I have been a librarian for over 25 years (that means I am old). As someone who has been in a leadership position for a few of those years, one of the areas that concerns me are the challenges regarding educating and training the new generation of medical librarians to be ready for the current workforce and the future.
IMHO I believe ALA and many ALA accredited schools have failed us. They have been too slow to adapt to changes within the profession’s landscape. Students are graduating from programs with few skills or knowledge that would be considered applicable for even entry level positions. I have interviewed new graduates for medical librarian positions who have never heard of PubMed, UpToDate, Docline, CINAHL, etc. While these may be niche to the library world, they are some of the largest most heavily used resources in the medical library world. It is like interviewing for a public library position and saying you have never heard of Libby/OverDrive.
Even at entry level jobs you should have baseline knowledge for the professional position. While it is not impossible to get an entry level job without that baseline, it makes it much more difficult to do so. For example, it would be hard for me to get an entry level job as a computer programmer if I don’t have familiarity with any programming languages.
Many hospital libraries don’t have multiple librarians. First, you are lucky if the hospital has a library. If it has a library, and IF it has a medical librarian, there is usually only 1 person who is the medical librarian for that hospital. Hiring somebody and training them if they don’t even have the basics becomes challenging. The departing librarian must train the basics of medical librarianship PLUS the regular job training to the new hire in a matter of a few weeks before the departing librarian leaves. Of course that assumes the hospital allows for position overlap, meaning the new librarian is hired and trained by the departing librarian before they leave. Many places do not do position overlap. They hire after the person has left.
Academic medical libraries serving university and colleges with medical, nursing, and other health profession student typically have more than 1 librarian and the new employee can be trained and learn from other library staff. However, depending on the new hire’s pre-existing knowledge/skills and the job, it can take many months to train them.
The lack of knowledge and skills in health sciences librarianship in many graduates of library programs, makes it difficult to hire new library graduates.
However, as concerned as I am, I do have hope. Programs like WISE (Web-based Information Science Education) which allows students at ALA accredited WISE schools to take courses in special areas and from faculty at other WISE schools who are highly regarded in their area of expertise without the need or worry that credits will transfer. This sort of system makes sense. While there is a need to educate others in medical librarianship, the number of those interested in pursing that specialization is most likely not enough to support a program at SLIS if they only make it available enrolled students. But it still makes those specialized courses, necessary for those unique areas of librarianship available to students.
As a member of The Vision 2048 Task Force of MLA, I also have hope that the concerns and opportunities that we identified regarding educating future librarians will also be addressed by librarians, educators, library associations and accrediting bodies. The task force just published “Welcome to the Future: Challenges and Opportunities Discussed in The Vision 2048 Task Force Open Forums 2021-2023” (The main reason I decided to write this blog post) which identified education, pay, advocacy, as well as other things as important areas for the profession to address as we go forward.
While I still think I am a young 25 yr. old, I am actually closer to retirement than vanity likes me to admit. I care for this profession and hope that we can make adjustments so that when I retire (which is still awhile) the profession thrives and in the future there is a Vision 2063 addressing all new concerns and opportunities.