2026 ALISE Annual Conference

Community college librarians support approximately 40% of college students in the United States, yet research about how well MLIS programs prepare them for this important yet undervalued work remains disproportionately scarce. This work-in-progress poster will describe a qualitative pilot study exploring how community college librarians perceive the relationship between their LIS preparation and the competencies they find most effective in their work. Grounded in a critical constructivist paradigm and drawing on Bourdieu, Dervin, and role theory, this study seeks to capture the nuance that survey-based research has consistently failed to surface.