Librarian
A librarian is a person who professionally works with information management. The professional duties of librarians encompass a wide range of activities, including the provision of access to information, the conduct of research, the creation and management of information systems, the creation, leadership, and evaluation of educational programs, and the provision of instruction on information literacy to users.
The role of the librarian has evolved significantly over time, particularly in the past century, which has witnessed the emergence of numerous media and technologies. From the earliest libraries in the ancient world to the modern information hub, there have been individuals responsible for the maintenance and dissemination of information stored in data repositories. The roles and responsibilities of librarians vary considerably based on factors such as the nature of the library, the librarian's area of expertise, and the functions essential for the maintenance of collections and their accessibility to users.
Education for librarianship has undergone a transformation over time, adapting to the evolution of its roles and responsibilities.
History
The ancient world
The Sumerians were the first to train clerks to keep records of accounts. "Masters of the books" or "keepers of the tablets" were scribes or priests who were trained to handle the vast amount and complexity of these records. The extent of their specific duties is unknown.Sometime in the 8th century BC, Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, created a library at his palace in Nineveh in Mesopotamia. Ashurbanipal was the first individual in history to introduce librarianship as a profession. We know of at least one "keeper of the books" who was employed to oversee the thousands of tablets on Sumerian and Babylonian materials, including literary texts; history; omens; astronomical calculations; mathematical tables; grammatical and linguistic tables; dictionaries; and commercial records and laws. All of these tablets were cataloged and arranged in logical order by subject or type, each having an identification tag.
The Great Library of Alexandria, created by Ptolemy I after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, was created to house the entirety of Greek literature. It was notable for its famous librarians: Demetrius, Zenodotus, Eratosthenes, Apollonius, Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and Callimachus. These scholars contributed significantly to the collection and cataloging of the wide variety of scrolls in the library's collection. Most notably, Callimachus created what is considered to be the first subject catalog of the library holdings, called the pinakes. The pinakes contained 120 scrolls arranged into ten subject classes; each class was then subdivided, listing authors alphabetically by titles. The librarians at Alexandria were considered the "custodians of learning".
Near the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire, it was common for Roman aristocrats to hold private libraries in their home. Many of these aristocrats, such as Cicero, kept the contents of their private libraries to themselves, only boasting of the enormity of his collection. Others, such as Lucullus, took on the role of lending librarian by sharing scrolls in their collection. Many Roman emperors included public libraries into their political propaganda to win favor from citizens. While scholars were employed in librarian roles in the various emperors' libraries, there was no specific office or role that qualified an individual to be a librarian. For example, Pompeius Macer, the first librarian of Augustus' library, was a praetor, an office that combined both military and judicial duties. A later librarian of the same library was Gaius Julius Hyginus, a grammarian.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Christian monasteries in Europe are credited with keeping the institution of libraries alive after the fall of the Roman Empire. It is during this time that the first codex enters popularity: the parchment codex. Within the monasteries, the role of librarian was often filled by an overseer of the scriptorium where monks would copy out books cover to cover. A monk named Anastasias who took on the title of Bibliothecarius following his successful translations of the Greek classicists. During this period, the lectern system, in which books were chained to desks for security, was also introduced. Classification and organization of books during this period was generally done by subject and alphabetically, with materials inventoried using basic check lists. Later in the period, individuals known as librarii began more formal cataloguing, inventory, and classification.In the 14th century, universities began to reemerge which had libraries and employed librarians. At the same time royalty, nobles and jurists began to establish libraries of their own as status symbols. King Charles V of France began his own library, and he kept his collection as a bibliophile, an attribute that is closely connected to librarians of this time.
The Renaissance is considered to be a time of aristocratic enthusiasm for libraries. During this period, great private libraries were developed in Europe by figures such as Petrarch and Boccaccio. These libraries were sponsored by popes, royals, and nobility who sent agents throughout Western Europe to locate manuscripts in deteriorating monastic libraries. As a result, Renaissance libraries were filled with a wealth of texts. While materials in these libraries were mostly restricted, the libraries were open to the public. Librarians were needed to plan and organize libraries to meet public needs. A tool to achieve these organizational goals, the first library catalog, appeared in 1595.
Enlightenment era
During the 16th century, the idea of creating a Bibliotheca Universalis, a universal listing of all printed books, emerged from well-established academics and librarians: Conrad Gessner, Gabriel Naudé, John Dury, and Gottfried Leibniz. The four librarians responsible for establishing the Bibliotheca Universalis are important figures in librarianship. Gabriel Naudé published Avis pour dresser une bibliothèque, the first printed monograph on librarianship. In this monograph, Naudé advocated collecting all kinds of books, old and new, of famous, more obscure, and heretical authors. He also contributed to the idea of organization and administration of libraries which led to the development of library collections. It was also in part thanks to Naudé that some libraries began to lend books outside of the precincts of the library.John Dury is considered to be the first English library theorist. He wrote two letters to Samuel Hartlib concerning the duties of a professional librarian, which were published in 1650 as "The Reformed Librarie-Keeper". He held that librarians should not only care for the books, but should also be well educated and accomplished to raise the standards of librarianship. Furthermore, he advocated that librarians deserve a living wage in order to use their energy to perform their duties to the fullest extent. Gottfried Leibniz upheld that the librarian was the most important factor in the aid of learning. He is credited as including science texts in addition to conventional literature within library collections.
Another key figure of this time, Sir Thomas Bodley, gave up his career as a diplomat and established Oxford's Bodleian library. He is credited as creating the first functional library of modern times. Subsequent librarians following Bodley were called Protobibliothecarius Bodleianus, Bodley's Librarian. They would earn £40 a year. The ideas formed with these librarians continued to develop into the 17th century. With the approach of Bibliotheca Universalis, libraries changed; the content of libraries became less selective, to include literature of entertainment as well as academic value. At this time, libraries also became fully open to the public, with access no longer restricted to a small circle of readers.
In 18th-century France, two librarians, Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon and Joseph Van Praet, selected and identified over 300,000 books and manuscripts that became the property of the people in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. During the French Revolution, librarians assumed sole responsibility for selecting books for use by all citizens of the nation. Out of this action came the implementation of the concept of modern library service: the democratic extension of library services to the general public, regardless of wealth or education.
Modern era
While there were full-time librarians in the 18th century, the professionalization of the library role was a 19th-century development, as shown by its first training school, its first university school, and its first professional associations and licensing procedures.In England in the 1870s, a new employment role opened for women in libraries; it was said that the tasks were "Eminently Suited to Girls and Women." By 1920, women and men were equally numerous in the library profession, but women pulled ahead by 1930 and comprised 80% by 1960. The factors accounting for the transition included the demographic losses of the First World War, the provisions of the Public Libraries Act of 1919, the library-building activity of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and the library employment advocacy of the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women. In the United Kingdom, evidence suggests that the Conservative government began replacing professional librarians with unpaid volunteers in 2015–2016.
COVID-19 pandemic in the US
During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in 2020, many librarians were temporarily displaced as libraries across the country were affected by a nationwide shutdown in efforts to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 disease. During this time, library services were in high demand as patrons were stuck inside during quarantine, but with limited building access, most public library patrons switched to digital content, online learning, and virtual programs.As the crisis escalated, there was a high demand for contact tracers, and the CDC had earlier named librarians as key public health staff to support COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing, so many librarians and library staff volunteered to help with contact tracing. Librarians also supported their community in other ways, such as staffing non-emergency hotlines and manning shelters for the homeless, for which they were able to retain their income, while others were furloughed for a time.
The Librarian Reserve Corps was formed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a global network of volunteer librarians, specializing in academic libraries and medical libraries, serving as "information first responders" in the fight against the Infodemic as a direct result of COVID-19 pandemic. The Librarian Reserve Corps Literature Enhancement and Metadata Enrichment volunteers, led by Jessica Callaway, vetted, indexed, and helped disseminate resources about COVID-19 to various organizations, including the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network and the World Health Organization. As of November 2021, the Librarian Reserve Corps has vetted over 60,000 publications relating to COVID-19. The Librarian Reserve Corps founder, Elaine Hicks, and co-leadership Stacy Brody and Sara Loree, were awarded the 2021 Librarian of the Year title from Library Journal.