Professional Socialization of Beginning Librarians as Measured By Involvement in Professional Activities (Michigan, Illinois).

Abstract

One hundred ninety-six 1978 graduates of the library schools at the Universities of Michigan and Illinois, their supervisors, and a representative of the employing organization, participated in a survey study which had as its purpose determining the level of professional socialization of a group of beginning librarians and assessing the influence of the work environment on that group's socialization. Involvement in professional activities was used as the indicator of socialization and organizational encouragement, supervisory encouragement, and supervisor's level of socialization were used as indicators of the influence of the work environment. A model, based on previous literature and several social science theories, was developed. Numerous descriptive data on beginners' and supervisors' involvement in and the organization's encouragement of professional activity are presented. Five scales were generated for use in hypothesis testing which was carried out using Spearman's rho. Relationships between the scales and several background variables and between certain pieces of descriptive data and the background variables were examined using Cramer's V and asymmetric lambda. In general, correlations were weak, in the directions predicted by the hypotheses and the model. A possible chain of events having the following steps was inferred: (1) the supervisor's perception of the organization's encouragement influences the supervisor to be active in the profession, (2) the beginner's perception of the supervisor's encouragement influences the beginner to be active in the profession, (3) the supervisor's level of professional activity also is related to the beginner's level of activity, and (4) the actual encouragement as reported by the organization has little influence on anything. Possible validity problems with the organization encouragement scale are discussed. An analysis of responses to open-ended questions indicates that the organization may have an influence not adequately measured by the scale. It appears that the academic libraries and librarians studied most nearly fit the hypothesized model; special libraries fit the model in most respects but provide a negative example of the model. It is suggested that a coordinated series of case studies of the socialization of librarians is needed to shed further light on the reasons for differences among types of library found in this study.