On the Ground Realities of Librarian Skill Development

In the third episode of this four-part series, our guests tackle the on the ground realities of librarian skill development following the recent white paper from Technology from Sage and Skilltype, Librarian Futures Part III: The Librarian Skills Landscape. Marcy Simons, Director of Hesburgh Libraries Organizational and Personnel Development at the University of Notre Dame, and Tony Zanders, Founder & CEO of Skilltype, dig into how library schools have failed to address the evolving demands of academic librarianship, even before the introduction of artificial intelligence tools. Marcy notes the lack of consistency across library and information science programs, while Tony highlights how Skilltype aims to help library schools understand today’s environment and adjust curriculum quickly and accordingly.

Further, Marcy and David Erlandson, Head of Cataloguing and Metadata Services at Rice University Fondren Library, chat about findings in the report on student success and how their libraries support this initiative. Finally, Tony and Matthew Weldon, Library Patron Consultant at Technology from Sage, reflect on the report’s finding that librarians value building transferable skills rather than those specific to certain products—in the rapidly changing landscape, flexibility allows for resiliency and autonomy in the profession.

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