Council On Library/Media Technicians

Certification for Library/Media Support Staff: Impact on Libraries
by Joyce Nielsen, Hope College, Holland Michigan
and
Linda Owen, University of California, Riverside California

The following is a report of the COLT Midwinter Program held in New Orleans, LA on January 9, 1998. It is a revision of a summary of the program submitted to the LIBSUP-L list serve by Joyce Nielsen, Hope College, Holland Michigan. The topic of the program was Certification for Library/Media Support Staff: Impact on Libraries. Margaret Barron, Certification Committee Chair for the Council on Library/Media Technicians (COLT), coordinated this program.

Kent Slade, President of the Council on Library/Media Technicians (COLT), welcomed the participants and gave some background on the involvement of COLT with the issue of certification of library and media support staff since the organization formed in 1967. Slade noted that COLT has long been active in developing national criteria for training library support staff and in updating national career directories. He further stated that the Council on Library/Media Technicians is a natural group to certify support staff.

Margaret Barron discussed the history of certification for library support staff. She believes early attempts failed because twenty years ago the whole idea seemed too threatening to degreed librarians. Now in the late '90s, the whole library world seems much more ready to consider such an idea because the computerization of much library work has changed how jobs are done and who does them.

"The situation is very complex. Even worker titles vary from one state to another, from one library to another. There are tiers of workers to accommodate who have learned their skills in a variety of ways," Barron explained, "As library schools around the country close down, there are fewer MSLS and MLS graduates available. Libraries are having trouble finding graduate librarians to fill some positions, especially in the technical services areas." Support staff personnel are filling more and more of these jobs. Many have learned on the job while others are graduates of two-year community college library technology programs. Barron also noted the criteria statement for training library support staff, or as some programs term it, library technical assistants, is being revised by the American Library Association at the present time. COLT is involved in the process by having two representatives on the Task Force, Annamarie Erickson, Education Committee Chairperson and Linda Owen, Immediate Past President.

Barron emphasized that Certification would be voluntary. The certificate would mean that the holder had demonstrated specific levels of skill and expertise by passing an examination. This certificate would move with the worker from job to job and from library to library. The tests and the study manuals that would help individuals prepare for the tests still need to be written. The manuals now used for SAT or GRE preparation show how successfully this can be accomplished. "We should have the pilot project in place by 1999," Barron told the group.

Linda Owen, Immediate Past President of the Council on Library/Media Technicians and COLT Webmaster spoke about Communication Networks for Support Staff. She commented that how we communicate with others in our library work has changed drastically over the years. Twenty years ago communication was predominately in a straight line. Your supervisor provided directions to you. You might go to a colleague for specific information and share information but that was still centered around a central authoritarian core much like a spider web. Today, communication networks look more like tapestries as any thoughts and ideas from many sources are interwoven. How we communicate has been affected by the methods by which we communicate. First the fax machine and now the Internet makes communication of complex ideas quick and easy. A question placed on the Internet Libsup-L list serv might garner an answer "from the next city, the next state, across the country, or from Canada, Australia, or Singapore." We pick and chose from many sources to weave our own answer and then add that answer to the network.

Library support staff who responded to Owen's request on the LIB-SUP-L list serv for personal experiences with library networking agreed that it has improved how they do their jobs and how they
relate to librarians and others in the workplace. They said expanding their communication networks help them learn to communicate more clearly and effectively.

"How does all of this relate to certification?" Owen asked. Through this enhanced net work of communication we will be able to make clear to librarians and to support staff what is meant by certification, how it can benefit libraries and the people who work in them.

Annamarie Erickson, Education Committee Chair of the Council on Library/Media Technicians presented Education Programs for Support Staff. Because as a library paraprofessional Erickson completed a Library Technical Assistant (LTA) program, and later as a librarian she directed an LTA program, she brings excellent credentials to this topic.

Erickson emphasized that as library support staff positions have become more complex, involving fewer basic clerical skills and requiring more technical and computer skills, the need for support staff training has increased. These courses have many different names, but are often available in community colleges as Library Technical Assistant curricula. Those that lead to an Associate of Arts diploma are sometimes transferable into a four-year college program however in some states, these classes are considered vocational and cannot be used toward higher educational goals.