Information Technology and the De-skilling of Librarians
by Roma Harris

Although I understand that feminist issues remain in the workplace, I am not sure that I buy that because some routine tasks are being automated that women's work is necessarily under attack or underappreciated.  Also, at least in education I do not see any evidence to suggest that men in IT positions garner more respect than the women in teaching, paraprofessional, or other support positions--even though we do revere our tech guy.  Perhaps there is that much difference between the cultures of elementary schools and libraries, or maybe the 1986 study quoted to support this claim of inequality is just that out of date.  I would be interested to learn about current perceptions of various library positions.  I also don't appreciate that the article consistently calls clerical, secretary-style work "women's work" while ignoring the contributions that women could make to the new style of library work with its focus on teaching and guidance.
 
Another area where the article seems to date itself is in some of its complaints about the deprofessionalization of cataloging.  Because digital cataloging systems have been the norm for most or all of my conscious library-using life, concerns about the shift from manual to digital catalogs seems distant...and old news. The library survived that change and will weather others.  To me the moral of the story is that libraries and librarians must be ever-transitioning to keep up with technology and user demands.  Not to mention that Sunny's presentation last week demonstrated that with the plethora of sources available, patrons need explicit direction from a trained professional now more than ever. 

The article did resonate with me when it said that "[s]tandardization and routinization make professional activities more comprehensible to outsiders, and consequently subject to their evaluation and control" (p. 2).  It sounds as if libraries encounter the same struggle between accountability and self-determination that is currently facing public education.