Mary Anne Kennan, Fletcher Cole, Patricia Willard

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Changes in the workplace transformation of the
information professional?

• Mary Anne Kennan, Fletcher Cole, Patricia Willard
  Concepción S. Wilson

School of Information Systems, Technology
Management, University of New South
Wales Sydney, Australia
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• The authors wish to acknowledge the invaluable
  help of Ms Margaret Lo in data collection and
  manipulation
• This research was supported by the John Metcalfe
  Memorial Fund

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Why?

• Why look at jobs? Substantial changes in the LIS
  field reflecting changes in IT, society and IR
• Practitioners and job seekers career pathways
• Educators relevance of courses taught, success
  of graduates in obtaining employment
• Employers identify developments, benchmark
• Why use job ads?
• Available, electronic, but drawbacks
• Provide graduates, school leavers, world
  opportunity to examine the roles, working
  conditions, salaries etc.

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Study 1 Comparison of LIS job market in
Australia and the USA

• Australian data 183 job ads from the SMH and
  the Australian and their associated web sites
• USA data - 212 ads Drexel job board
• Content analysis (Simstat/Wordstat) utilising a
  categorization dictionary
• Frequency counts, correlation and co-occurrence
  analysis using cluster analysis and multi
  dimensional scaling (MDS)

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Discussion

• Most obvious difference between Australia and the
  USA is the basic qualification
• Supports previous studies. In both countries
  importance given to
• Interpersonal skills and behavioural
  characteristics
• Dynamic, fast-paced, changing environment
• Technical computer skills not often asked for
• Except for web design and maintenance seen as
  core in USA but not Australia
• USA and Australia overall picture similar, but
  with slightly different emphases.

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Study 2 Australian LIS job market 1974-2004

• Similar method to Australian-USA study
• SMH, 4 week period Aug/Sept 1974, 1984, 1994,
  2004
• Small data set (microfilm)
• Similar set of task categories
• Changes over time simple to complex

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1974-2004
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LIS as a profession

• Professional status often linked to, and
  distinguished by, specialist knowledge and skills
  rather than generic ones
• e.g. ABS Classification of Occupations NSW Pay
  Equity Judgement
• Profession defined by jurisdiction (Abbott)
• accepted body of knowledge over which the
  profession claims unrivalled expertise
• External forces have led to blurring of
  boundaries between LIS-related occupations and
  other professions
• Profession as an on-going project (Larson,
  Macdonald)
• claiming, maintaining and re-claiming
  jurisdiction
• Profession defined by qualifications required
• to demonstrate mastery of jurisdictional
  knowledge
• as basis for collective control of practitioners
  (social closure)
• to provide assurance of competence for clients /
  employers

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Further reflections

• Changes in qualification requirements
• trend since 1974 to down-play recognised
  qualifications suggests de-professionalisation
• The drift to the generic
• trend since 1974 towards greater emphasis on
  stating the need for generic knowledge at the
  expense of the special knowledge that
  distinguishes LIS from other fields
• Australia vs the USA
• American employers currently seem to rank
  jurisdictional knowledge higher than their
  Australian counterparts

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Professional qualifications needed?
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Thank you. Questions or comments?
maryanne.kennan_at_unsw.edu.au University of New
South Wales School of Information Systems,
Technology and Management, Sydney, NSW 2052,
Australia
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Appendices
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Clusters MDS map of USA data,dimension 1 2
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Clusters and MDS map of Australian data
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Australia/USA Findings type of library
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The Australian LIS job market Employers over time