Three Blended Librarians\u27 Narratives on Developing Professional Identities

A blended librarian holds two separate and distinct responsibilities in the academic institution. One relates to instructional technology, the other relates to the information professional. In this narrative inquiry, I explore the constructed identity of three blended librarians and offer insight to inform current and future blended librarians, instructional technologists and designers, and their academic institutions. Each librarian was hired between 2012 and 2013. Each participant was the first blended librarian at each of their universities. I explored themes of transformation, inclusiveness, and connectedness. I used Mezirow’s transformational learning theory with support from secondary theories, universal instructional design and TPACK to guide my research. For the scope of the study, I covered the working life of three blended or instructional technology librarians. In the first phase of the study, I explored my three-year career as a blended librarian. In the first phase, I explored fifty of my created learning objects. These are primary documents in constructing a narrative. In the second phase, I collected narrative accounts from two instructional technology librarians. In the second phase I used chaptered worksheets, semi-structured interviews, and follow-up interviews to guide the librarians in telling their stories. I utilized thematic narrative analysis to determine a central theme within the three narratives using the theoretical lenses. I identified three separate individual themes as the key to each librarian developing their identity