So you’re a profession, or you want to be. How do you guard your borders?
One way, as a friend pointed out to me in IM, is to control something so dangerous or vital that government regulation comes into play. Doctors and lawyers have this one sewn up; malpractice in either can get you sued, and calling yourself an MD without the degree and the associated certification will get you thrown in jail. (Compare this to faking a Ph.D, which will get you roundly ridiculed, but won’t earn you hard time.) The higher end of finance is also regulated, for similar reasons. I can go around calling myself a financial planner all I want, but if I call myself a CPA, I’m in a world of hurt; them puppies is regulated. (For the record: I am not a CPA.)
Librarianship? Not so much with the regulated, and we wouldn’t like what happened if we were, as our profession’s ethics and praxis are often at cross-purposes with government. So forget about that.
Another way is gatekeeping the entry to the profession, by some combination of education and oathtaking. The clergy do this. We try to do it in librarianship; that’s what the MLS is for. Unfortunately, as I pointed out, the MLS isn’t the only way to find work in a library, even quite responsible and high-level work in a library—even running a library. So the MLS is made of fail, and it’s made of more fail every day, as the curriculum steadily focuses on work bits (such as basic reference) that have already been deprofessionalized, without adding bits that haven’t (such as digital data management).
Likewise, a curriculum so rigorous that only a few survive it would be an effective gatekeeper. In librarianship? When pigs fly.
My aforementioned friend also pointed out that one thing that happens to disciplines that face change is that they split, with the newbies forging a new path while the oldbies sit back and (often enough) moulder. Well, isn’t it interesting that we have L-schools and I-schools, and isn’t it interesting that the I-schools are generally tougher, and isn’t it interesting that I (sticking out like a sore thumb in this profession as I do) kinda wish I’d gone to one. I’ll be blunt: based on what I see going on, if the L-schools and the I-schools don’t reintegrate, only one will survive, and it won’t be the L-schools. What price ALA accreditation then?
Yet another way to guard the borders is by requiring continuing reaccreditation of professionals, such that nobody who isn’t serious about the profession is willing to put up with the hassle. Teaching and nursing do this. Tenured academic librarianship sort of does. The rest of librarianship? Nah. There’s a reason the MLS is called the union card. Once you have it, you’re in for good.
The flip side of accreditation and re-accreditation is the ability to kick somebody out for malfeasance or plain old idiocy. Lawyers can be disbarred; doctors and nurses and teachers can have their licenses yanked, or let them expire (since they’re time-limited if you don’t reaccredit yourself). We don’t do this in librarianship. Let me tell you, it is a problem. Some of our colleagues don’t do us even a tiny bit of good in the eyes of the world. We have cords and cords and cords of deadwood. We can’t do one damned thing about it.
So what’s guarding the borders of our profession? Not a whole lot, and that’s why these librarian/parapro discussions keep coming up like a bad burrito, and why we can expect them to continue doing so. If ALA wants to fix the problem, it can pick one or more of the above border-guarding tactics and get serious about it.
But that’ll be a cold day in hell. Remember, ALA doesn’t serve librarians. It exploits librarians for the sake of libraries.
