Keeping it brief (for once)

I feel like my posts have all been coming out through the lens of the job search, lately. I mean, I try to address bigger issues, but you can probably see the thought patterns behind some of what I say... Like I mentioned before, I have started looking for jobs--and even applied to a few--but it's ludicrous that I could be less than 2/3 of the way through my MLIS and so focused on that one thing... isn't it? It's a semester too early for "senioritis."

Ah, well.

Anyway, I apologize if I seem kind of one-track in my thinking. While the question of where I'll be living and what I'll be doing in [not even] six months dominates a lot of my headspace, there are other things going on. For instance, there's spring (soon?), allergies (western PA hates me), long walks (1.5mi today), taking care of my injured parakeet (he's fine now), dancing with book carts (going fantastically), and some "for fun" reading instead of the work reading I should be doing. Sometimes, I even go out for hot dogs and beer or politics and beer (OK, only once). And, while I feel hopelessly behind on all of the projects that are coming due, I am getting used to the feeling and remembering that, every other time I've ever felt this way, I've pulled through just fine, with everything making it in by its due date.

Just have to remember to breathe. And take enough allergy medicine.

Retreading old ground

The argument over whether the MLIS is useful/relevant/necessary to library work, particularly in academic libraries, has raged on for years. I admit, having been through roughly 2/3 of an MLIS program myself, now, I'm a little more on the "no" side than the "yes." I'm centrist enough to see both sides, and, certainly, I've learned things in my classes. I don't think the degree, sans professional experience, is worth anything at all, but, on the flip side, I'm not prepared to claim that professional experience alone is enough.

I've been exposed to high-falutin' ideals in coursework and seen the truth of their applicability (or lack thereof) in real library situations; similarly, I've heard of technologies in my digital libraries class that I then got to talk about with real library professionals at a conference. Would I have bothered noticing the larger issues under debate in my workplace, or bothered discussing these technologies at the conference, if I hadn't had the in-class exposure to them? Hard to say. There's always been a feeling of kismet to my intellectual life--different experiences happen in different areas of my life around the same time and build on each other. I've always felt great wonder about this process, but maybe that's just how we all learn (see "experimental bias"). It isn't as though the process started with coursework: I read every blog and news feed I could, over the spring and summer before school started, and a lot of what I read has been talked about [sometimes ad nauseam] in my coursework or has shown up in my library jobs, both public and academic.

So maybe all that's needed is intellectual curiosity combined with experience? I don't know; I'm not here to make a proclamation either way. I'm not all that experienced, myself, and I'm sure my view will continue to change over time.

To the point, though: apparently, ACRL thought this whole thing would be worthwhile to debate, and LJ thought the debate was worth covering.

I was a little unimpressed by some of the arguments presented--whether this is poor summary by LJ or whether the argument is just too stale to interest the debaters, I'm not sure. The MLS "fosters shared values"? (I'm quoting LJ, not Liz Bishoff, here.) I am not convinced that a year--or even two--of courses that are, for financial reasons, stuffed to the brim with students, or worse, taken only online, will change one's values dramatically. The full phrase LJ used was "it fosters shared values--values essential to the transition to the future of the digital library." I think I've made my feelings clear, re: the amount of preparation the average library student receives, as far as "the transition to the future of the digital library" (awkward phrasing). I just don't see it.

But the other side wasn't wildly impressive, either. The argument that--and this is a quote, according to LJ, of Arnold Hirsholn--the library Master's is “devoid of anything unique to librarianship" seemed strange to me. What, really, is unique to librarianship? Like MBAs, we should learn to manage. (I don't know about them, but we don't, really.) Like teachers, we should learn to present thoughts and ideas coherently. Like anyone in the entire world, we should learn to conduct ourselves professionally--and it deeply frustrates and saddens and, honestly, scares me that we waste course time on this, where other Masters programs do not. Like anyone in customer service ... we don't really need a Master's degree for that, though, do we?

Putting aside anti-censorship ethics, the only thing really unique to librarianship is a certain facility with data--an ability to find things other people can't find--and I don't really feel like my coursework has given me that at all. I came in with better-than-average search skills, both in books and in Google, and most of the really library-specific search skills I've gained have been gained on the job. Even the one course dedicated to teaching us those skills just kind of points out that there are things called "bibliographic resources" and "encyclopedias," then sets us loose to find the answers to some contrived reference questions, each week.

This whole discussion has given me an idea. Perhaps we should require some professional experience, in libraries or elsewhere, (like an MBA program does) before we allow anyone into library school. Similarly, a certain ability with computers should be demonstrated. That would allow us to drop most of the really time-wasting aspects, the portion of the program devoted to bringing undergraduates and technophobes up to speed, and focus on the important theoretical and ethical issues.

I mean, it's just a thought. But I think it's clear that some kind of change should be made. Given that the MLS is still a requirement for many jobs--and that most librarians agree there should be some kind of formal educational experience--I'd prefer to see the discussion revolve around fixing the clear problems with the MLS. Better, I'd like to see the schools make some real effort in that direction.

I sound my quasi-heretical yaw over the roofs of the world

(I typed that "foofs of the world" and almost left it.)

The Dialog event today--I hesitate to call it a "training," since it was not focused specifically around learning to use the tool--was interesting and fairly enlightening. (Heads up to any readers in SLAPSG: we may have a Dialog tutorial in the works. I have no more details than that.)

To back up a bit: The word "library" used to bring to mind the public library, for me. Like many MLS-seekers, past and present, I spent a large portion of my childhood in a public library (though I think I had the grace not to say so on my application to library school). But I've been pretty academic-library-centric in my LIS education, thus far, for a variety of reasons that I may or may not get to later in this post. I work in an academic library (or three, depending how you count), I am taking Academic Librarianship, and my classes thus far have all been taught by academics of one stripe or another (even a practitioner in an academic institution is still an academic, I say). This immersion--which I made reference to, in a different way, in my last post--has kind of colored my thinking on the field of librarianship.

Today's event really drilled into me a different way of thinking about the library field, though. Certainly, as an SLA member and technically-inclined person, I was aware of corporate librarians--I have even applied to work as one--but I never really sat back and pondered to myself whether my philosophy about librarianship as a field applied to corporate libraries. Today I realized it does not, and that is exciting.

Whereas, for a variety of reasons*, I think the long-term goal of academic and public librarians (field-wide more than individually) should be to build tools that allow for nearly complete disintermediation: as opposed to continuing to fail at making the "but you don't know how to find things! Google doesn't have everything!" sales pitch and leaving most of the population with a poor view of us and poor information, to boot, the goal should be ... something else. We need to talk about what that something else is--do we team up with Google? Do we build our own tools to search our collections? Do we buy Serials Solutions' very, very sexy new Enterprise Search tool? I don't know, yet, and it's clearly going to take more than just me to figure that out. But before we can get there, we have to drop the self-indulgent view that computers will never compete with us (hey, they already are, and even if they aren't doing as good a job as we could, they're winning in market share) and the self-interested view that having a job is better than not (nobody likes that programmer who writes deliberately-confusing, uncommented code in hopes of retaining his or her job; let's not be that guy). We owe it to the general public, college educated or not, to build them tools that make information accessible to them without our interference. Because, increasingly, they are uninterested in asking us for help.

I'm not totally crazy, though. While I do think most authoritative information can be made accessible this way, and I even think it's a fairly affordable undertaking if we stop working so hard to recruit technophobic liberal arts majors into our ranks and instead beef up the "bright technical mind" bastion of librarians--not a small group, already. (Let me say, I dearly love several technophobic liberal arts majors. I do. But I still don't think they should become librarians unless they can lose the fear of technology.)

Anyway, as I was saying, not totally crazy: I think there will still be a need for professional data finders. Take the consulting firm I used to work for: great firm, hired some great people. But I had and continue to have a fundamental disagreement with their approach to professional development. They believed that a consultant should be all things--good with whatever engineering/IT specialty they had, good with people and management and customer handling, and also good with writing and presentations. We did our own research. I can see where they are coming from, and it seems to work fine for them ($4 billion in income a year is nothing to sneeze at). But, from a gaming perspective, I believe there's a real benefit in min-maxing. I think, if you have a really brilliant technical mind, there's no good reason to stick you behind the proverbial typewriter, as long as you can communicate the technical details to some genius writer you have on staff. Similarly, why would an engineer waste a bunch of time doing research for a literature review when an information specialist could do it for her, freeing her up to go to the lab? Why would a marketer waste time finding statistics that an information specialist could find faster? ... Having everyone trying to do everything is inefficient. Sure, there should be some overlap; the writer has to understand technology, and it helps if the information specialist (you see how I'm not calling the person "librarian" anymore? the word is rooted in the idea of books; no wonder people see us the way they do!) has some domain knowledge. It also helps if the engineer or marketer has a clue how searches are constructed. But each person has their area of expertise, and they spend the bulk of their time really excelling in the work they enjoy, rather than muddling around with things they aren't as good at.

I think corporate librarians will prove themselves indispensable, and I think they will bring some of the esteem back to our field. One day, people won't immediately assume an MLIS means shelving books and "being paid to read." I'm kind of excited about that.

(I'm also not sure I'm going the corporate route. I've sent out applications to several very different jobs. Only one is corporate, and I would love to do that job. The others are all, so far, academic, and I would love to do any of those jobs, too. I get so excited about each job, as I apply for it, and it's kind of hard to realize that I'm not going to hear back for a little while, and I need to keep looking. On one hand, it's a little rollercoastery and a little hard on the motivation, both to keep applying to places and to keep working on homework. On the other, hey, wow, there's a lot out there that I'm really excited to do. That's great, right?)

*Most of it comes down to "Not everyone attends information literacy classes, even on a college campus. Too many people are slipping through the cracks." Honestly, even tenured professors don't all know how to use the tools we provide, or to come to us for help; how many students do we miss? UVA and CMU both missed me (for real, my Master's thesis is online; I haven't had the gumption to go back and look, but I'm sure you can see how abbreviated my literature search was), even though I was one of those people fortunate enough to earn both an undergraduate degree and a Master's degree. What about all those folks who didn't, whose parents didn't take them to the library as a kid (or who were, like me, too shy ever to find out what a reference desk was [I know now :)]) and therefore don't even know librarians exist to answer their questions? How many people are finding bad medical, legal, or other information on the Internet, even as you read this? It's too big a problem to ignore, just for our own egos' sakes.

Spring Break, Classes, Et Cetera

I had a pretty fantastic spring break. I did not, as I had hoped I would, research and complete my paper for Academic Libraries, though I did settle on a topic. I also did not catch up on Cataloging, where I feel like I'm shamefully behind the curve (on the bright side, if you can call it that, there are a bunch of other people who feel similarly). Nor did I get much of anything else school-related completed. But I think I needed the break, honestly. This short, intensive program, with internships and job applications and with so much else going on in the library world that I want to keep up with in my free time, is beginning to burn me out. ... I feel stupid saying that. Who gets burnt out in less than a year? But it isn't real burn-out; it's just an awareness that I need to put my mind firmly on something that isn't school and isn't libraries, now and then. And I think taking some time to do that, last week, was beneficial (even if my Google Reader and inbox were bursting at the seams on Monday).

I worked on some crafty stuff, including some pretty jars of bath salts to sell for Book Kart Drill Team fundraising, and a jewelry-selling (or perhaps eventually a jewelry-storing) rack that I'm really quite proud of. I read most of Alex and Me, which is probably still an interesting read if one isn't a bird-lover but is absolutely wonderful if one is. I cleaned my kitchen and did a little bit of actual cooking, for the first time in a while. No homebrewing, yet, but I hope to get to that in the next few weeks, depending how project due dates fall.

And then I spent several days in DC, visiting people, which was tremendously fun. I remembered how much I like my friends down there, even as I remembered how little I like getting around Northern Virginia. Also, I got to play with a baby. Good times. (No, you don't have to want to have a baby to enjoy playing with them. They're cute!)

Anyway, now it's back to the grind, as they say. I have five or six big assignments coming due in the next few weeks, and it's stressful. But I'll get through it.

On Thursday I'm attending a session on Dialog. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, though I feel bad missing volunteering at the Aviary for a second week in a row. Hopefully I can make it up to them in the form of 120 more hours (and some course credit for me) over the course of the end of this semester and the summer. Or, if the job fairy makes an early visit, one Saturday a month until I'm finished.

Calmer in the morning

I was in a bit of a tizzy last night, and cooler heads have reminded me that sometimes rebuttals happen. Still, the rebuttal (which made a few sweeping statements of its own, I thought) was pre-economic-downturn. The special libraries that decreased the size of the applicant pool are no longer as numerous, or as well funded. (While I realize that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," something like three special libraries have closed in Pittsburgh, recently.)

I still believe that continuing to allow enrollment increases--or even keeping enrollment steady--would be short-sighted and unethical. I still think there are too many library schools. I still think 90% acceptance rates are a crime. But I am no longer going to storm my dean's office, I think.

Anger and frustration

Did you know there are roughly 5000 MLS/MLIS graduates per year? And if the 2-month sample of job openings discussed in this article in Library Journal is representative, there are roughly 400 full-time entry-level jobs being offered per year (this was circa 2005--imagine what it is now).

Yet, Pitt's iSchool is hiring five new faculty members (to replace others--no new positions that I'm aware of) and making no noises about decreasing admissions. I have no reason to believe the other 61 ALA-accredited library programs are much different.

How is this ethical? How do the deans of these schools sleep at night? Also, why are people still applying? (It might be that story that keeps going around about all of the librarians who are going to retire any moment now. Magically, despite the losses everyone's sustained in retirement funds. And of course people retiring from a lifetime of library work will leave entry-level positions open in their wake.)

My concern a few months ago, upon hearing that the acceptance rate in our program exceeds 90%, was that it was "watering down" the profession (I'm not trying to demean myself or my classmates, but even if we were a truly exceptional bunch of applicants, numbers like that shouldn't happen). Given Pitt's high ranking, I assume we aren't some crazy outlier; there must be other programs with comparable numbers. And that is a serious problem.

But then to learn that the bulk of the graduates in our school and others will not be finding full-time professional positions, on top of that? It frustrates and angers me. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the lucky ones; I can go back to my previous field if no library offers me a position before my loans come due. But I no longer see the MLIS I'm earning as the valuable asset--the clear gateway to a profession in which I could really improve the world--that I thought it would be. I am disenchanted, I guess, on top of my frustration and anger.)

Am I the only one? No, you know what? I know I'm not the only one. But why aren't we doing something? Why aren't library students picketing in the streets--or at least our deans' offices? Why aren't we writing to our schools' chancellors/presidents, to the ALA Council, to local and regional newspapers, to anyone who will listen, to prevent yet another crop of students from making the same mistakes we did--such as believing the ALA's over-optimistic job predictions? (Maybe we just don't know where to send our correspondence. Who listens to library students? I mean, there are 5000 of us graduating each year; individually, we're expendable.) Why aren't we demanding answers from our professors? Why do we let advice seeker after advice seeker on blogs and forums and listservs wander happily off, thinking their BA in history and semester of shelving books will be sufficient background to get a job in the library profession, if they just get that MLIS?

What's wrong with us?

Schedule woes

It's fun to post about my schedule, because, pretty much immediately after I hit "publish post," I begin rethinking it. I've dropped Instruction to take Web Engineering (seriously, a class about applying software design principles to web development? with XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Perl, and PHP? I'm in! I only wish it covered SQL as well!), but now I'm thinking maybe I should have dropped SciTech Resources and kept Instruction. It's true that four weekends won't make me one of the world's great teachers, but will a 12-week class taught by four instructors really be a more structured introduction to science and engineering resources than I've already received through my work at CMU's E&S Library? I'm not so sure.

Also, I keep playing with the idea of making my Aviary work into a Field Placement, so that I can afford to spend more time there. I've barely started on their book collection, and I would very much like to finish it all before I move out of town. (Here's hoping I do, in fact, move out of town--or find a job here--by August. I hear times are tough, out there, right now.)

In mostly-unrelated news, Book Kart Drill Team (known from here on out as "BKDT"--yes, we spell it with a "K," for no good reason) is going swimmingly. We have most of a routine, thanks to our phenomenal drill expert. It looks like there are going to be eight of us, and we're probably going with costumes in black and gold (but shiny gold, not yellow gold). I'm worried about funding, but it seems we're doing a bake sale roughly once a month, and we're all working to make crafts for sale, as well. Also, there's going to be a raffle. Maybe I should get in touch with our raffle person about that...