Background: Young, MLS holding graduate with a 4 years working in public libraries (professional cataloging, circulation, and administrative experience).
I've had reservations about my degree ever since I got it. After having worked in the library for my relatively short amount of time, more and more I find myself faced with an uncomfortable truth.
What is the true worth of my degree currently hanging on my refrigerator next to this week's to-do list? Is it holding our field back?
I was fortunate enough to have a job alongside my graduate school studies. Working in a library definitely made it all too clear how so much of my curriculum was totally worthless or out of touch in my day to day work life. Why had I wasted two semesters (and around $3000) learning Ranganathan's Five Laws and Noise Theory? Where were the courses on budget development, grant writing, community outreach, and human resources?
My most valuable class, by far, was a course titled "Business Management In The Public Library," a special topics course only offered that semester and co-taught between a Library Science instructor and a former director of a major library system. That course was the first (and last) time I ever saw an actual line item budget in graduate school. It was one of the few courses that taught me skills that were DIRECTLY INVOLVED with the job I went to everyday from 9-5. In that course I learned not just about finances but valuable human resources skills when it comes to interviewing, hiring, and managing a workforce. Those skills hit home for me having worked in small rural libraries where the director isn't just the director but also human resources, accounting, payroll, and sometimes children's librarian.
My next most useful class was definitely my cataloging courses (I took two) if for just making it clear how much documentation on it is available, free, over the internet now. When I was working as a cataloger I found myself using MARC and AACR2 resources available online far more than the expensive subscriptions and manuals that gouge the annual budgets of libraries everywhere (they were far easier to use as well).
But I think the far greater concern is what this means for our field. Is the MLS just a gatekeeping tool? I've had the fortune of working with some incredibly smart and resourceful people in the library. Many of them had no MLS, most of them had chosen the library as a second or third career, and yet I wonder how many of their resumes would get tossed into a trash can or weeded out of automated systems because they're short a comma and three letters after their name.
Here is what I think should be done:
Throw out the science in Library Science. Make a clear distinction between those who wish to have careers dealing with in depth information studies and those who want to work in a library. Reconfigure the curriculum and standards to reflect that.
Redo the curriculum. Include more courses on finances, program development, human resources skills, courses specializing in business or grant presentations, and other tangible skills (marketing, technology, etc).
Create a certificate system. This is something that has worked well for healthcare. Offer a system of certificates for a number of positions in the library (children's librarian, cataloger, circulation, etc) that can be obtained cheaply and easily, but require one to re-certify after a certain amount of time (this may finally solve the problem I've encountered of stick-in-the-mud librarians that refuse to learn anything new and choose to hold up progressive reform).
Institute some kind of system where professional work experience can be used for school credit. Many schools offer independent study courses, but for most it is only under their auspices (had one full time children's librarian of 3 years who asked if her work experience counted for anything and was told that independent study only applied to those who did it in that university's library. Ridiculous).
I'd love to discuss this issue with the librarians of Reddit (and beyond). What do you think? Have you altered what you look for in a candidate? Was the MLS ever a big deal to begin with?
Submitted March 16, 2015 at 10:06PM by elxdandy http://ift.tt/18SXrbl Libraries
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