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One of the Librarians at my local Library has been there for nearly 35 years and she is wonderful at her job. She doesn't even have a BA. Makes you wonder how many amazing people they skip out on who just have BA's and High School Diplomas.
Im pretty sure 35 years of experience trumps a Masters right out of college.
Newdixiegal -- I have an M.A. in a foreign European language and related literature (with studies at a major U.S university that specializes in foreign languages, at U.S. campuses in that foreign country and a foreign university with studies in the foreign language.) (focus on linguistics, that country’s-related European history and art history)
The idea that librarians sit at a desk checking books in and out is fairly universal. In reality, those minimum wage jobs are held by college students in academic libraries and clerks in public libraries.
Libraries can be public, academic or special (subject specialities like geography,law, historical, etc ). These are run differently for different patrons and purposes.
Trained librarians are at the reference desk and behind the scenes in cataloging and acquisitions. Cataloguing used to be a lengthy technical specialty and reference required not only a knowledge of cataloging but also a broad knowledge of subjects and how to find information in a library. Someone has to make informed decisions on collection development, which is reading reviews on books to be purchased, determining the gaps in the collection, what to keep and what to discard, what professors require to support the curriculum in an academic library and so on. Most people have no idea what is required to order, run, and maintain library collections.
The reality is that subject specialists, such as law librarian, will require a degree ( JD in this case) as well as an MLIS. An art librarian will have an MFA and an MLIS, etc. Directors of academic libraries hold usually a PhD and an MLIS. Someone can come to the reference desk at a public library and ask a question from physics to history to geography. You always have to be at least as smart as your patron or you won't even know what they need.
The profession has changed drastically in the last 10 years. Now a foundation in computer science is recommended along with a broad general and/or specialized education. There is much less emphasis on cataloguing because of preprocessed materials. There is a greater need to know how to navigate and evaluate information for value because of so much crap and misinformation. The career is set up for even more change in the future. Archivists are different to librarians since they have a different approach to materials- generally more preservationist than patron oriented.
When I was in junior high, I was an assistant in the library. I cataloged books, shelved them, did inventory at the end of the year. Anyone with an IQ above 80 could be a librarian.
Whether a librarian's job will require a MLS will be completely irrelevant in 20 years or so anyway since libraries won't exist. Pursing a career as a librarian today would be like pursuing a career as a horse-drawn carriage driver in the 1910s.
Kindles and Nooks are wiping out the need for physical libraries just as Netflix and Redbox have wiped out the need for a physical movie rental store. I have a nephew who is in school and each of the students is issued a Nook at the beginning of the school year. There has been a lot of discussion about firing the full-time librarian and replacing her with part-time minimum wage help to shelve books and run the catalog system.
Last edited by statisticsnerd; 12-31-2013 at 09:18 AM..
Most professions can be done without the degrees required to get them. And I'll go a step further...
Most jobs, even some that require many years of experience can be done by most intelligent people with anywhere from a day to half a year of training. Most jobs.
Could I be a librarian? Uh, yes. Could a librarian do my job if they didn't have my degrees (science, engineering)? Yes. The learning curve varies, but for the vast majority of jobs, it is not greater than six months.
There are few jobs that require so many hours of dedicated training that somebody could not do an adequate job at it.
Ones that come to mind are trained musicians, doctors, dentists, professional athletes, etc.
A better question is, what presumes that you have any idea what Librarians do?
One would think, with the borderline erotic fascination that people have placed on anything with the word "science", Information SCIENCE would be a heavy hitter.
Strangely, that's not how it's perceived. But who needs libraries, or books, right? Who needs to read or write either? The defective generation currently in college--which is now the equivalent of 16th grade with moms still hovering overhead--can't read, write, or spell anyway. For what purposes would such people need a library, when they could just like OMG plagiarize from Wikipediaaaaa....
When I was in junior high, I was an assistant in the library. I cataloged books, shelved them, did inventory at the end of the year. Anyone with an IQ above 80 could be a librarian.
Whether a librarian's job will require a MLS will be completely irrelevant in 20 years or so anyway since libraries won't exist. Pursing a career as a librarian today would be like pursuing a career as a horse-drawn carriage driver in the 1910s.
Kindles and Nooks are wiping out the need for physical libraries just as Netflix and Redbox have wiped out the need for a physical movie rental store. I have a nephew who is in school and each of the students is issued a Nook at the beginning of the school year. There has been a lot of discussion about firing the full-time librarian and replacing her with part-time minimum wage help to shelve books and run the catalog system.
As a teacher, I have found it interesting that schools are now using para-professionals as school librarians, much lower pay scale & educational requirements.
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