By Labibah Zain 1 (LIS Department of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia)

Transcription

1 Empowering Future Librarians through Interpersonal Skills (A Case of the Curriculum of the Master Program of LIS Department at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia) ABSTRACT By Labibah Zain 1 (LIS Department of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia) The low rated image to say such things as the low salary paid to the librarians, the fact that people still underestimate librarians as unwell-educated and unpleasant persons, the unavailability of grants for library programs, and so on of librarians in Indonesia seems to be the root of many librarianship problems. Therefore, it is important to deal with this matter in order to get at a higher level of librarian development in Indonesia. There are at least two factors that build the image of librarian; external factors and internal ones. The external factors responsible for the poor image of librarians include the lack of support by the government and parent institution and the complicated policies for the career; while the internal factors have something to do with librarians personality. This paper believes that librarians personality is the keyword for building librarians image and for solving some librarianship problems. Nice personality will make users comfortable when accessing information in the libraries and will, to some extent, make them satisfied. These satisfied users will in turn be potential for making free publicity, which is crucial for building the image of librarians. Librarians with good mastery of public speaking skill will also be another benefit. With their ability to make attractive proposal presentations, they may have more chances to get library grants. Librarians with good mastery of writing skill will also be helpful for building the image of librarian as they can advocate their profession by writing articles for newspapers, journals, and blogs to get the people s attention worldwide. In short, to build their image, librarians need to master all these skills, and therefore courses on interpersonal skills must be included in the Curriculum of Library and Information Studies (LIS). In library context, interpersonal skill is defined as the ability to help librarians move toward their goal by dealing efficiently and effectively with people for an effective and pleasant work environment. In other words, interpersonal skills are a way of communicating with people. These skills include communication skills, effective learning, problem solving sikll and capacity. As one of the institutions responsible for preparing future librarians, LIS department needs to integrate interpersonal skills into its curriculum. The Master Program of 1 Labibah Zain earned her MLIS degree from McGill University Canada. She has been LIS lecture at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta whose focus on Library Management. She published some short stories, edited some books and become a founder of Indonesian Weblog Community; blogfam.com. She has been presenting her paper on librarianship issues in various places of Indonesia and the United States of America. Labibah can be reached through her labibah@gmail.com

2 LIS department at UIN Sunan Kalijaga has included Social Skills on Librarianship as one of the courses in the curriculum since This paper will also explore the content of the course as a lesson learned. Keywords: Social skills, Interpersonal Skills, Library information studies curriculum, Librarian s empowerment I. INTRODUCTION Library education must take into account the environment in which information professionals operate. To a great extent, these two fields are indeed inseparable. In Indonesia, librarian is still considered a low rated profession. Here are some of the attributes of librarians: the book keepers, the punished staff ( Suara Merdeka, 2011), the unfriendly man/woman, the out of dated person, the unwell paid staff and so on. It is true that not all Indonesian librarians suffer these labels but most people in the society still think that librarians are unpleasant people who work at an unpleasant place. These impressions to some extent influence the development of library as institution. These images, I believe, are the roots of many librarianship problems, including the problem of library budget. The parent institution can hardly trust librarians to handle with big budget and good programs. As a result, they have to accept limited budget for library. It is clear, then, that librarians need to improve their performance as important part of their effort to solve their image problem. Librarians performance in their work place is highly determined by how well they mater librarianship skills and how nice their personalities are. The former has been on the top list of Library and Information Studies (LIS) Curriculum, the later, however, is quite neglected. This paper will describe the importance of teaching interpersonal skills in the library schools II. THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG The bad image of librarians, in my opinion, is caused by two factors; external and internal factors. The external factors include the low salary, complicated career s procedures, government s policy that sometimes pushes librarians into deep frustration. The internal factors come from the librarians themselves such as their low working performance, ranging from performing tasks unprofessionally, showing unfriendly faces to having bad attitude. These two factors, I believe, have significant influence and have influenced each other as I named this condition as the chicken and the egg.

3 In Indonesia, when people have difficulties to answer a question, they used to make analogy using the word just like chicken and egg, which one comes first? This analogy is good enough to describe the condition of librarian - parent institution/government/society relationship. The librarians or library staffs say that there is no need to work hard or professionally since no matter how hard/professional they work, the policy about salary, library budget have never been increased. On the other hand, the parent institution/government/ society think that the policy and budget has been good enough, considering the librarian s performance so far. This condition will lead to big problem on the librarianship. These two sides are busy blaming each other and do not step forward for their own goodness. As a result, the condition of library remains the same; no hope, no future and be ignored. The steps to solve the problems must be taken. The librarians must improve their skills to show to the society that they are capable of performing their tasks professionally. If they do so, the society/government/parent institution will be impressed, and the image of librarians will be better. Librarian as a profession will be more appreciated and supported by policies and reasonable salaries, as shown in the diagram below: Personalities Skills Knowledge LIBRARIANS SATISFACTION Impression Images POLICY/REWARD In accordance with this, Johannah Sherrer (1996) said.the personal attributes of librarians have a direct bearing on how effectively individual libraries move forward in providing improved, enhanced and user respected services. In any job or profession, success depends as much on attitude and approach to work as it does on training, knowledge, or appropriate degrees. Further she explained in detailed how the interpersonal skills have the significant

4 impacts to the success of the reference desk interaction. This successful interactivity, in my opinion, will lead to the users appreciation more than just in the reference desk interactivity but toward the librarian profession as well.. III. Interpersonal Skills Interpersonal skills simply can be defined as the way we get along to other people. There are some discourses on the need of interpersonal skill for the library profession. Mary Nofsinger (1999) said that the core competencies for the librarians, especially for the reference librarians were reference skill, subject knowledge, communication and interpersonal abilities. Even though she said that the interpersonal skills are especially needed for the reference librarians, this statement implies that the interpersonal skills are not only needed by the reference librarians but also for the librarians as profession. In this perspective, Tanawade (2011) said that there is growing recognition that the need for interpersonal skills applies to internal peer and management relations as well as to user-contact activities. Librarians need good communication skills, record-keeping skills, teaching skills, information research skills and the ability to evaluate material and to be organized. For her, interpersonal skills also include: *friendly * maintain enthusiasm * pleasing personality * helpful and patient when dealing with users * able to remain calm and polite under stress * accurate, quick and efficient * able to work on their own * self-motivated * able to ask for help if it is needed On the other hand, for Pellack (2006), having nice interpersonal skills is more than the ability to deal with people in front of the desk but the skills are influenced by anything happened behind the desk. Once a person is having difficult time to interact with his colleagues or bosses, it is difficult for her/him to hide it from patrons. In this case, Pellack suggests that a

5 librarian needs to be trained to interact to her/his colleagues. Having interpersonal skills will lead somebody to the world of successfulness as we can see from the circle below: From the discussion, one might think, what is the definition of interpersonal skill? The Special Library Association published competencies for special librarians in They divided the competencies into two sections: professional competencies and personal competencies. Personal competencies are defined as a set of skills, attitudes and values that enable librarians to work efficiently; be good communicators; focus on continuing learning throughout their careers; demonstrate the value-added nature of their contributions; and survive in the new world of work. These skills are further defined as creates an environment of mutual respect and trust, knows own strengths and the complementary strengths of others, and constantly looks for ways to enhance personal performance and that of others through formal and informal learning opportunities. From this definition, I will divide the interpersonal skills into three categories; Communication skills, attitude, and learning skills.

6 IV. INTERPERSONAL SKILLS AND THE CURRICULUM OF THE MASTER PROGRAM OF LIS AT UIN SUNAN KALIJAGA YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA The State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta is a house of thousands students studying various areas such as literatures, history, communication, social work, law, finance, science and technology, math, sociology, psychology, anthropology, education, philosophy, inter religious studies and library science using integration and interconnection paradigm based on Koran-Hadis (theology), Knowledge and Philosophy. UIN Sunan Kalijaga offers LIS on three-year diploma (1999- now), bachelor degree (2001-now) and master degree (2009-now). A course on Interpersonal skills is offered under the name Social Skills on The librarianship Contexts at Master Degree levels. This course was offered based on my dissertation draft revealing that all the respondents need interpersonal skills to handle the stresses on the workplaces and to be able to build a good relationship with users, bosses and colleagues (Zain, 2009). To build the course outline, my fellow lecturer, Sri Rohyanti Zulaikha, and I discussed the materials, references and possible activities to be taught. Finally we divided the course into three categories; communication skills, attitudes and behaviors, and learning skills. 1. Communication Skills Merriem Webster dictionary (2010) defines communication as a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior. While Kpangban (1995) said that communication is the establishment of meaning and understanding between people. In the library management context, Reitz (2004) stated that Library administration is responsible for the control and supervision of a library, and cannot function without good communication. Further, Yusuf (2010) stressed that any activities in the library have communication purposes. Cataloguing and classification activities, to mention some, have communication purposes. This means when a book is classified and catalogued, it is meant to ease the users in finding the information. Therefore there must be a communication between them. There is no aspect in the library without communication. The communication skill is the way we interact to other people, including the way we listen what other people say, the way we understand other people, and they way we express our ideas. In the library context, the way a librarian treats the patrons will need the

7 communication skill. Both verbal and non verbal language needs to be learnt by a librarian to gain understanding between the librarians and the users, the staff, the administration, the relatives and the society. By having good communication skills, the networking can be built, team working will be easier to do and the problems can be solved. For the library development, both oral and written communication is needed. The way we present our proposal to the funding and parents institution will influence the amount of the budget we will get. The presentation skills cannot be neglected for the development of the library. Good communication skills are also needed for teaching purposes. As we know that a librarian is an educator as well. She/she must be able to transfer knowledge to the users regarding information literacy and user education. Therefore a good communication skill is a must. For a career development, communicating ideas using written words is very crucial. First, the credit points given for the published article are quite significant. Second, writing is an important way to spread librarians ideas. By writing, the librarians can draw the society s attention; stereo typing on this profession can be eliminated, the librarians issues on salary, policy, and profession advocacy can be addressed. Finally using good writing and communication skills, the librarian can present the proposal for funding more convincingly. For the purpose of having good communication skills, the course outline of UIN Sunan Kalijaga LIS curriculum lists Quantum Teaching and Oral and Written Communication Skills as the materials to be taught. In Quantum Teaching, the students are taught the art of teaching including preparing course materials, teaching strategy and making evaluation. While in Oral and Written Communication Skills, the students are taught how to make an impressive presentation including preparing presentation, the outfits used, presentation strategy and how to make a good writing including making and developing outline and writing organization. 2. Attitudes and Behaviors Attitude is defined by The Oxford Advanced Learner dictionary as the way we think and feel about a thing, a person or an object. Pinker (2007) argued that the things we do are based on our emotions and the views of others about us usually disturb us. This means that the librarian s value about the profession may affect their attitude toward the users and colleagues. Positive values about the profession will lead to the positive attitude. The positive attitude will lead to the positive behavior. A librarian may have competence to do

8 her/his job and may not have the desire to do it effectively. In Morzano s word, competencies give us the ability to perform while attitude gives us the desire to do (1998). While Behavior can be simply defined as the way we behave. The way we behave will leave impression to others. Wise word say The first impressions will last forever This is true since people s decision of whether or not they will have continuing interaction with somebody/institution is based on their first impression, as we can see from diagram below: first impression Further interaction Addiction In the library context, the first impression such as librarians approachability, show of interest, usage of both verbal and non verbal languages, may affect the users decision about whether or not they will make another interaction toward the library. But once they get positive impression, they will make further interaction that will lead to addiction. In this case, Pellack said that these are classic areas that all aspiring library school students learn, think about, and practice early in their careers. In this case, the course Social Skills in the Librarianship Context offered by the Master program of LIS at UIN Sunan Kalijaga teaches the future librarians about emotional intelligence including self awareness, self disclosure, establishing motivation, assertiveness, understanding others, problem solving and decision making. The emphasis has been on the creation of best practices in patron and colleague interactions. The books used for the reference mainly are Daniel Golman s Emotional Intelligence (1998), Jannete Caputo s The Assertive Librarians (1984) and UIN Sunan Kalijaga s Sukses Belajar di

9 Perguruan Tinggi (2010). The references are then adapted for the Indonesian librarian context purposes. Self Awareness teaches the students to be able to have a positive self concept about the librarian as profession. Self Disclosure is taught to make the students honest in building relationship. The honesty will lead to the open minded in receiving the feedback. Material on Establishing Motivation will help the students to gain better achievement, commitment, initiative and optimism. Assertiveness gives the students the lesson how to defend their rights, express their ideas with respect to the other people. It is expected that the student will be the assertive librarians in the future workplace. Understanding others will teach the students to respect others and eliminating bias gender, races and physical attributes. The Problem Solving and Decision Making give the best practices to the student about how to solve the problems and make the right decision. By learning these materials, it is expected that the future librarians can handle their job professionally and make the library a pleasant place to visit. 3. Learning Skills Learning is a part of life. When library as a learning center becomes more complex as resources and technology have changed, librarians must be ready to learn new things not only for serving the users purposes but also for their personal life. For serving the users, they cannot rely on what they got from the library schools as the materials taught might be contextual at that time but might be outdated for a certain time. By the time they graduate, the new issues appear and the fresh graduates need to learn them. Those who stop learning after graduating will not survive on the workplace. On the other hand, those who apply long life learning will have bright careers. But learning skills need to be learnt, otherwise they will lead to ineffective patterns that might absorb a lot of energies and times but produce less learning result. Moreover, the way adults learn is different from the way kids learn. Andragogy is the art of teaching that focuses on adults. Andragogy was coined by Knowles to differentiate between the needs of adult learners and young learners. The andragogy suggests some methods that should be employed in the education of adults. The characteristics of andragogy are self directing, the learner s experience is a rich resource of learning, people learn what they need to know and people are performance center in their learning (Renner, 1994).

10 For the purpose of having learning skills for long life education purposes, the course outline of UIN Sunan Kalijaga LIS curriculum lists Quantum Learning as the material to be taught. Andragogy is taught and employed. In teaching this material, the students are asked to identify their learning styles. By knowing their own learning skills, it is expected that the students will learn new issues easier. The next step of quantum learning is teaching the students to read effectively using scanning and skimming techniques. Scanning can be defined as a technique to read the materials that are only relevant to the questions in our mind. While skimming technique is the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall impression of the content of a reading selection. By employing these techniques, the students will be able to get information in an effective way. Finally they will be asked to make notes using mind map. Basically mind map is a technique to utilize the brain using visual and graphical facilities to have an impression (quantum learning). By using the mind map, the student can classify the important information from the books, papers and others in only one paper as we can see below: This mind map is taken from mappio.com

11 V. CONCLUSION The unpleasant images of library and librarian in Indonesia are basically affected at least by two factors; the external factors and the internal ones. These factors influence each other, just like the question which one comes first; an egg or a chicken? The internal factor which is the librarian s performance will influence the external factors, which is about how the society looks at the profession. The more professionally the librarians perform their jobs, the better images and policies they will get. To be able to perform their job professionally, librarians need to have interpersonal skills. The Master Program of LIS at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia has been offering course Social Skills on the Librarianship Context. This course provides the students with three skills; communication skills, attitudes and behaviors and Learning skills. By having good interpersonal skills, the students are expected to be able to get along with the users, colleagues, bosses and the society professionally. This will reduce the stresses on the workplace. Good interpersonal also will help them in promoting the library, profession and in getting more funds and grants, in building necessary networking, and in supporting long life education process.

12 REFERENCES Caputo, Jannete S The Assertive Librarian. Canada : Oryx Press. Goleman, Daniel (1998), Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books Kecerdasan Emosi Untuk Mencapai Puncak Prestasi : Working with Emotional Intelligence.Jakarta : Gramedia Pustaka Utama. Kpangban, E Lecture notes on Communication in the School. Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria Marzano, R.J A Theory - Based Meta- Analysis of Research in Instruction Aurora Colorado: Mid continent Regional Educational Laboratory 167. Nofsinger, Mary M. 1999, Training and Retraining Reference Professionals: Core Competencies for the 21st Century, The Reference Librarian no. 64, Pellack, J Rollean Working Within The Library : Intangibles. Interpersonal Skills in the Reference Workplace Pinker, S How the mind works. New York: W.W. Norton & company. Renner, Peter The Art of Teaching Adults. Vancouver: Training Associates Reitz, J. M Dictionary for library and information science. London: Libraries Unlimited. Sherrer, Johannah. 1996, Thriving in Changing Times: Competencies for Today s Reference Librarians, The Reference Librarian no. 54, Tanawade M.S, Shri Effective Interpersonal Skills For Library Management. Indian Stream Research Journal. V.1 no. 1, UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta Sukses di Perguruan Tinggi.Yogyakarta : UIN Sunan Kalijaga. Yusuf M.S, Pawit M, Drs Ilmu Informasi, Komunikasi dan Kepustakaan. Jakarta: Bumi Aksara

13 Zain, Labibah Menggagas Kurikulum S2 Jurusan Ilmu Perpustakaan dan Informasi Islam di UIN Sunan Kalijaga: Sebuah Tawaran. A paper presented on round table discussion at The Graduate Program of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Zulaikha, Sri Rohyanti Course Outline Mata Kuliah Ketrampilan Sosial dalam Kontek Kepustakawanan pada Program Pasca Sarjana Program Studi Interdiciplinary Studies Konsentrasi Ilmu Perpustakaan dan Informasi.