LIS Core Competencies
What Are They?
What are the Core Competencies and why are they important to LIS Students and the LIS Program?
Developed in 2005 by the American Library Association, the result of many years of discussions and thought on "What is librarianship?", the Core Competencies are a set of skills and knowledge that form the basic preparation for a new information professional.
"It describes what can be expected of a newly graduated student from an accredited program of library and information studies [our emphasis]. It is not intended to represent the “state of the art” in library and information studies or to categorize what a seasoned librarian knows about the field. The statements reflect the knowledge and skills of a beginning generalist librarian, not a specialist trained in a particular area. Taken as a whole, this list suggests the development that is basic to a librarian or information professional in contemporary society." - ALA Draft Core Competencies, July 2005 (read the full draft here [PDF])
Integration into the LIS Program
In the summer of 2007, the LIS Program decided to make the Core Competencies an intricate part of the curriculum. Through faculty advising, we emphasize to students the importance of forming a broad foundation of knowledge and skills - a "core" that will prepare them for careers as information professionals. The Core Competencies have been mapped to each of the courses offered by the LIS Program in terms of whether a certain competency is of "Primary Emphasis (P)", "Secondary Emphasis (S)", or not emphasized in that class.
The full map of the LIS Courses to Core Competencies can be found here (clicking this link will open a PDF document).
The LIS Core Competencies
The LIS Core Competencies are presented below. The first eight core competencies are the American Library Association’s Core Competencies (2005 Draft). In addition, the LIS Program has added a ninth core competency that we believe is essential to our historic mission and speaks to our unique strengths:
- Professional Ethics: codes and principles of ethical practice governing the field.
- Resource Building: creation, evaluation, selection of collections of information; storing, preserving and conserving information.
- Knowledge Organization: standards to control and create information structures, principles involved in the organization and representation of knowledge and information structures.
- Technological Knowledge: current information and communication technologies as they affect information centers, concepts and processes related to assessing and evaluating impact and efficacy of tech-based products and services, use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and tools.
- Knowledge Dissemination--Service: concepts, principles and techniques that facilitate information access for users, interaction with users to provide consultation or guidance in use of information resources, assessment of user needs, diversity in user needs.
- Knowledge Accumulation--Education and Lifelong Learning: principles and techniques dealing with consultation and guidance to users; application of basic learning theories, instructional methods, and achievement measures to learning situations; importance of continuing education.
- Knowledge Inquiry--Research: research methods and findings within the information fields; fundamentals of research, survey and data collection designs; familiarity with current literature in the field and related areas.
- Institution Management: principles of planning, management, and evaluation of information centers; awareness of types of library and information professions; institutional change; oral and written communication skills; concepts for developing partnerships and collaborations; diversity of stakeholders; outreach and advocacy to specific audiences.
- Social, Historical, and Cultural Context: concepts and knowledge regarding the socio-historical development of libraries, print culture, and information science; preservation of cultural resources; international dimensions of librarianship, information technology and policy, and social and cultural issues, including the interplay between library and information science and the cultures of Hawaii, the Pacific region, and Asia.