Librarianship is a Profession or Not?: A Comparison

Librarianship is a distinct and distinguished profession in modern society. It is engaged in public service and plays an important role in national development. Librarianship today is termed as “Library and Information Profession” since the concept of librarianship has changed in view of the changing information needs of society.

The art and science of managing libraries are called “Librarianship”. The essential function of librarianship is to make available “information” in its widest sense, serving leisure as well as work needs, for the benefit of people seeking day-to-day information. Librarianship essentially concerns the problem of storage, retrieval, and access to documents.

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Librarianship is not a Profession.

For a long time, there was a dilemma whether librarianship is a profession or not. One of the views is that it is not a profession, it is believed to exist between a profession and a vocation. The medical and legal professions are ancient and hence accepted as professions from time unknown but it is not so in librarianship. Different opinions have been expressed by social scientists about librarianship being a profession. There are those who do not agree with the professionalism of library services. Lancour (1962) does not consider librarianship as a profession on the following grounds.

1) It doesn’t have the community sanction.
2) Librarians’ services are not indispensable in the same way as that of doctors.
Most of the library employees, both professionals, and non-professionals, hide behind the shelves when looked upon for service. They are not able to serve society confidently to earn their reputation.
3) They exercise no real authority with the clients. Sills (1968) observed that “the profession of the librarianship has not been included in the long list of the professions, even in the International Encyclopedia of Social Science”.

What is a Profession, can librarianship be an occupation?

“Profession means an occupation, especially on requiring extensive education in a branch of science. A Librarian does not only come into contact with covers of knowledge but also experiences the pleasure and thrill of providing the right information to the right person at the right time. Librarianship thus can be a great profession for those who enter it with the seriousness of purpose”.

Librarianship is, definitely, an occupation, which demands specialized knowledge and skills. Its study is based on a systematic theory that delineates and supports the skills that characterize the profession. It has its professional organizations that promote excellence in the work of the members, influence public sentiment and support, and try to raise it to a position of dignity and social standing.

Definitely! Librarianship is a profession.

A librarian conserves the cultural and intellectual heritage of mankind and acts as an agent of communication from information generation to the point of use. His services are indispensable in the information transfer chain. This opinion was shared by many social and information scientists like Melvil Dewey, Butler, Greenwood, Schaffer, et al and they tried to prove that librarianship is a profession as it has many attributes of a profession. Robert D Leigh wrote that librarians have accepted professional status as a goal on the following factors:

1) “They are identified with knowledge, which is prime service of occupational prestige in our society
2) They are service-oriented rather than self-interested at least in certain senses.
3) Library and information professionals belong to professional associations (state and national)
4) They are trained in professional schools, associated with universities.
5) They have a code of ethics.”

Thus, librarianship can be considered as a profession, as it possesses the following basic characteristics of a profession:
• A body of knowledge imparted in LIS schools;
• Intensive training and continued practice to gain mastery over the skills for knowledge organization and retrieval;
• Oriented towards service to the society;
• Associations to bind the professionals;
• Standard terminology and practices; and
• Code of ethics.

Education for librarianship at middle and higher levels is imparted at the post-graduate level for two years. Teaching different theoretical aspects and intensive training of skills support the view that it is a profession. S.R.Ranganathan contributed to the development of the library profession in India by developing standard terminology, theoretical principles, LIS education – from certificate to research level, and introducing specialization and standardized practices.

The library profession in India owes a lot to his contributions. To quote Ranganathan “Librarianship is a noble profession. A librarian derives his joy by seeing the dawn of joy in the face of the readers who were helped in their search for the right information at the right time.”

EVOLUTION OF THE LIS PROFESSION 
M.A.Gopinath opined that there are three distinct stages in the evolution of the LIS profession.

Scholarly Period
Before the middle of the 19th century, the libraries were owned by kings, noblemen, and monasteries. Only monasteries were interested in the collective use of libraries that were managed by scholars. Nalanda and Taxila University libraries belong to that period in India. The libraries during the period are characterized as collections with access to a limited few. The books were prized possessions in
view of the treasure of knowledge they represented and also the labor involved in their production.

 Vocational Period
The next century saw the birth of librarianship. In UK and USA, public libraries were started in the 19th century and managed by persons devoted to the work. This led to the development of a new vocation – librarianship – that involved the art of book selection, classification, cataloging, and reference service. Later, programs were designed to train librarians. The specialization resulted into considering librarianship as a ‘skilled occupation’.

 Professional Period
Over the period librarianship developed from a vocation to a profession having a body of knowledge, laws, principles, techniques for processing information and serving the users. The application of the scientific method to librarianship gave it the status of a profession. It has been six decades now but there is still a cross-section of the society that likes to debate on whether librarianship is a profession or not.

Librarianship as an Occupation: In ancient times, during the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Babylonia librarianship emerged as an occupation. There were libraries at Alexandria, Taxila, Nalanda, and in Rome that were managed by librarians. Librarians were employed in libraries maintained by kings and monasteries. Thus the profession emerged as an occupation/employment. Librarianship as a

Vocation: In medieval times more and more libraries were established that were managed by scholars. In the initial stages, they
developed special skills for organization knowledge and recalling it as per user requirements. Many of these skills were applied on a trial and error basis with no scientific foundation. This was the time when librarianship was considered a vocation and not a profession.

Librarianship as a Profession: With the industrial revolution and universalization of education, knowledge production had increased. The academic institutions considered libraries as centers of knowledge activity. Further, the establishment of the British Museum (London), Bibliotheca Nationale (Paris), and the Library of Congress (Washington D.C) inspired the development of public libraries and other types of libraries. The library legislation in the UK that enacted Public Library Act also boosted the situation. Consequent to the increase in the number of libraries and librarians, associations were developed in the USA (American Library Association) and UK (Library Association).

Library science courses were offered by universities as a graduate or post-graduate programs. Library science got its own knowledge base when codes like Cutter’s ‘Rules for a Dictionary Catalog’ and ‘Dewey Decimal Classification’ were developed to achieve standardization in the technical aspects of librarianship. Thus librarianship emerged as a profession from vocation

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