investing in ourselves

A story from the iSchool flickered into my Twitter feed today: Is a Master's Degree in Library Science a Poor Investment? A Counter Perspective to Forbes Magazine.

(The Forbes story in question was pretty ignorable; coming from Forbes, of course it's going to focus on the financial benefits of your master's, and of course our degrees aren't going to make us rich. We knew this wasn't a good investment in the traditional meaning of the word "investment," so blah blah whatever, Forbes.)

But then the iSchool student winds up making the exact same point as the Forbes story.

Forbes:

"[I]f your desired profession requires a master’s degree, that’s a good reason to pursue it.”

iSchool:

"An MLIS is often required when applying for professional librarian jobs, especially in regards to the more advanced positions such as director or manager. This is why I am pursuing my Master’s degree: In looking at job postings and talking with people in the field, I quickly discovered that a lack of educational credentials would quickly eliminate me for consideration for the director or manager positions I was seeking."

Dur.

That's not a real reason.

It's a valid short-term explanation, but it's not a reason. "Because they said so" isn't good enough for toddlers and teenagers, and it shouldn't be good enough for our profession, either.

Why are we all so afraid to ask the real question: What, exactly, do we learn in library school, and do we need it to be librarians? 

I've questioned my Syracuse degree -- and its $40K price tag -- loudly and often, but the further out I get from library school, the more certain I am that I did, in fact, need to go to library school. It wasn't because of anything I learned in classes or from readings or from professors; some of that was helpful and important, and some of it wasn't.

The reason I needed to go to library school was that I needed to meet other people in the same stage of their careers as I am. 

I needed to have daily contact with people who were navigating the same things, figuring out where and how to work in this field -- and, now, having jobs that are similar to what I'm doing or am going to do or might want to do someday. Just in Klub Kat, we have public librarians; academic librarians at schools of all sizes and stripes; archivists; early-career administrators; people working at vendors; people working at "special" libraries; people working in non-MLS staff positions.

All of you push me to think about things way outside my comfort zone (proper spit-cup signage, say, and bugs and rodents in public spaces) and how we're shaping this profession. Our generation isn't shaping it enough yet, but we have to start somewhere. And we're doing things together, too -- brainstorming, venting, helping each other find job posting, presenting together, co-authoring academic papers.

That is what I needed, what I couldn't get on my own. Were there other ways to find these people, ways that didn't take two years and cost every cent that some people make in an entire year? Maybe, but I don't know them, and the more graduation recedes in the distance, the more I value what I did get out of library school: you guys.

P.S. That said, people shaping MLIS curricula? Please keep asking that Big Scary Question: What, exactly do we learn in library school, and do we need it to be librarians? If the answer is no -- and it is, too often -- get rid of it, please, for the sake of our future and our sanity.

Interesting Post from Will Manley's Blog

Please take time to read all the comments. They provide some interesting food-for-thought, particularly for us as we are at the beginnings of our careers...

From Will Unwound
February 16, 2012

WILL UNWOUND #684: “From the Tavern Mailbox: Goodbye to Librarianship”

Note from Will:  On a regular basis I get emails from librarians who want to drink deeply of the collective wisdom found in our Unwinders Tavern.  If you have an issue that is bugging you feel free to send me an email at wmanley7@att.net and I will run it in this blog so that our Unwinders can comment on it.  Feel free to change identifiable details so as to protect your identity. I received this email last month.  Please give your best advice to anonymous.

Hi Will,

Just writing to thank you for your last Manley Arts piece about meeting librarians’ needs. Particularly the part about librarians not having taken a vow of poverty. I wasn’t going to rant but you did say you have a lot of free time… I am about to leave the field because the pay is so much lower than the modest ALA-recommended minimum my alma mater touted as de rigeur when I was looking into grad school. The professional satisfaction promised as a trade-off is not happening, either.

The other payoff missing from public librarians’ lives is the professional dignity I was expecting when I became a librarian several years ago. I thought being a librarian would be great, given my aptitude for technology and the written word combined with my social altruism. Whoops. Most of the young librarians I know regret their choice. The most ambitious of us are the most miserable because we know that we could, as they say in the dating game, “do better.” I can make databases, but here I am un-jamming the photocopier and repeating program dates and times for callers who don’t have a pen handy. (It’s not that I need to pay my dues and work up the ladder: this is the highest position under Director.) Patrons are disrespectful, clerks talk to us like we’re pages, and managers struggle to keep a straight face when we suggest salaries should reflect value delivered rather than time served. There is a stark difference in the types of personalities and demographics the field attracts today vs. the era of my coworkers’ entrance to the field. Our colleagues make us pariahs for so rudely writing them an e-mail when they are in the building. They have worked here forever and half of them can barely use computers, forget that PCs have been widely accessible for over fifteen years. We are smart, enterprising, eager professionals. Projects fail miserably because none of my dear elders know how to conduct a productive meeting or start and complete a project. Our ideas are met with “that’s very neat but this is how we’ve always done it” and our attempts at competitive salaries are met with “well you knew going into this you wouldn’t be making a fortune.”

What’s broken? Is it a clash of power structures? I theorize that in a women-run organization like a “traditional public library” the structure is like a family, where authority comes from physical age instead of from your job title which you earned with your ability, like how us Gen X-ers came up. Is it that the civil service system has ruined the money-for-work model, leaving us hard workers feeling cheated? I felt a moment of clarity the day I realized “this doesn’t have to be my problem.” Much as I love social programs, I am industrious and don’t need the system to provide for me.

As you say, basic needs must be met. After looking these last four years for one of these elusive “real-pay” jobs I have given up on librarianship as a career and switched directions to focus on a consulting business centered around journalism and web design. Sometime before my biological clock stops ticking I will type up that resignation letter and say: I cannot raise a family and pay my student loans for $15 an hour. You will have to find another “professional” librarian.

For a long time I was worried it was me: I interview poorly? I don’t know the right people? Wouldn’t you know, less than a year into Project: New Career and I already have a couple freelance clients. Stranger still, none of them have balked over money or yelled at me because they don’t know how to make a photocopy. Perhaps the libraries here will miss my abilities, but life is too short to stay on this train.

I imagine you field lots of letters like this so I won’t ramble any more. I’ll just say thank you again and maybe at least the donut thing will catch on.

Best,

Anonymous

Finally

Today was a day for the history books.

I officially felt like a librarian. (Finally.)

It wasn't just my awesome new outfit. It wasn't just the cardigan I wore. It wasn't just that I had taken the time to brush my hair.

No, today I felt like a librarian because I weeded the shit out of our audiobook collection.

I have a lot of responsibilities at work, but since I am administration I miss out on some of the very basic elements of public librarianship. I often feel very inadequate about the work I've done so far and quite often confused by concepts I haven't learned yet and have probably bypassed. (And then I remember I haven't even been on the job two months.)

Today I utilized our (awful) library system, ran a report, manipulated it in Excel, printed it off, then weeded our entire adult audiobook collection! I started with the fiction, then the non-fiction, and in between I re-organized our cassettes (don't even get me started) and Great Courses section. I also added shelving units and dusted.

My criteria for weeding was fairly simple (which almost made me doubt myself). I looked at items older than 2008 and that hadn't circulated in a year OR hadn't gone out more than three times in the past two years. If there were double copies I kept the one in best shape and got rid of the beat up one. Now all our shelves have about 25% free space and everything has been shelf-read!

I was shvitzing all over the place, but had such a feeling of accomplishment after. The only thing left for me to do is run some numbers about the size of the collection before and after and put a report in our collection development manual.

I'm a grown-up! I'm a librarian! Hear me roar!