to operate in a socially inclusive learning culture, the librarian and information professional of the future will need:

• high level information-handling skills;
• high level ICT awareness skills;
• high level management and leadership skills;
• research and project management skills;
• mentoring skills;
• marketing and promotion skills ;
• to be good communicators;
• to be flexible and adaptable;
• to be innovative and imaginative;
• to be proactive;
• the ability to help and educate others

Returning to my cross-sectoral stance, a paper given by Dr Sandra Ward 13 celebrating forty years of the IIS, compared the skills required for information scientists in 1959 with those required in 1998. She highlighted the following behaviours as critical for today's information scientist:

• Self-belief;
• Vision and creativity;
• Opportunistic;
• Confidence and willingness to take risks;
• Focused service ethic;
• Team playing and partnership;
• Ambition

Interestingly, they seem to be exactly the skills required of the professional of the future working with children and their carers.

The framework and political climate has changed, almost overnight. The Information and Learning Society will depend on a skilled and literate workforce. There is a need to equip young people with information-handling skills that will make them more effective as citizens and more productive as individuals. Librarians have a range of traditional and newly emerging skills that are appropriate in the traditional as well as in the new electronic and networked environment.

We need to preserve and exploit those skills and be proud of them.

I should like to finish with a quote from Beyond book issues: the social potential of library projects:

Libraries, if used as a means of community self-development, could confidently assume a position alongside schools and hospitals within the public sector. They have the capacity and public support to do so: do they have the will? 14

The opportunities and challenges are there as we enter the twenty first century, just as they were for Esme Green and her contemporaries in the post war years.

Thank you.

References
1. Elkin, J. Looking to the future: the Esme Green memorial lecture. The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, 1996 Back to text
2. Elkin, J. and Lonsdale, R. Focus on the child: libraries, literacy and learning. London: The Library Association, 1996. Back to text
3. 2020 Vision. London: Library and Information Commission Back to text
4. Libraries: the lifeforce for learning. London: Library and Information Commission Back to text
5. Libraries: the essence of inclusion. London: Library and Information Commission Back to text
6. Elkin, J. Why the hell shouldn't they have the opportunity of walking on carpet. YLG News, vol.17, no.3, Winter 1973. Back to text
7. Central Office of Information. Our information age: the Government's vision. London: Central Office of Information, 1998. http://www.number-10.gov.uk Back to text
8. Department for Education and Employment. The learning age: a renaissance for a new Britain. London: The Stationery Office, 1998. Back to text
9. New library: the people's network. London: Library and Information Commission, 1997 Back to text
10. Elkin, J. and Kinnell, M. A Place for children: public libraries as a major force in children's reading. London: The Library Association Publishing, 2000 Back to text
11. Train, B., et al. The Value and Impact of Homework Clubs in Public Libraries. London: Library and Information Commission Research Report 32, 2000. Back to text
12. Higher Education Funding Council England. Supporting expansion: a report on human resource management in academic libraries, for the Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review. (Fielden Report). Bristol: HEFCE, July 1993. Back to text
13. Ward, S. Forty years of the IIS: presidential paper given at IIS, September 1998. Back to text
14. Matarasso, F. Beyond book issues: the social potential of library projects. London: Comedia, 1998. Back to text

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