Abstract
The future will hold challenges for everyone working in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector. The application of technologies, many of which are yet to be discovered, will change work patterns and the type of professional employees required. Organisations that support more than one activity in the sector will seek to combine them and have staff who are multi-skilled. This may result in a devaluation of professional qualifications in favour of generalist qualifications supplemented by professional development. Hiring staff with non-traditional qualifications has always occurred and will increase. In future, staff will move more easily across the sector without necessarily having formal qualifications related to their new duties. There will be greater emphasis on structured career-long professional development that is more multidisciplinary than may be currently offered. There is a need to beginning re-imagining what distinguishes a curator, librarian, archivist or other GLAM professional. Is it really necessary to have specialist qualifications to work effectively in the sector? If so, what are those qualifications and how are they best obtained?
Introduction
My doctor displays an impressive array of diplomas and certificates in her office. They occupy most of a wall and seemingly provide her patients with instant confirmation of her qualification and ability to treat them. Of late she has begun including framed certificates testifying that she has undertaken professional extension courses. So why does she display her credentials? Is it a legal requirement, is it just a convenient place to keep them, or is it to convince patients that she is competent? Most patients do not evaluate the quality of her qualifications but are impressed by the number and variety. As far as they are concerned, she is a doctor who is allowed to practise, so she must be qualified and competent. Ultimately, however, their judgement of her ability to satisfy their medical needs will be based on a range of factors and almost certainly will not include consideration of the quality of her formal qualifications. They will probably only be considered if they need to sue for malpractice. Strangely, I never ask a plumber or electrician about their formal qualifications. I’m usually just delighted that they have deigned to turn up and naively assume they are qualified and insured. My critique of their competence is the quality of the work they undertake for me or others. Until I made enquiries, I was unaware of the compulsory extension courses undertaken in some trades.
So what about members of the GLAM sector – galleries, libraries, archives and museums? Is it really necessary for workers in these industries to have specialist qualifications? If so, what are those qualifications? Are the professional qualifications currently provided by education institutions appropriate and sufficient for the future? Do all library, information and cultural services workers need the same type of qualifications and training? Should evidence of professional development be mandatory for continuing recognition as a professional? These questions exercised my thoughts many times over the more than 40 years that I have spent in the sector.
There are probably no definitive answers to these questions. The GLAM world is extremely diverse and will continue to evolve. It is an environment that ranges from very large to very small organisations. It encompasses libraries, archives, galleries, museums, keeping places and other cultural activities involved in the acquisition, curation and preservation, and dissemination of knowledge resources. The range of skills and knowledge utilised in the sector is enormous.
My life in the GLAM sector
Over the past 40 plus years, I have been a school teacher, archivist, university librarian and a museum manager. I have a motley collection of degrees and diplomas, attended an extensive but unchronicled number of developmental activities, and acquired a varied experience that comes with managing other people and processes. No single qualification, staff development activity or experience particularly equipped me to do any of my jobs. It was the amalgam of them and the ability to extrapolate learning in one environment to situations in another that was invaluable and continues to pay dividends.
My Higher School Certificate results were good but hardly outstanding, although they did earn me a scholarship to study economics at the University of Sydney. It was a time when the economics course was being changed radically and the new curriculum did not appeal to me. The alternative was to take up a teacher trainee scholarship. My preference was to go to the University of New England where there was a course for teachers specialising in small rural schools. Family commitments precluded that option so I enrolled at the newly established Macquarie University. Unlike the older universities, Macquarie offered a curriculum that encouraged cross-disciplinary study and research. The teacher education course promised greater in-school practical experiences than courses at other universities. The education courses, however, concentrated on the theory of learning rather than their application to effective teaching.
At the end of four years, I graduated and was posted to a one teacher school in the Hunter Valley hinterland. Very little of the knowledge acquired at Macquarie prepared me to simultaneously teach 11 pupils ranging from kindergarten to year 6. Salvation came from the detailed programmes left by the previous teacher who had attended teacher’s college for a year in the 1930s. Despite my lack of practical teaching ability, my starting salary as a university graduate was almost equal to that of my predecessor who had 40 years experience! Two years later, I transferred to a larger school and soon after left teaching. My ability to apply the theory of my university education had improved in that time. Nonetheless, I always felt disadvantaged by the gaps in my practical knowledge that I believed colleagues who went to teachers’ college possessed. The improvement in my skills came in part from experience, and in part from the professional development activities provided by the NSW Department of Education and the Teachers’ Federation.
Like many of my generation, I bade farewell to a culturally deprived Australia and went to London. A half day stint at a school in Brixton convinced me that I really wasn’t meant to teach. While doing genealogical research in Scotland, I was offered a job looking after an archives collection in Aberdeen. Although the job interested me, the remuneration was based on my lack of qualifications. My colonial pride and the open road lured me away and I eventually returned to Australia. Retraining via a Diploma in Archives Administration enabled me to enter a new career. The diploma was the formal ticket into the archives profession. Once again, a university qualification provided a theoretical basis but only minimal practical skill and knowledge. That deficiency was addressed over time by professional development and by interaction with colleagues through the Australian Society of Archivists.
My next career change was an overnight translation from archivist to executive officer of the University of Wollongong library. The move was unexpected and one for which I was unqualified and ill prepared. There was no time or opportunity to gain formal qualifications, but an intense reading programme and a series of short management and other courses enabled me to stay ahead of my critics on the staff and within the library sector. When I became university librarian four years later, senior members of the library profession protested my appointment. Their concern was not whether I was competent, but that I did not have a formal library qualification. My opinion of professional qualifications was coloured by that encounter and my previous experience in teaching and archives. For a long time, my stance was that formal qualifications might be a necessary criteria for appointment to a position, but an appropriate mix of general education, experience, ongoing professional development, aptitude and attitude was more important.
There were periods during my early years as a manager when frustration drove me to say ‘a trained monkey could do that job!’ At other times, I was left speechless by the inability of a qualified librarian to undertake routine professional tasks with any degree of competency. Frequently, however, I was astounded by the capacity of staff to transfer knowledge and skills gained in a non-library environment to their work. As organisational change became more pervasively essential, acceptance of innovation was often resisted by professionally qualified staff while being welcomed and often initiated by other staff.
The need for qualifications?
The need for academic qualifications, particularly specialist professional degrees, was often challenged by me and some of my colleagues. These dark and unconventional thoughts usually coincided with a crisis of some sort. Trigger points were the lack of sufficient staff with professional qualifications, individuals with seemingly impressive academic qualifications who lacked the requisite practical skills, staff who were qualified but resisted further skills development, and the library’s need for new skill sets as digital technologies became more pervasive.
It was, and often remains, difficult to attract staff to regional or disadvantaged areas who have the appropriate amalgam of professional qualifications, experience and aptitude. Sometimes, the disadvantage relates to the need to compete with better resourced local institutions for quality staff. Often institutions who want to be innovative and provide services that are unconventional, or simply stretch traditional thinking, find it impossible to attract suitable formally qualified staff. What choices are left open to them? Surrender to convention? Make do with the staff resources available? Develop inhouse training programmes? Lobby for changes in education and training curricula? Flaunt industry opinion and disregard the need for professional qualifications when appointing or promoting staff?
There is, of course, no single approach that suits all institutions at all times. At the University of Wollongong, we changed position descriptions to appoint staff who had library technician qualifications to professional level positions. This caused consternation among professional staff who foresaw the opening of floodgates that would sweep away civilisation and all that was good and true in the world. That dire prophesy did not come to pass. The staff appointed in this way were exceptions who possessed high levels of ability and experience. They also undertook to acquire further relevant, although not always library, qualifications. The appointments did, however, produce a sense of precedence that required careful handling.
For many years, university libraries had a staff category called ‘library assistant’ that was neither paraprofessional nor professional. Appointment to this category required a university degree but no professional qualifications. On-the-job training was provided but career progression and duties were limited irrespective of experience or competency. Some staff who had been at this level for some years sought promotion to professional positions. They were joined by other staff who held general assistant positions within the library and had academic qualifications. At the University of Sydney, there were staff with doctorates employed as book shelvers. If a precedent hadn’t been set, there would have been no problem. No professional qualifications and no appointment to a professional position.
The issue intensified, however, at times when there were restrictions on hiring staff not already employed by the university. Leaving professional positions vacant wasn’t always an option. A position left unfilled for too long was at risk of becoming a budget saving for the University. It also compromised the services provided by the library. The response to the situation had to be pragmatic while still supporting the desirability of professional qualifications for appropriate positions.
The response lay in the way in which position or job descriptions were phrased, especially the requisite qualifications and experience. Throughout Australia, libraries stopped mandating membership of professional organisations as an essential requirement for appointments. This was an initiative of institutional personnel offices prompted by changes in equal opportunity legislation. The change had a deleterious long-term effect on the membership levels of Australian GLAM sector associations. The unintended effect was to subtly devalue at least membership of professional organisations, if not professional qualifications.
Challenges for GLAM institutions
Another challenge for professional qualifications in cultural institutions is budget pressure. It has been a common practice over decades for parent organisations to contain expenditure on library, information and cultural services within their portfolios. Strategies include expecting annual efficiency dividends, imposing random funding reductions or simply not adjusting funding allocations from year to year. Managers have often reacted by changing service levels and offerings, or by reducing the employment of more expensive professionally qualified staff. In many libraries, there has been an increase in the employment of staff with library technician qualifications. Other libraries have reduced the number of unqualified staff and required qualified staff to undertake a wider range of duties. The adoption of digital and communication technologies by libraries, information and cultural services has had a continuing effect on the type of staff employed. New skills have been required, including those associated with web design and maintenance, metadata and digital curation, use of social media and training of users unfamiliar with the technologies.
Some existing staff members are able to adapt to new skill and knowledge requirements. They are motivated enough to acquire these attributes through personal education activities. Others take advantage of short staff development courses offered by their employers or undertake formal study. Often, the organisation has no alternative but to hire new staff with the required skills. The new recruits often do not identify, at least in the initial stage, with the values of the library, information or cultural service. It is a job, not necessarily a long term commitment to the industry, and their qualifications may be professional but are somewhat at odds with those of their colleagues.
The many challenges faced by GLAM institutions will continue to metamorphose with the evolution of technology, society expectations and operating environments. As services evolve to meet new demands from users, there will be a commensurate need for staff with new skills. This is not a new phenomenon, but there has been an increasingly more rapid, and sometimes more capricious, change over the past two decades. Skills such as cataloguing have adapted to encompass metadata. The use of the web and social media as adjuncts to collection promotion is no longer trendsetting. The curation of digital data is an activity undertaken by all but a minority of collecting organisations. Not surprisingly, there has been a need to revive some traditional skills in order to ensure the preservation of non-digital collection items. Staff with high-quality skills in activities such as paper conservation, bookbinding and textile repair are already in demand, but the supply is low.
So what are the implications for the GLAM sector and the type of staff employed? No one can predict with any certainty, despite the claims of some individuals in the consulting industry. There is, however, an extremely high probability that institutions involved in the provision of information and collecting services will continue to live in a Jekyll and Hyde world. It will be an environment in which change will occur at varying and sometimes unpredictable rates influenced by changes in technology, government policy shifts and a host of other factors.
Unless there is major change in our society, information and collecting institutions will continue to be lauded with host of platitudes including ‘public good’ and ‘essential to the well-being of the nation’s community’. At the same time, governments will continue to seek ways to reduce their funding contributions, and expect individuals and business to donate towards the operation of the same cultural institutions that politicians at all levels delight in attending for any activity that will give them personal publicity. There is nothing evil about philanthropy, but it does require different skills, aptitudes and personalities to promote successful giving. Will staff with the appropriate skills be considered GLAM professionals, or will they remain outsiders?
It is also likely that the future will witness more amalgamations of information and cultural services institutions. Local governments and universities often bring libraries, archives, art galleries and museums together in the same management portfolio. It is not uncommon for the more sophisticated of these conglomerations to share physical premises and administrative services, and to allow staff members to move between the constituent units. So, an individual trained in one discipline may take up duties in another without having to gain formal qualifications. Their interest and aptitude are the criteria for appointment, more than their qualifications. A mix of educational activities including on-the-job training, attendance at conferences or short courses, webinars and reading enables the transferees to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for their new duties. The rate at which they become proficient varies, but voluntary transferees usually have rapid acquisition.
Educators and employers
How can educational institutions prepare students for this brave new world where a broad range of skills and knowledge will be necessary, along with an ability to update them continually? Staff at all levels and in all areas of the GLAM sector will be affected. Part of the response involves ensuring that curricula emphasise the ability to think, reason and discover knowledge, rather than the intense acquisition of specific skills. In a pre-computer age, it was common for library diploma students to be required to identify the reference book from which a page had been torn. Students of cataloguing lost marks for the inappropriate location of punctuation marks. The efficacy of these and similar practices as preparation for the practice of librarianship was doubtful at the time. Presumably, the intent was to train student memories and instil an appreciation of the need for abiding by set rules.
Over time, educators have recognised that students benefit more from being able to find information, rather than learning by rote a fixed set of sources. Similarly, an exhaustive knowledge of the more arcane rules of cataloguing has yielded to understanding the function and purpose of cataloguing and metadata. There are similar examples to be drawn from archives, museum and other education courses. The dilemma for educators is that their students are so varied. Some are employed already and may have considerable work experience and knowledge. Others are retraining and may bring with them extensive transferable skills. Some come straight from school or from a period of unemployment. On graduation, students move into a very diverse employment environment. Students from the same cohort may find themselves in a research institution, a public library, a local museum or a large gallery.
It is not uncommon for employers to bemoan the lack of skills or knowledge possessed by recent graduates. Yet, gather together the complainants and they will either be unable to express their needs, or will express them in detail but with a total focus on their often idiosyncratic workplace. Fortunately, awareness of the need for continuing education has increased over recent decades. Both employers and individuals generally accept that staff development is an essential part of employment. Relatively few employers, however, have implemented and maintained structured and consistent staff development programmes. Despite employer rhetoric about the benefits of staff development and its inclusion in performance evaluation schemes, it is frequently an early victim when budget restrictions occur. Access to development opportunities becomes competitive and often a reward for good performance rather than need. Employers increasingly expect a co-contribution from staff attending external staff development activities. Individuals unable to contribute financially tend to forgo the opportunity to participate.
Individuals have a responsibility to improve their skills and knowledge, but employers have to be realistic about the extent to which they are able to participate. The development of skills and knowledge contributes to an individual’s employability with current and future employers. Regrettably, some staff continue to believe that longevity in a job qualifies them for promotion or appointment to another position irrespective of the outdatedness of their qualifications.
Ongoing career commitment
To return to the questions posed at the start of this article: Is it really necessary for workers in the GLAM sector to have specialist qualifications? If so, what are those qualifications? The answer to the first question is yes, no and maybe. If individuals in these sectors want to be recognised as professionals and receive appropriate compensation, then there is a need for specialist qualifications that set them apart. Technical training qualifications alone are not enough: they must be accompanied by a sound broad education, continuing professional development and membership of strong professional associations.
Do all professional GLAM sector workers need the same type of qualifications and training? The short, and obvious, answer is no. There is extreme diversity both within and across the GLAM sector institutions. Whilst there may not be a single qualification that suits all workers in the sector, there are underpinning theoretical concepts that could form part of a common curriculum. This central core should be supplemented by specialist skill or knowledge units relevant to individual workplaces and available as part of formal qualifications and professional development. Sector-related curricula will be enhanced by access to units such as management, information technology or marketing.
Are the professional qualifications currently provided by education institutions appropriate and sufficient for the future? Yes, sort of. Education providers have been forced to react to market forces when creating their curriculum. They also need to comply with the academic quality requirements of their institutions. Degrees and diplomas offered at university level are subjected to rigorous scrutiny to ensure that their content and standards are commensurate with those of qualifications at the same level offered by other parts of the institution.
The outcome has often been omnibus qualifications trying to satisfy every interest group, but leaving a sense of incompleteness for some graduates and employers. Professional associations in some areas of the GLAM sector accredit courses offered by educational institutions, which assists in maintaining a workable balance between institutional and workplace/professional requirements. Regular audit and accreditation reviews are essential to maintaining this balance and facilitate the job suitability of graduates.
No matter how rigorous the curriculum or how closely it claims to meet workplace needs, no qualification is more than a basis for learning. Workplace experience, short specialist courses, reading, interaction with colleagues and other professional development remain essential adjuncts. The process should be an ongoing career commitment. Many employers already have formal, funded programmes that assist their staff members to maintain and extend their professional knowledge. Others merely pay lip service and transfer the onus to individual staff. Professional associations also have a role. The Australian Library and Information Association has a voluntary professional development scheme for its members of whom about 40% participate. By 2020, participation will be mandatory if members are to retain their professional accreditation.
This needs to be strengthened by employers recognising not just formal qualifications, but actively supporting the professional development schemes and recognition structures provided by GLAM sector societies. Many senior managers throughout the GLAM sector have no formal qualifications relevant to their institutional purpose. Their suitability for appointment is based on other qualifications or experience. In most instances, this is beneficial to the sector as it brings in different skills, attitudes and abilities. Their continuing success, however, depends on their personal professional development, which includes recognising and valuing the professional skills of their staff.
Conclusion
At several times in my career as a senior manager, I questioned the efficacy and need for staff to hold specialised library or archive qualifications. There were times when I appointed a person to a professional position who had a general degree and a combination of extensive relevant workplace experience, as well as the right blend of attitude and aptitude. These were exceptions and the appointees proved successful because they undertook further opportunities to improve their professional skills and knowledge.
Whilst a broad range of skills and knowledge is beneficial in any workplace, so too is specific professional knowledge. If the GLAM sector is to maintain and strengthen its status as more than ‘that artsy lot’, there is a need to ensure that staff in the sector are professionally qualified and trained, and that professional development is accepted as an essential part of employment. It is also imperative that the sector not become precious about its distinctiveness, but recognises that a balance of skills and knowledge is required to ensure the continued effectiveness and health of the sector.
There are considerable challenges ahead for professional organisations and the way in which they recognise qualifications. A qualified librarian who does IT training can be recognised as an IT professional, but an IT professional who does extensive library-related professional development will find it hard to be recognised by the Australian Library and Information Association as a professional member. To stay relevant, and maintain members, professional societies will need to reconsider the qualifications that identify a professional member.
So, do I really need specialist qualifications to work as a professional in a gallery, library, archives or museum? Yes, but in the future, a broader definition will apply to the requisite qualifications. That definition must include knowledge of the underlying principles, concepts and theory of the GLAM sector. Failure to ensure this professional content will be detrimental to the future of GLAM institutions and staff.
Notes on contributor
John Neville Shipp was the president of the Australian Library and Information Association in 1998 and in 2015 and 2016. He was the president of the Council of Australian University Librarians from 1992 to 1996. John trained as a school teacher and as an archivist. Despite the lack of library qualifications, he was appointed as University librarian at the University of Wollongong in 1986. Prior to his retirement in 2011, John headed the University of Sydney Library.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.