23 Things for Professional Development - Thing 16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published.

Firstly, it seems there is a slight misconception about international librarianship here. Librarianship and librarians all over the world experience the same indifferent attitude from the people we serve, even though in different degrees. It’s a known fact everywhere that faculties in academic librarianship and the clinicals in medical librarianship find it hard to see the relevance of librarians to their service. Afterall, they can access the internet by themselves and what with the mini library each one has in his office? What other thing can a librarian provide?


There is definitely a whole world of difference in Activism and Advocacy and to summarise all Johanna said in my own words, activism is the radical step you take to salvage a bad situation while advocacy is what you do constantly to prevent a bad situation.

It makes me reflect on which one I can classify myself to be good at. I would say activism! Advocacy is something you can’t but do as you carry out everyday librarianship tasks anyway: current awareness services, liaison with the faculty and the clinicals, publishing etc

This brings to mind an NHS interview I went for in 2008 where I was asked what I could do to encourage the Clinicals in the use of the library. I responded that we could have a carnival. The interviewer asked me why and I responded that people had caged librarians in their minds and when people think of Librarians they think of ‘silence’, ‘boredom’ and ‘strait-jacketedness’. This is the right time to break out and make some noise and what better language to use than the language of the people we want to reach out to? I remember he was so intrigued but unfortunately I didn’t get the job because I had no experience whatsoever in NHS librarianship.

I work at the library helpdesk and this involves helping students and staff see the relevance of library materials and Eresources and guiding them through the maze of information on the net by showing them how important it is to get themselves trained to be able to use these effectively and productively. What better advocacy can you have than that?