International Librarianship and You

So, you want to work abroad

Excellent! There is nothing quite like the challenge and satisfaction that comes from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and into other cultures. Experience abroad can help you look at your home in a new light. It can teach you new things, help you grow as a person, teach you humility, and, perhaps paradoxically, help your confidence as well.

One small problem: it’s very difficult to get hired.

Your Dearest Author of this Chapter (that’s me) was lucky enough to have a conversation with Rebecca Hodson, Associate Director of International Education. The crux of our conversation was, very simply, that it’s very difficult to convince a foreign company to hire Information Sciences graduates.

Why is that, you ask? Simply put: Immigration is expensive, and most countries have their own universities to educate their own information specialists. Now that’s not to say it’s impossible, but a prospective expatriate will have to do a lot of work to justify that they are worth the investment to get them overseas. If you want to work in England, for example, it would be in your best interest to start getting involved in research and projects that would help you stand out as an expert in a given subject that they may want over there. The exact subject is, unfortunately, hard to pinpoint, and you’ll likely want to have a good idea of exactly where you want to work before you even try.

However, there is another option. In many countries, there is enough of a demand for English speakers that simple proficiency in your native language can be considered a skill worthy of their consideration all by itself! In fact, that is what your’s truly did before returning to school. I lived and worked in South Korea for two years as an assistant English teacher. The demand in South Korea especially for English teachers is very high, but the same is true of countries such as Japan and Spain!

“But Mr. Author,” I hear you ask, “that’s a teaching job but I wanted to work in Information Sciences!” True. But work abroad makes connections, and connections make jobs. If nothing else, time abroad can make it very easy to learn the native language, which you will want to do if you want to be able to apply for work there competitively. Teaching abroad is surprisingly easy to achieve if you keep an open mind and are willing to accept risks, and the work is not dissimilar to what a proper Information Professional would be doing anyway.

So, I’ve shattered your dreams and told you to go teach kindergarteners across the pond instead. Where does that leave us? What if you don’t want to focus on a specific subject? What if children terrify you? What then? Well, if finding work in and international context doesn’t seem like it will pan out, you can always look into finding work as and international context. And that brings us to:

The Mortenson Center

Founded it 1986 after a donation from C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson, the center promotes international communication and understanding through the promotion of various programs and initiatives. The Mortenson Center hosts training for librarians from abroad to come and engage in professional organizations and workshops. The Mortenson Center Associates Program is one example. The Mortenson Center hosts librarians and/or information professionals from abroad and allows people from around the world to engage in new practices and technology in order to address challenges facing the global information sciences community.
Obviously, though, that program will not be useful to the majority of you reading this book. Available to students here are a myriad of professional development opportunities such as workshops, lectures, and webinars. Their most recent Distinguished Lecture was this last September, and was given by Dr. Ricardo L. Punzalan on the subject of digital archivism’s role in decolonialization and reparation. The Center’s events can be accessed through their website and they can also be reached by email. According to their website, they can be contacted for internship opportunities!
In the even that finding an internship proves challenging, the Mortenson Center also publishes resources, which might be useful to read in order to better understand the field of International Librarianship. Currently they have a publication called “Thinking Outside the Borders“. It’s a guide for libraries to structure themselves with international initiatives in mind. It was formed from feedback collected from Institutes for International Library Leadership over the course of three years, and is available through the Mortenson Center either online or in print.
Additionally, the Center maintains several websites:

• Libraries for Peace: an Initiative by the Mortenson Center to provide resources and education to information science professionals in order to promote international education and peace. On their website you can get connected with books and articles in order to educate yourself about their mission.
• Libraries for Sustainable Development: Much like Libraries for Peace, Libraries for Sustainable Development is a web portal maintained by the Mortenson Center to make resources and information regarding sustainability widely available. They also have a page breaking down all seventeen of their goals!
• Project Welcome: Project Welcome is a result of the Mortenson Center partnering with the American Library Association and, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, it seeks to learn about the ways in which refugee communities can have their information needs met. Like the other websites, it provides access to resources in order to learn about the subject and promotes World Refugee Day.

All of these websites provide news and resources for those of you who would just like to learn more about the field and the challenges it faces. Events are often promoted there as well, so it’s more than worthwhile to look into!

IFLA

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions is a non-governmental organization representing librarians and information sciences professionals. Founded in Scotland in 1927, it is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that seeks to promote freedom of information and international exchange of ideas.
IFLA considers “members” to be library associations and institutions. Members are expected to pay yearly dues and in turn are given discounts on World Library and Information Congress admission as well as IFLA publications. Members an associates can also join one or more Sections: divisions within IFLA representing different categories of the field, ranging from Art Libraries to Information Literacy. Membership in a section allows an organization to nominate individuals to positions in the section as well as vote in elections.
Individuals can also join IFLA. They are known as Associates. Associate categories include Student Associates as well as recently-graduated Associates. They are also expected to pay a fee but besides some limited voting privileges, are still given all of the other benefits of membership. The membership dues aren’t obscene for individuals and in the event you want to be kept informed, the discounts on publications could be well worth it alone. Still though, college being what it is, be sure that the investment is worth it unless you’d like to wait until after you’ve graduated and can more easily afford it.
We will talk much more about IFLA in the next section.

Libraries Without Borders

Founded in France in 2007, Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières) is a charitable organization dedicated to providing free internet access to underserved communities. If you’re like me, you probably immediately thought of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) and well… yeah, they are strikingly similar in their mission and are both French! However, they are not the same organization, nor are they different heads of a connected organization. Libraries Without Borders was founded much later and their founder is still acting president.
They accept both job applications and volunteer work. Now, you may be wondering why I did not include them above in options to go abroad. That’s because the work you would be doing with them is different than a lot of the work most people think of when they want to go abroad. Libraries Without Borders works with struggling communities, either due to economic hardship or war. They set up libraries or book depositories in these communities, and try to make sure everyone has access to information. Also, it should be noted that it’s entirely possible to get a job with them and never be sent abroad. Unlike IFLA and the Mortenson Center, internationality isn’t the goal of Libraries Without Borders, it’s an obstacle. Their main concern is helping those who need it, so if that calls to you, and you don’t mind the possibility that you’ll never see France, then they are absolutely worth your time. They can proudly boast to have developed innovative new technologies to help with information access such as the Ideas Box: a mobile multimedia platform that can be uses to bring information to places that may otherwise be unable to support the necessary infrastructure. Also interesting to me is their development of Kajou: an app that gives access to a digital library using an SD card.
Though the focus and day-to-day work of Libraries Without Borders is a half-step away from the rest of this, I still think it, and organizations like it, are very much worth keeping in your head if you’re at a loss of what to do and where to go with your degree.

IFLA (Continued)

IFLA (The International Federation of Library Sciences and Institutions, in case you’d forgotten) was founded in Scotland in 1927 by a collection of fourteen library associations from across Europe and the United States. At the time, the horrors of World War I were far from forgotten, and amidst the optimism surrounding the League of Nations there was the obvious necessity for European countries and cultures to learn to cooperate and collaborate.¹ With that in mind, IFLA has a highly collaborative structure: all full-fledged members of IFLA are allowed to vote on policy decisions and can promote their own members to administrative roles within the organization.

Because of this, IFLA has been noted to have a rather relaxed atmosphere, referred to as even “quaintly lethargic”² in comparison to other, more focused organizations like the ALA. And this is, quite frankly, to be expected. IFLA cannot be expected to have a focused and easily-pursuable aim. There is no tight set of points and agendas to attack in order to achieve their goals. The circumstances and needs of the various organizations now under its umbrella are far too many and the obstacles are too complicated. Much of this is due to the political and cultural realities in the various countries represented by it. For example, though IFLA guidelines are noted to be applicable to library work in China, the political situation of the country can bias professionals there against all of the guidelines, since some might be contrary to public policy.³ Economic differences exist as well: libraries in Kazakhstan have had difficulties surmounting the costs of access to scientific journals in order to supply information to its scientific community.⁴ In fact, issues surrounding freedom of information access is one of the core concerns of IFLA, but more on that later.

Much of what IFLA concerns itself with is fostering collaboration and the sharing of information across international boundaries. Cultural and social events are a huge part of IFLA because that’s where people connect and learn. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that IFLA has long worked closely with UNESCO in order to further each others’ goals.

Now, all this is not to say that IFLA is impotent or simply a club to go learn about the world while being a librarian: they very much do have goals and organizations dedicated to achieving them! There are, at the time of this writing, 79 Committees within IFLA, each one overseeing a different aspect of library work from particular regional concerns to special interest groups such as LGBTQ users or Library History. Particularly important among these are IFLA’s Professional Divisions. There are eight of them, each made up of 6-8 Professional Units grouped together by similar topics in order to represent different concerns among the Information Sciences professions. For example, Division A includes such Units as “National Libraries”, “Public Libraries”, “Library Buildings and Equipment”, and “Local History and Genealogy”. The shared concerns of Division A clearly being how libraries and similar institutions relate to and serve their local communities. All of these Professional Divisions are overseen by a Professional Council, made up a Chair and the Chair of each of the Professional Divisions.
If you’d like to search through IFLA’s collection of Committees, including Divisions and Special Interest Groups, you can do so here.

Working with IFLA proper isn’t a walk in the park: I did not find any easy application process on their website, and most of what I saw regarding how they select new members is through elections from their constituent organizations. Working for a library involved with IFLA is an excellent first step and, luckily for us, the University of Illinois is involved. This year, we actually helped support the IFLA 88th World Library and Information Congress by providing a regional virtual hub for participants who were unable to travel. University is, once again, an excellent place to get involved abroad, which leads me to…

Studying Abroad While at University

Living somewhere gets you connections there, it’s as simple as that. If you want to work somewhere that is separated from you by a border, it’s in your best interest to take any opportunity you can to live there. Not visit, but live. This is why I suggested teaching English abroad way back in the first section. Any way to get to a country will help you if you want to live there, even if it isn’t what you want to be doing with the rest of your life. Study abroad is a great way to do that.

If you are an Undergraduate

If you are an Undergraduate, your best plan of action is to consult our Education Abroad department’s First Steps page here. Seeing as we have full-time professionals to oversee this process, I do not predict there will be any information I could provide here that wouldn’t be either useless or, worse, misleading. Unlike all the other information I have provided, of course.

If you are a Graduate

If you are a graduate student… bad news: there are no study abroad programs offered here at the University of Illinois. Much to your dear writer’s own misery as well.
However, that is not to say there aren’t options. If you decide to pursue a temporary job overseas, there is actually very little stopping you from taking a semester or even a year off in order to do this. I have discussed this with our advisors, since this was a very real consideration for me when I first came to university here. What I learned was that there are no issues with taking a semester off. However, taking a year off will require you to petition for re-entry. I was assured that there is little to worry about with a petition for re-entry, especially if you take time to discuss your plans with our advisors ahead of time. While this pathway will not directly impact your academic record, I mention it again here in case, for whatever reason, you’d like to enter the job pool with your degree and your international connections both.

During my discussion with our advisors, though, I also learned about a more difficult but preferable pathway. Other graduate-level Information Sciences courses hosted at other universities do have study abroad programs, often in partnership with international schools. One example provided to me by our advising department is the San Gemini Preservation Studies Intersession offered by West Virginia University. Recently, a student in our program was able to enroll in that program and travel abroad to Italy. From there, the credits you would earn in that program can be transferred here. This process would take a good deal of legwork to organize and communicate with our advisors, but that is also a good argument for why it would look great on a resume!

Conclusion

Overall, working internationally in this field is tricky. It’s not like certain STEM or specialty studies that are in high enough demand to give you your pick of countries. Like anything in this field, it will take work and wit in order to justify yourself to your would-be home. But International experience is good. It’s always good. Especially in our field, where the exchange of information and cultural humility is so important. The library science field is… let’s face it, it’s not diverse. Yet diversity should be one of our core concerns. Global competency is not some just neat little skill that can be looked into if you’d like to galavant across Europe for awhile, it is something vitally important to the library’s role in an increasingly international world. Experience immersed in another culture teaches you about yourself as much as it teaches you about your host home. It forces you to confront biases and assumptions you may never have known you had. It allows Information Sciences professionals to approach their field with the kind of open-mindedness we claim to value⁵. While it can be taught, and experienced in a limited form with the many international connections and opportunities we offer here on campus, the simplest and most direct way is to go there.

Work abroad may be difficult and may be risky, but its benefits should be highly sought after by both individuals and employers. It’s a brave new world out there. Explore it.

Bibliography

These are a selection of the readings I did, namely those whose ideas and/or information were most directly incorporated into my final piece. Some were referenced directly, some just heavily informed certain passages. Most were about IFLA.
¹Wieder, Joachim. 2002. “IFLA’s First Fifty Years: A Reprise.” IFLA Journal 28 (3): 107–17. doi:10.1177/034003520202800303.
²Malinconico, S. Michael. 1982. “An IFLA Primer.” Library Journal 107 (13): 1295. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lls&AN=7399572&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
³Zhang, Jing, Lin Lin, A. D. Madden, and Ying Zhang. 2019. “On the Applicability of IFLA Standards in Different Local Contexts: The Case of IFLA School Library Guidelines in China.” Library Quarterly 89 (3): 232–53. doi:10.1086/703470.
⁴Kairatbekkyzy, Madina. 2016. “Research Impact of Kazakhstan: Informational Problems and Barriers.” Journal of Library Administration 56 (7): 845–53. doi:10.1080/01930826.2016.1216223.
⁵Engseth, Ellen. 2023. “Global Competency and International Mindedness in LIS Education.” Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 64 (2): 169–84. doi:10.3138/jelis-2020-0104.