Practical Wisdom: Pre-COVID Advice from Public Librarians in a Post-Pandemic World

This paper examines renewed understandings of ‘soft skills’ and their necessity in library practice and education. While professional education in modern librarianship and the establishment of continued professional development (CPD) as an ethical tenet formalised in the 19th and 20th centuries, the place of practitioner-derived advice on what professional recruits should know when entering practice has apparently been lacking. This paper reports on the findings of such advice from public library practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand from 2019. Using thematic analysis, three primary themes are explicated. Further, using a post-COVID-19 pandemic analytical lens, these themes are considered between their pre-pandemic elicitation, contrasted with a post-pandemic informed understanding of professional realities. This synthesis is detailed among professional values and contemporary realities, including issues of the multiplicity of inclusivity and its contextual deliberations. Soft skills remain essential in engaging in the practice and professional values of public librarianship. The resulting implications for organisations and professional education and training are considered. Adopting a grounded-inform structure, the paper also presents thematic findings first, followed by sensitising concepts, which develop the analytical lens applied to the themes in the discussion section. The Aotearoa New Zealand context is introduced and applied with the post-pandemic analytical lens.