Dec 01 2005
Strong, pithy title here.
I feel like there should be a disclaimer for this.
Blogging: not as easy as it looks.
It seems like I have tons of ideas running through my head when I’m sitting in class, or waiting for a train, or walking down the street. But the moment I sit down to post… tabula rasa.
Maybe it’s an irrational fear of a blank page… all of that scary white space.
One of the things that I’ve enjoyed so far about library school is meeting new people, and hearing their stories. While there’s a certain level of quiet insularity (and probably shyness/anti-social tendencies), there are also a number of people like myself who are not afraid to use our voices. In talking with a fellow student last night after class, I think that we came to the shared realization that while the courses so far are somewhat easier than our (unrelated)previous university experiences, the purpose of this professional program is to prepare us for jobs in the archival world. For most people, an MLS is a terminal degree, a means to a professional end. In other words, the program, while interesting, isn’t meant to prepare us for teaching duties– but for more practical job applications. This may all seem overtly obvious, but I think that library school programs have a tendency to masquerade as being much closer kin to an academic master’s degree– and from what I have observed so far, there’s a wide gap separating the two. Nobody seems to discuss these differences, but perhaps this is why so many archives ask for experience in or a separate MA in history?
Ahh, the MA in history as qualification for archival positions. While I absolutely am for education- and allowing people to have as much of it as they can cram into their greedy brains, I’m somewhat opposed to the practice of hiring persons holding only history MA’s as archivists. What does a person holding an MA in history know about preservation standards, provenance or replevin? Does the average history master’s student keep up with developments in the archival field? (Probably not.) Would you hire a psychiatrist to perform foot surgery? A psychiatrist has an MD, sure, but probably isn’t the right fit for that position. The same goes for hiring MA’s in subject areas to be academic librarians without holding an MLS or library experience. Sure, they probably have an excellent reading knowledge in the field– but what do they know about cataloging, donor agreement, preservation management or collection development, OPACs, or library management? The short answer: they shouldn’t be expected to have that knowledge without library training, and employers shouldn’t be shortchanging their users by hiring them. Of course, knowing that I’ll be out there job hunting soon, MLS in hand, has no effect on my opinion here. (Right.)
The expectation in many an archival or academic librarian job ad is a second MA in a subject area. I think can be a lot to ask of employees– a BA and two master’s degrees– for positions that pay $30-40,000/year, and sometimes much less.