At its April 13 meeting, the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Board of Directors approved a revised Statement of Professional Competencies. This new document continues SLA’s 20-year history of leadership in articulating the evolving competencies of librarians and other information professionals.
You can see it at , and there’s a blog post by Carolyn Sosnowski, a member of the task force that drafted the document, at . (Full disclosure: I chaired the task force.)
But why is this important to embedded librarians? One of the important innovations in this new document is the separation of competencies into “core” and “enabling”. “Core” competencies are those that are unique to our profession. The hope is that having this list can help with one of the challenges that embedded librarians face when starting new engagements: how to articulate what they do to others. The “enabling” competencies are the ones that are not unique to librarians, but are nonetheless vital to successful performance. Embedded librarians may need these more than any other librarians, because they have so much contact with so many diverse members of their communities and organizations.
So, I encourage you to take a look at the new competencies, try them on, and see how they fit. If you have comments, I’d love to hear from you.
The Embedded Librarians Café
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