Special librarianship (& special libraries & special librarians)
Librarianship within a specific domain, for example arts, business, chemistry, law or medicine.
Professionals working in a specific domain may have different education varying from pure education in a discipline to a general education in Library and Information Science (LIS). They may be termed, for example, librarians, research librarians, special librarians, documentalists or information specialists.
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Characteristics |
General libraries |
Special Libraries |
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Librarian |
(i) Professionally trained, active in attitude, conversant with library tools, need not be subject specialist, not necessarily innovative, assists users but does not take their burden
(ii) Acts as an educator
(iii) A gatekeeper, often a protector of resources |
(i) Professionally trained, subject specialist, aggressive, innovative and pro-active in attitude, fully conversant with the availability of library tools, sound in the techniques of information-handling, works under tremendous time pressure and himself takes the burden of users. He acts as
(ii) Knowledge manager
(iii) Host, generous sharer of resources
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Excerpt of table from Singh & Kumar (2005, p. 16) |
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The ideal is not just a combination of a degree in a subject with a degree in
LIS. Neither in chemistry nor in general librarianship, for example, is
one taught chemical databases, chemical terminology, scientific communication
within chemistry and so on. Such knowledge is mandatory in special librarianship. The ideal is that
special courses in different domains being developed and that the insight from
such developments are fed back to the general theory of LIS. (Cf.,
Hjørland, 2002).
In American library history have "special librarians" formed a part of the library profession, while the development has been somewhat different in Europe, where the documentalists were more independent.
Literature:
American Association of Law Libraries - Publications
http://www.aallnet.org/products/
Hjørland, B. (2002). Domain analysis in information science. Eleven approaches - traditional as well as innovative. Journal of Documentation, 58(4), 422-462. http://web.archive.org/web/20040721022850/http://www.db.dk/bh/publikationer/Filer/JDOC_2002_Eleven_approaches.pdf
Scammell, A. (Ed.). (1997). Handbook of Special Librarianship and Information Work. London, Aslib.
Singh, S. P. & Kumar, K. (2005). Special libraries in the electronic environment. New Delhi: Bookwell.
Williams, R. V. (1998). The Documentation and Special Libraries Movement in the United States, 1910-1960. IN: Hahn, T. B. & Buckland, M. (eds.): Historical Studies in Information Science. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc. (Pp. 173-180).
Journals:
E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special
Librarianship (an Open Access journal on the Internet):
http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/
INSPELL. International Journal of Special Libraries. Official Organ of the IFLA Division of Special Libraries http://www.ifla.org/VII/d2/inspel/intro.htm
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA)
http://www.jamia.org/
Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA)
http://www.mlanet.org/publications/jmla/index.html
Special Libraries 1910-1996. Freely available on pdf: http://www.sla.org/content/shop/speclibs.cfm#1910
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Special Libraries Association: http://www.sla.org/index.cfm
See also: Professional aspects of LIS;
Subject specialist
Birger Hjørland
Last updated: 24-01-2007