Ask a librarian: The profession, professional identities, and constitutive rhetoric of librarians

Institutions can be powerful influences on our personal and work lives and can constrain and enable our behaviors. It is through communication that institutions are created and sustained.Professions, institutionalized occupations, are one example of institutions that play an important role in organizations. Terms like profession and professional evoke certain expectations about types of work and workers. Organizational communication scholars, however, often treat professionals as non-distinct from other organizational members or uncritically employ the terms profession and professional. This study explored the meanings of profession and professional identity for librarians. Specifically, this research analyzed librarians’ rhetoric about their work. Interviews with public and academic librarians were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using modified grounded theory approaches combined with rhetorical analysis. Librarians’ rhetoric revealed insecurity about the stereotypes and misconceptions held by the public. Librarians actively defended their professional status by delineating certain activities as truly librarian and aligning their activities and professional identities with the profession of librarianship’s values and standards. By aligning their activities and professional identity with the broader practices, values, and standards of the field, professionals add meaning to their work, defend their professional status, make sense of their roles, and (re)constitute the profession. This work suggests that professional identity can be usefully seen as tied to activities as much as to social membership. The research also guides our understanding of communication’s role in creating and sustaining institutions and providing coherence and meaning to work.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Garcia, Mattea A.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lammers, John C.
• Poole, Marshall S.
• Finnegan, Cara A.
• Wright, Trina J.

• organizational communication
• profession
• professional identity
• institution
• constitutive rhetoric

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2011 Mattea A. Garcia

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/24280

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/24280