Comments on: What I'm finding as an Information Professional

By: Where’s the Brewin’ Librarian? (or, No… I did not fall off the face of the Earth) | The Brewin' Librarian

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:29:37 +0000

[...] Before, I could spend the evening on a whim staying up late coding a cool website or mashup just because I thought it would be fun. I could head off to pretty much any meeting, conference, or committee that I could drive to and afford. I could spend my time exploring and playing with ideas and writing rants about what needs to change. [...]

By: Roger Green

Roger Green — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:03:06 +0000

The learning curve, 17 years out from library school, is always tremendous. I agree that learning programming is not a solution – on my first day working as a librarian, I’m doing code for an electronic bulletin board – WHO CARES, now? And I loathed it to boot.

By: A discussion on the future of librarianship « Circulation

A discussion on the future of librarianship « Circulation — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:34:05 +0000

[...] Then Matt Hamilton (Brewin’ Librarian): What I’m Finding as an Information Professional [...]

By: What’s the matter with our profession? « Librarian by Day

What’s the matter with our profession? « Librarian by Day — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:58:34 +0000

[...] Hamilton wrote a post with some observations on the field, he’s about to graduate with an MLS and he’s the [...]

By: Jerry Yarnetsky

Jerry Yarnetsky — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:30:03 +0000

A view from the public library side of things…

I think this problem goes way beyond how librarians are trained — it’s the management mindset of “give them what they want” and “run libraries like a business.”

I know there are societal changes that influenced that mindset, but the whole notion of running government “like a business” has clearly failed our nation and libraries are paying the price.

The expectation that we’re a glorified bookstore leaves us being compared to Amazon and Walmart. The same expectation has lead management to dumb down the staff. The same expectation has kept pay low which makes it hard to attract the good talent that would allow us to innovate. The same expectation has allowed governments to burn our budgets because we’re no longer seen as essential services to our communities.

Yes, “librarians” need to step up to the plate, but we need the institutional framework to make it happen.

By: LisatheLibrarian

LisatheLibrarian — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:31:20 +0000

Interesting points. As an academic librarian, I would like to add that librarians are doing/not doing all these things you have outlined. In addition, in the academic environment, we are not prepared to take our place as a member of an academic community. I disagree with Rachel, a national certificate program will lower the status of academic librarians and reduce their standing on college campuses. The History and Biology faculty don’t have a certificate program, do they? Already, most academic librarians are not doing the same types of research and teaching activities that their fellow faculty conduct, whether they have tenure or not. If they do not have faculty status on their college campus (and there is no consistency in acquiring this status), they are increasingly pressured to provide a hybrid of “information literacy teaching” while providing a key student service. It is a great struggle to find a place for oneself on a college campus with inconsistent expectations, both from the campus and the librarian professional community. At the same time, the profession itself is changing rapidly, along with the academic community.

By: Rachel Resnick

Rachel Resnick — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:18:49 +0000

What we need is a national certification program to ensure that all libraries have some necessary skills in all aspects of librarianship (info theory, management, all of the lower levels of courses), then possibly separate certificates so that librarians can be recognized for specialization in particular functional areas (metadata/cataloging; reference, info systems, etc.). Accreditation is one thing, but there’s no guarantee that anyone keeps up their skills beyond the MLS unless there’s certification and recertification.

By: See Also… » The Brewin’ Librarian » What I’m finding as an Information Professional

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:13:05 +0000

[...] The Brewin’ Librarian » What I’m finding as an Information ProfessionalMy fellow Coloradan, Matt Hamilton, takes a look around and comes to the conclusion that "the library field is weird. No, really. I mean it…. I’m afraid we just might be making a mockery of ourselves. And we don’t have another 15 years to fix it. In 15 years the information landscape will have changed just as drastically as the web has changed us and if we don’t get serious we might just fall off the map completely." Matt is finishing his MLS, and he's written up a very interesting perspective on what's wrong with the field, what's right with it, and how he thinks we cold start to improve things. [...]