On Your Own but Not Alone: One-Person Librarians in Ireland and Their Perceptions of Continuing Professional Development

One-person librarians (OPLs) are the sole information provider in their respective organizations. Continuing professional development (CPD) is vital to satisfy their own information needs and, by proxy, those of the people they serve. No research has so far been carried out to establish what CPD means to these highly specialized library workers. This article reports on some of the findings of a phenomenographic study conducted among thirty OPLs in the Republic of Ireland. The researcher found five different ways of experiencing CPD, ranging from an organizational focus only to a lifelong, lifewide learning orientation. She also discovered four dimensions of variation, namely, “time,” “style,” “networking,” and “role,” each of which influenced succinctly how solo librarians perceived the effectiveness of different means of CPD. The study suggests that a new model of understanding CPD is needed if library associations want to provide successful support to OPLs. A “one-size-fits-all” approach is not appropriate for OPLs. Introduction Continuing professional development (CPD) is widely recognized as an integral part of being a professional (Collin, Van der Heijden, & Lewis, 2012). The library and information science (LIS) profession is no different, with professional organizations placing increased emphasis on CPD (Broady-Preston & Cossham, 2011) and many libraries actively encouraging their staff to engage in activities that enhance and deepen their knowledge by, for example, engaging in staff development committees (Davis & Lundstrom, 2011). Technological developments in particular make constant updating of knowledge necessary (Corrall, 2011), especially in the context of Web 2.0 (Broady-Preston, 2009b; Partridge, Lee, & Munro, LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 61, No. 3, 2013 (“Research Into Practice,” edited by Sheila Corrall and Barbara Sen), pp. 675–702. © 2013 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 676 library trends/winter 2013 2010). In some circumstances, however, this can be a problem: “often called a solo librarian, an OPL is the only librarian (or only professional librarian) in a library or information center” (Siess, 2001, p. 1). These one-person librarians (OPLs) have limited access to training courses and frequently small budgets. For many of them, being part of a professional association is vital, as these offer access not only to workshops and conferences but also to many electronic resources and networking opportunities. Library associations around the world have developed CPD initiatives (Broady-Preston & Cossham, 2011; Ghosh, 2006; Roper, 2006), but to date there is no countrywide strategy in Ireland. It is up to individual librarians to follow the guidelines provided by the Library Association of Ireland (LAI). Without the pressure provided by a national policy or by a compulsory scheme, however, many OPLs find it difficult to make a case for CPD to their management, who often are not librarians. OPLs face the dilemma of having to close the library in instances where they do not have access to another librarian who could cover for them. Resnick (2003) gives some advice in this regard, but warns that nonprofessional staff or volunteers are no substitute for the service provided by a qualified solo librarian. So how do OPLs in Ireland manage continuing professional development? Rationale and Overview The rationale behind this research was a sense of frustration experienced by the researcher, who had encountered barriers to CPD in her own practice. She was of the opinion, however, that OPLs have both a right and an obligation to keep up-to-date and that they should be able to expect support from professional bodies and management alike. This led to an investigation of the literature available, which was quite limited with regard to OPLs and CPD. The basic questions, such as what OPLs actually understand “continuing professional development” to be and how they experience different means of CPD, were not answered at all. In the researcher’s opinion these needed to be clarified in order to offer successful CPD opportunities to solo librarians. As a volunteer committee member of one specialist group of the LAI, the professional body of librarians in the Republic of Ireland, she had an additional interest as a CPD provider. The present article reports on some of the findings of a recently completed doctoral thesis (Hornung, 2011), which is based on a qualitative research project conducted among OPLs in the Republic of Ireland. After briefly reviewing relevant literature, it describes phenomenography, the research approach used, which is followed by an outline of the research project and the data collection and analysis process. The next part looks in more detail at the main findings and compares them with related studies. Finally, some of the implications for policy and practice are discussed. 677 one-person librarians in ireland/hornung Research Questions The researcher carried out an extensive literature review, which incorporated studies in the fields of adult education, lifelong learning, management, psychology, sociology, and LIS. She also drew on her own experience as an OPL in an educational research center in Ireland. After many revisions the following two research questions were established: • What are the Irish OPLs’ conceptions of successful and effective CPD? • How do OPLs in Ireland experience different methods of CPD? The next section outlines some of the literature reviewed that informed this study. The focus is on three areas of interest to the present article: OPLs, CPD, and phenomenography. Literature Review The literature on OPLs is scarce worldwide and virtually nonexistent in Ireland, except for two articles by Sliney (1985, 1988). In general, contributions tend to be personal accounts and case studies (e.g., Woolley, 1988) and are often equated with being employed in special libraries (e.g., Smith, 2001), even though that is not the only setting where they work. Despite estimates that one in three librarians worldwide could be classified as an OPL (Siess, 2003), they remain a group of library workers seldom investigated. The figures for Ireland are sketchy. The latest year for which there are data available is the 2011 Census, which was published in 2012 and revealed that the number of librarians, archivists, and curators in 2011 was 1,671 (Central Statistics Office, 2012, p. 47). With a separate entry for “library clerks,” we can assume that these are qualified librarians. How many of them are OPLs, however, is not known. The OPL movement can be traced back to Guy St. Clair, a former librarian, who, when invited to speak at the Annual Conference of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) in 1972, insisted on changing the title of the talk from “The One-Man Library” to “The One-Person Library” (Siess, 2003), which has since become “one-person librarian.” He also cofounded (with Andrew Berner) The OPL Newsletter, one of the first dedicated information resources for solo librarians. Judith Siess, librarian, information consultant, and former chair of SLA’s Solo Librarians Division, later took over as editor. In the United Kingdom and in Ireland, the term “one-man band” is still quite popular, but in the present article, “one-person librarian,” or “OPL,” is used. There are also several concepts available regarding who would count as an OPL. For the purpose of her study, the researcher defined it as “a qualified librarian/information professional working on his/her own without any professional help in the immediate organisation other than clerical/administrative.” 678 library trends/winter 2013 CPD, in contrast, has been a topic of interest around the world for the LIS research community for some time. Researchers have investigated CPD for special librarians in the United States (Fisher & Matarazzo, 1993); public librarians in Israel (Doran, 2000); university librarians in Ghana (Adanu, 2007), Indonesia (Maesaroh & Genoni, 2009), Vietnam (Leong & Nguyen, 2011), and Finland (Saarti & Juntunen, 2011); and library staff in general (e.g., Brown, 1992, for the United Kingdom, or Cossham & Fields, 2006, for New Zealand). Within the academic library sector, the CPD needs of librarians in relation to their role as instructors/teachers has become a particular concern in many countries, evidenced by studies in the United Kingdom (Bewick & Corrall, 2010), United States (Westbrock & Fabian, 2010), and Canada (Houtman, 2010). These are just some examples of a vast number of studies conducted over the last twenty years. The CPD activities of library associations and LIS schools fall into another category of publications. Majid (2004), for example, reports on efforts made by LIS schools in Southeast Asia. Broady-Preston and Cossham (2011) compare mandatory CPD schemes as implemented by the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA) and planned by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in the United Kingdom as a logical development of its voluntary revalidation scheme. On a more practical level, personal viewpoints (e.g., Cameron, 1994) and CPD linked to workplace learning, for example Ian W. Smith’s series of articles in Library Management (e.g., Smith, 2004), also feature prominently in the professional literature. However, despite longstanding and widespread interest in CPD, the concept has not been clearly defined in the literature. Collin et al. (2012, p. 155) assert that “theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the scope and understanding of the concept.” Broady-Preston (2009a) notes many different interpretations of the term CPD, even within the library and information profession, where it has been variously characterized by representatives as a realization, a commitment, a plan, an activity, and a process. She also highlights a “dichotomy between the perspectives of the individual and those of the employer with regard to responsibility for CPD and the benefits of this activity” (2009a, p. 265), reinforcing the conclusions drawn by Cossham and Fields (2007) from their investigation in New Zealand, which found a significant differences between librarians’ and managers’ views of CPD. Reconciling the development needs of professionals with needs identified by their employers is a universal problem that extends beyond the library and information community (Collin et al., 2012). OPLs’ participation in and needs for CPD have been researched in a few studies (e.g., Shuter, 1974; Slater, 1988; Williamson, 1990) and in training guidelines (Lacey Bryant, 1995). They adopted, however, more 679 one-person librarians in ireland/hornung quantitative methods of data collection, such as questionnaires and surveys with predefined categories. By their very nature, they thus provided definitions of CPD for participants and therefore gained only limited insights into participants’ understanding of that term. Although these studies were valid in what they tried to achieve, they did not go to the core of the problem, which needed a more qualitative approach. As the researcher was interested in the variation in how people actually experience CPD and what it means to them, she chose “phenomenography” as the research approach. Phenomenography is gaining more acceptance in LIS, where it has been used mainly in research on information seeking (e.g., Limberg, 1999); information use (e.g., Maybee, 2006); and information literacy, notably in the works by Bruce (1997) and Boon, Johnston, and Webber (2007). Bruce (1997) discovered seven conceptions of information literacy in her sample of Australian university staff. Boon et al. (2007), in their study of twenty faculty members working in higher education in the United Kingdom, found four different ways of understanding information literacy. CPD also has been the focus of phenomenographic research. In the related field of education, Stein, Shephard, and Harris (2011) conducted a study among tertiary educators that yielded five conceptions of e-learning and four of professional development for e-learning. Because readers may not be familiar with this research specialization, the next section outlines its theoretical background and provides a detailed account of the data collection and analysis.