Still, I’ve had an itch to follow up on the feelings Steven stirred up with his question, because why we do what we do and whether it matters is a question we all need to ask ourselves from time to time.

The  ACRL/AAUP Joint Statement on tenure for librarians is a document I’ve turned to over the years, usually to explain things to someone in the administration who doesn’t use libraries and doesn’t understand why we’re faculty. I mean, librarians are . . . what, exactly? They shelve books, right? Oh, and they’re good at finding stuff.

Actually, student employees shelve the books, and we’re very good at finding stuff, but that’s not what we do for a living.

The Joint Statement, born in 1972 and most recently affirmed in 2007, sounds a little old-fashioned these days, so I’m going to riff off what it says to explain why I’m a librarian. It opens with these words:

As the primary means through which students and faculty gain access to the storehouse of organized knowledge, the college and university library performs a unique and indispensable function in the educational process.

Whoops. The library can no longer claim to be the primary means of accessing knowledge. There’s lots of material on the Web, much of it good stuff; to complicate things, a student working in a dorm room may not even realize they’re using “the library” when they read a JSTOR article. Moreover, the word “storehouse” makes me cringe; we abandoned the image of a “storehouse” – endless rows of unused books - in favor of “growing organism” way back in 1931. But quibbles aside, libraries remain a significant and still-growing common ground for the academy. What a library provides is a place and space for students to not only find information and use it in their papers, but to see how knowledge itself is made – by people like them. In using a library, they learn how to participate in what Michael Oakeshott called “the conversation of mankind.”

The statement goes on:

This function will grow in importance as students assume greater responsibility for their own intellectual and social development. Indeed, all members of the academic community are likely to become increasingly dependent on skilled professional guidance in the acquisition and use of library resources as the forms and numbers of these resources multiply, scholarly materials appear in more languages, bibliographical systems become more complicated, and library technology grows increasingly sophisticated. The librarian who provides such guidance plays a major role in the learning process.

Dependent is a funny word. Academic librarians try hard to make students independent learners. But we know that the technical savvy we attribute to students does not translate into sophisticated research skills – which are more about reading, comparing, making choices, and understanding context than about mastering gadgetry. Librarians and faculty in the disciplines work together to help students learn the ropes of critical information use, in the classroom and lab – and the library. And there is truly nothing cooler than seeing a student get excited about her independent work, to see her really get it. I live for moments like that, and I want every student to have them.

The Joint Statement continues:

The character and quality of an institution of higher learning are shaped in large measure by the nature of its library holdings and the ease and imagination with which those resources are made accessible to members of the academic community.

Holdings. Hmmm. The idea of a single library determining what is in them is in flux as resources are shared across the Web. Still, there is an art to making decisions about which resources, print or electronic, are most likely to support student learning at a particular institution. And making those resources accessible depends on providing useful paths for exploration. This isn’t about our telling students what they should use; it’s about them giving them a map and helping them gain the confidence and experience to make those choices themselves.

Further along in the statement, a case is made for academic freedom:

Academic freedom . . . is indispensable to librarians, because they are trustees of knowledge with the responsibility of insuring the availability of information and ideas, no matter how controversial, so that teachers may freely teach and students may freely learn.

I couldn’t agree more, except to add “and so that citizens can be free to read and think what they want.” Though public and school librarians are more likely to face challenges over the books on their shelves, academic librarians play an increasingly critical role in creating social conditions for intellectual freedom. That’s a role that has only grown more critical in a world where information is power, and control of it as “property” is in heated dispute. It isn’t just information itself that is valuable. It’s information about what we’re reading, what we’re thinking, and who our friends are. We value privacy as a necessary condition for intellectual freedom. It was a proud day when an unnamed FBI agent complained about “radical, militant librarians” in The New York Times; the T-shirts were being made minutes after the newspaper hit the stands. And when librarian John Doe went to court to challenge an unconstitutional gag order, we cheered.

Librarians are pretty good at finding information. We’re even better at understanding what’s at stake in keeping it freely available to all. Helping students develop their ability to roam freely and confidently through the world  of knowledge – and fighting to keep that world free - that’s why I’m a librarian.

I’d like to hear why others are librarians, so I tag: Rudibrarian, who is Deepening the Conversation; Angel, The Gypsy Librarian, Jenna, the Lower East Side Librarian, Rory Litwin at Library Juice, and Anne-Marie at Infofetishist.