It is both an extraordinary and an extraordinarily difficult time to enter the library profession, says Lorcan Dempsey, an iSchool Distinguished Practitioner in Residence. Over decades, he has observed libraries shift from a transactional focus on collections to a relational and social focus on communities, with the challenges that brings.

For the public library, this can mean addressing food poverty, providing services for immigrants, dealing with book bans, resolving conflicts, and engaging with local social and educational agendas, says Dempsey. For the academic library, the shift means collaborating with instructional or research services and being focused on student success and retention, as well as researcher workflows and data curation. 

As libraries of all types build shared collections and system infrastructure and engage with complex licensing and information policy issues, students have to be prepared for the complex social, technical and relational roles. “Library education has to grapple with this great range. It’s a challenge,” says Dempsey, an independent librarian, writer and advisor whose insights into library trends have influenced conversations about libraries around the world. 

He is indisputably a thought leader in the field, says Constance Malpas, executive director for research and programming at the Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit that provides shared technology services, research, and community programs for members worldwide. Dempsey worked at OCLC for more than 20 years, most recently as vice president for research and membership. “He was tremendously generous with his intellect,” says Malpas.

The DPIR program, funded by a 10-year $1.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, invites information professionals into classrooms to meld theory with boots-on-the-ground practice. Dempsey, completing his second year, took the position to better understand students’ perspectives on their upcoming careers. 

“They are entering the profession at a time when people need new perspectives. It’s a moment of challenge, but also a moment of change,” he says.

Dempsey was struck by his Master of Library and Information Science students’ strong commitment to do meaningful work, to make a difference and to improve their communities. “I was also taken with their openness to learning and engaging. I admired their candor and frankness, their willingness to espouse particular values and willingness to disagree, to be open to other views. It was quite refreshing,” he says.

The course Dempsey developed focuses on collaboration and partnerships, a topic central to evolving library operations but too often overlooked in library education. The course presents libraries as deeply interconnected social organizations and emphasizes the importance of honing such traditionally undervalued “soft skills” as team building, advocacy and relationship building. Dempsey is also working on a project exploring the dimensions of library collaboration with the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a regional academic library consortium in the Pacific Northwest. 

His MLIS students have appreciated the expertise of the many library leaders he brings into the classroom to share real-world practice and decision-making. Student Taylor Hazan took both Dempsey’s courses, including the mandatory class in management of information organizations. “I went into the first management class intimidated that I’d be learning from such a significant voice in this field. His welcoming, humble and witty demeanor had us all laughing at 8:30 in the morning,” she says. “He treated us as colleagues, as though we were already the managers and collaboration catalysts many of us will eventually become.”

“Working with him was a terrific experience, both in terms of growing my own knowledge about libraries and seeing his contributions benefit our students and faculty.”

Dempsey faced his own challenges coming into the program as a first-time teacher who was developing his own course from scratch. In his widely read blog posts, compiled in a book titled “The Network Reshapes the Library” (ALA Editions, Chicago, 2014), the native of Ireland compares those early days at the iSchool to being in a kitchen, baking a loaf of soda bread for the first time without a recipe, and with an audience observing every move. “And you cannot throw it away if it does not work.”  

Dempsey soon realized he was making the mistake of trying to impart knowledge rather than facilitate student learning. “I talked too much,” he admits. iSchool associate teaching professor Chance Hunt, who has assisted other DPIRs stepping into their new pedagogical roles, came to Dempsey’s aid, helping him make his classes more interactive and student-centered using exercises such as role-playing in authentic library situations.

Hunt describes Dempsey as a “wonderful teaching partner.” The learning went both ways. “Working with him was a terrific experience, both in terms of growing my own knowledge about libraries and seeing his contributions benefit our students and faculty,” says Hunt.

Dempsey began his career in public libraries in his native Dublin. Leaning toward high-impact policy and research, he began working in information services and development in Ireland. Before moving to the United States, he lived and worked in the United Kingdom, helping to lead the nonprofit organization Jisc, which provides networking, information and innovation services to higher education there. He worked at the Online Computer Library Center, based in another Dublin — Dublin, Ohio — until 2022.

“With his wide-ranging background, he brought us a rich understanding of the library landscape and created frameworks that are foundational to our community,” says OCLC’s Constance Malpas. Dempsey’s frameworks include such concepts as the “collective collections” — describing the combined holdings of a group of libraries — and the "inside-out library," which looks at how today’s academic libraries not only acquire content but curate institutionally created outputs and make them accessible outside the institution.

After completion of his iSchool appointment, Dempsey and his wife, also a librarian from Ireland, will return to their longtime home in Columbus, Ohio, where they moved from the United Kingdom shortly before 9/11. Dempsey is not sure what’s next. But whatever it is, he’ll approach it with his usual curiosity — he still sticks his nose in libraries wherever he goes, asking questions — and a strong sense of humility that belies his reputation.  

“As an immigrant twice over, I have learned never to assume that I am right about anything,” he says. “I like to say that I owe my modest success to always working with people who are smarter than I am.”