Other Duties (And Places) as Assigned: How Analog Approaches Are Impeding Progress in Online Librarianship

Just as librarians have intentionally developed and strengthened face-to-face services according to ACRL Standards, so too should we intentionally create and support standards-based online work.

To accomplish this work, we need both dedicated, experienced librarians and progressive organizational structures that embrace the post-traditional work environments needed to fully support online and post-traditional students. The inequities felt by both online librarians and the academic audiences they serve (students and faculty) can be traced back to the gendered nature of librarianship as a whole. We have an opportunity to address this narrative and resulting practices and policies in this moment of social change, but it requires a confrontation of commonly accepted norms in the field (hegemony) and the internal inequities that are showing up in the analog/digital divide within our field.

An intentional focus on equity is vital for truly successful distance programs because if we view distance services as secondary or less optimal to traditional, on-campus services we are automatically relegating distance library users to a secondary status within the library community. And if distance services truly are less optimal, we simply need to redesign them.

Problems Addressed: Equitable work environments Opportunities for upward mobility in the DOL area of the profession Empowering fellow librarians