1. The Challenges of Change: Using Core Competencies in LIS Education Competencies & Education for a Career in Cataloging Interest Group Meeting – Chicago, Illinois – June 23, 2017
Karen Snow, MLS, PhD
Associate Professor & PhD Program Director
School of Information Studies
Dominican University
River Forest, Illinois

2. What is Competency?

3. Competency
Competency/Competence: the quality of being competent; adequacy; possession of required skill, knowledge, qualification, or capacity. (Dictionary.com)
Competency: an ability or skill. (Merriam-Webster)

4. Competency
Prahalad and Hamel (1990 Harvard Business Review) - definition of “competency” focused largely on the resources, skills, and techniques needed by an organization to distinguish it from competitors
Within the library and information sciences (LIS), “competency” refers primarily to characteristics of an individual, not an organization

5. Competency There is no universal definition of competency in LIS
Fisher (2001) – competency is multi-faceted:
Professional
Personal
Educational

6. Competency – Fisher (2001)
Professional competencies are “occupation-related knowledge and skills that make one technically proficient at the tasks that comprise one’s job and are needed for success in a particular work setting”
Personal competencies are “individual traits, attitudes, and behaviors needed for success in almost any venue”
Education competencies are “those skills, traits, and attitudes that result from studying a body of knowledge on a given topic as one learns how to learn”

7. Competency
Fisher (2001) - Competencies will evolve over time as jobs and knowledge adapt to ever-changing information environments.
Some do not believe “behavioral” or “personal” competencies should be part of the definition, possibly because of difficulty learning and measuring these behaviors (Dole, Hurych, and Liebst, 2005).
When Competencies Task Force reviewed job advertisements from , “behavioral” or “personal” competencies were mentioned very frequently.

9. http://www. ala. org/accreditedprograms/sites/ala. org

10. ALA Accreditation Standards - 2015
Standard 1 – Systematic Planning
Standard 2 – Curriculum
Standard 3 – Faculty
Standard 4 – Students
Standard 5 – Administration, Finances, & Resources

11. ALA Accreditation Standards - 2015
Standard 2 – Curriculum
The curriculum is concerned with information resources and the services and technologies to facilitate their management and use. Within this overarching concept, the curriculum of library and information studies encompasses information and knowledge creation, communication, identification, selection, acquisition, organization and description, storage and retrieval, preservation and curation, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, synthesis, dissemination, use and users, and management of human and information resources.

12. The Evolving Curriculum…

14. Competencies in LIS Schools
If competencies documents are kept up-to-date, they can be very helpful to LIS schools.
Lester & Van Fleet (2008) – over half of schools with an ALA-accredited program did not mention specific competency documents in their program presentations.

15. Competencies in LIS Schools
Lester & Van Fleet (2008) – one reason why competencies documents are not consulted by LIS schools is the age of the document – many of the competencies documents are not reviewed according to a regular schedule
LIS school faculty & practitioners should work together to review & revise documents on a regular schedule

16. https://alair.ala.org/handle/11213/7853

17. Core Competencies for Cataloging & Metadata Professional Librarians
Divided into three major competency areas (similar to Fisher (2001))
Knowledge Competencies
Skill & Ability Competencies
Behavioral Competencies

18. Dominican’s MLIS
LIS703 – Organization of Knowledge (required for all MLIS students)
LIS730 – Cataloging & Classification
LIS731 – Subject Analysis
LIS882 – Metadata for Digital Resources
Balance of theory and practice!

19. Dominican’s MLIS - Additions
1.5 credit courses:
LIS – Tech Tools for Technical Services
LIS – XSLT for Information Professionals
Hoping to add more 1.5 courses on trending or niche topics

20. Dominican’s MLIS - Encouragements
LIS799 – Practicum
Courses covering leadership, assessment, project management, advocacy (a student cannot obtain all competencies in one course!)

21. Dominican’s MLIS
academic year – curriculum review. Task Force:
Increased number of required courses from 4 to 6
Karen Brown
Karen Snow

23. Dominican’s MLIS
Core Values, Ethics, and Issues in the Information Professions
Facilitating User Learning & Information Needs
Organization of Knowledge
Leadership, Marketing, and Strategic Communication
Technologies for the Information Professions
Evidence-Based Planning and Decision-Making

24. Conclusion
Educator-Practitioner partnerships work – they produce fruitful dialogue and documents that are helpful to LIS schools, practitioners, and administrators.

25. Conclusion
Competencies documents are very helpful for LIS schools as long as they are kept up-to-date and LIS faculty are aware of them (post new and revised documents on JESSE!). LIS faculty can use them to make better and more informed curriculum decisions.

26. Works Cited
Dole, W.V., Hurych, J.M., & Liebst, A. (2005, Summer). Assessment: A core competency for library leaders. Library Administration & Management 19(3),
Fisher, W. (2001). Core competencies for the acquisitions librarian. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 25(2),
Lester, J. & Van Fleet, C. (2008, Winter). Use of professional competencies and standards documents for curriculum planning in schools of library and information studies education. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 49(1),
Prahalad, C.K. & Hamel, G. (1990, May/June). The core competencies of the corporation. Harvard Business Review 68(3),

27. Thank you! Questions?