The profession's biggest problem: diversity

LIZ Jolly, Chief Librarian at the British Library since September 2018, will give a keynote speech at the CILIP conference in July. In this Q&A she discusses her role and the state of the profession. Liz has more than 20 years’ experience in a variety of institutions in the university sector, most recently as Director of Student and Library Services at Teesside University. An Honorary Professor at Teesside, Liz is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow both of CILIP and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). She was Chair of Sconul (the UK university library directors’ group) from 2014-16, and Chair of the Northern Collaboration, a group of 27 higher education libraries in the North of England, from 2016-18. Liz is a member of the editorial board of the New Review of Academic Librarianship.

What are the roles and functions of the Chief Librarian and how do you think the role might be changing as a result of digital technology?
The Chief Librarian is responsible for teams delivering core activities such as collection development; services for researchers, learners, businesses and entrepreneurs; research strategy and digital scholarship; our extensive cultural programme of exhibitions and events, and the library’s online presence. Digital technology brings opportunities in terms of access to collections, both remotely and physically, in terms of how we use our spaces and in how we enable and support our users. There are challenges around licencing and access to content, around how our Reading Rooms reflect current research and learning practice, and how open we are as an organisation to our user community – all of which we will need to address on an ongoing basis.

How does the Chief Librarian role differ from the CEO?
The Chief Executive Officer is responsible to the BL Board for the overall running of the library and for meeting its objectives as laid out in our management agreement. The Chief Librarian is one of two other Chief Officers (the other being the Chief Operating Officer) with responsibility for the areas I outlined above. All three of us work closely together, along with a senior leadership team that represents all the key areas of library activity.

Do the chief officers’ different professional backgrounds mean you have different values, and how you manage differences?
Staff at the British Library may be a ­multi-professional team but we have a strong sense of shared values. The library’s values – as set out in our Living Knowledge vision to 2023 – include a commitment to put users at the heart of everything we do, to innovate and adapt, to treat everyone with respect and embrace equality, fairness and diversity, to act with openness and honesty, and to collaborate with others to do more than we could by ourselves. These Living Knowledge values were one of the elements that attracted me to the organisation. Any differences of opinion we may have we discuss in as open and direct a manner as possible.

What is the value of being part of a professional body in your role and in librarianship in general?
I certainly wouldn’t be in my current role without the learning and leadership opportunities that CILIP has given me. I have been a CILIP member throughout my ­career and have benefited from the resources available from the website, from CILIP events and especially through membership of CILIP special interest groups (SIGs). Involvement with SIGS has given me the opportunity to meet with and learn from colleagues from my sector and the broader profession and to develop leadership skills in a safe and supportive space. Libraries are about enabling and supporting learning in its widest sense. So I would say that as librarians we need to continue to learn and develop as effective and reflective practitioners, throughout our careers, to ensure we can fulfil our role successfully. Being a member of a professional body is one way to do this. It means that we are committing to professional standards and a code of ethics, and are showing others that we believe in them fully and we are continuing to learn. The CILIP registration process is further demonstration that we are continually learning and reflecting on our practice in a culture of continuous change.

Will you be encouraging British Library employees towards joining CILIP?
Yes, for those in librarianship roles. We work in a multi-professional team and value the different perspectives that contribute to the operation and development of the library. Colleagues are from many backgrounds including curation, learning, research, marketing, administration and I strongly encourage staff to become members of, and gain professional registration with, whichever body is right for their professional background.

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CILIP hopes to attract data ­scientists, information and knowledge management ­professionals. Do you think the boundaries of librarianship have shifted ­significantly in these directions?
I think there is at last widespread ­acknowledgement that there’s a broader professional grouping around information and data, and that boundaries of this broader profession are changing and will continue to change. Librarianship is just one part of this broader grouping of professional, all of whom have a contribution to make, and whose status should be equal, regardless of their background or specialism.

Do you think there is enough collaboration between librarians and other professions?
Librarians are natural collaborators, and there is plenty of evidence of librarians collaborating and of developing relationships across professional boundaries in several sectors. However, I think there is a lot more we can do. In the past we have perhaps not thought broadly enough about challenges facing us and how different professions could support us in achieving our aims (the issue of cost of content in higher education and our initial failure to involve finance directors is an example). Many of us now work in multi-professional teams and collaboration has to be a good way forward, whether this is an organisational imperative or a professional initiative This does not mean “watering down” the profession but instead being clear and confident about what we, as librarians, can bring to the table. The key collaboration, however, has to be with our communities.

How healthy do you think the profession is now and what changes would you like to see?
I would say that in some ways the profession is more healthy than it has been in some time. I see a generation of really committed activists coming through. I think the registration process is a lot more accessible to candidates and more understandable to employers. In an era of “fake news” librarians and libraries are seen as trusted providers and intermediaries. However, after a decade of financial retrenchment the impact of the closure of public libraries, and of changes to funding in higher education, on the profession and on wider society cannot be ignored. The biggest issue within the profession itself is the lack of diversity. Most obviously, the findings of the ARA/CILIP Workforce Mapping study showed that our profession is a workforce that is 97 per cent white, compared to a UK population that is 88 per cent white, and predominantly female (79 per cent), except in senior management roles. We have to take ownership of the issue, to learn, and most importantly to take collective action. Libraries and librarians are not neutral but are part of wider society, and part of the debate. Lack of diversity in our profession will have impacted on our collections (what they represent, what we acquire and what we preserve); on our spaces and how accessible they are and are perceived to be; on what skills are considered as key to information and digital literacies, as well as on our staff and our communities. These are all areas that need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Does technology pose a threat to the profession?
R. David Lankes talks about the mission of librarians (rather than libraries) as ­“facilitating knowledge production in our communities”. The core purpose of libraries is enduring, but how we deliver our services is constantly evolving to enable us to meet the changing needs of those communities. Technology can be an opportunity but in an era of big data, “fake news” and ­artificial intelligence it can seem like a threat. We as librarians have a clear role in ­enabling people to navigate through our digital world, and we need to do this working with one another as continuously developing professionals and – crucially – in collaboration with the communities we serve. IP