“From ‘Back-End Workers’ to Knowledge Leaders: Understanding the Social Recognition Gap in Librarianship.”

Abstract

Librarianship has undergone significant transformation in the past decade, shifting from traditional custodial roles to digitally driven knowledge leadership. Despite this transition, librarians across academic, public, and special libraries continue to face a persistent gap in social recognition. This paper examines the factors that contribute to this recognition gap, including outdated public perceptions, limited institutional visibility, expanding workloads, and inadequate representation in decision-making spaces. The study relies entirely on secondary data from scholarly articles (2020–2023), national reports, and organizational surveys. Findings show that while librarians now perform advanced tasks such as digital curation, research support, information literacy training, and technology facilitation, their contributions remain undervalued due to systemic and cultural factors. The paper argues that strengthening professional identity, advocating for policy reforms, and building leadership-oriented competencies are essential to reposition librarians as knowledge leaders in the information society.