PLA Blog

… and I really am disappointed that I missed it. However, I ran into a colleague on Saturday who had attended the forum as she was running out to lunch, and we chatted a bit about it.

Overall, it sounds like it was a good session, or at least there were good parts to the session, but there was also decidedly unproductive parts of the session.

As I understand it, a paper on the topic was read, and there were panels of librarians (who had seen the paper beforehand) whose job it was to respond to the paper. While one librarian (my colleague) did a great job of responding to the paper, using pointed notes, proposing questions, offering counter opinions, and really speaking to the issue, it seemed like many of the other librarians (especially the academic types and professors) on the panel had simply prepared their own three page paper response to read out loud which didn’t really address the issues set forth by the original paper, but rather said what they wanted to say about what they wanted to say. This, unfortunately, seems pretty normal librarianship today, and is somewhat demonstrative of the academic/professorial approach to discussing issues, which sometimes spills over into the classroom as a style of teaching.

The small table group part of the session seemed to be a bit more intellectually fulfilling, since the smaller groupings allowed for more real discussion and a little less rhetoric and diatribe.

I didn’t get to ask whether or not any conclusionary points came out of it, like a list of goals for improving MLIS education, or even a list of aspects that are missing from library education today.

In my travels to conferences, my experiences working with library school administration, my communications with students in other programs (blogs, emails, IM, etc.), and my fellow librarian colleagues, I’ve gotten a sense of what other programs are like, and where the similar weaknesses lie. Taking that experience into consideration, here’s a skeletal overview of my ideal MLIS program, where the goal is to breed librarians with the flexibility to evolve with the ever-changing information needs of our patrons, as well as the ability to help the library profession evolve as a whole.

• Let’s get wicked selective: Like, financial firms who follow promising students in their academic careers then recruit them kind of selective. People in library school should want it, should be hungry for it, and should be super motivated to get it, and not just be there because they “need the piece of paper” or they couldn’t get a job in their own field. It’s not just about flooding the market with unemployed new librarians to throw at the retiree problem, it’s about matching each candidate as a high quality package to the profession. This includes recruiting candidates with core competencies in customer service, professional communication skills, and more that can’t be taught, as well as basic technology skills.
• Aggressive introductory coursework: a one year intro to librarianship course including field trips to see in action what each unit covers. It will take over most of your life for that one year.
• Experience: Not just your average one-semester practicum. Think the Northeastern Coop program, where students work for several semesters as part of their degree. The library school program is responsible for finding, placing, and monitoring each librarian coop, as opposed to the “find your own experience” model that seems to be prevalent.
• Valued adjuncts: It’s the job of the instructors in the program to teach students, not to rake in research dollars for the institution at large. Adjuncts add higher value, and therefore will be valued highly, for their ability to share their real-life experiences with students, and to give a sense of what’s actually going on in the profession right now. Pay them more, and stop treating them like second-class instructors because they don’t have tenure.
• Advisors that know their advisees: Gone are the days where the only interaction you have with an advisor is jumping through hoops in a schedule to have a piece of paper signed. More selective programs mean fewer students to advise, which means more quality advising time per student.
• Technology classes are mandatory: You can’t serve your patrons if you can’t work a computer, a mouse, and a printer, so you can’t get into the program. Period. You need to be able to learn about emerging technologies to serve your patrons. Period.
• Project management is also mandatory: How to assess, plan, assemble, and execute a plan, especially when working with a team from different departments and skill backgrounds, is not a prominent skill in our profession. It needs to be.
• Presentation and instruction skills: Presentations are more than just creating cue cards out of Powerpoint slides. Students must be willing and able to present their knowledge in a comprehensive, pleasing and engaging manner, and to present instructional materials with the same acuity.

Truth be told, I thought that the “The Future Of Our Profession: Educating Tomorrow’s Librarians” presentation by Andrei Codrescu (and Michael Gorman) was going to be more along the lines of what librarians needed to know and learn, and where our profession was going. I have a whole other post for this, but I will say that neither his talk, nor the question period that followed, really even touched on the subject.

Something that will be all over this topic is the Library Education Forum at the Community Church of New York on March 11, 2006. In a nutshell:

We will create a space where all may participate and critically examine the current state of LIS education with the hope that we can learn from each other and provide insight for our colleagues and peers.

This will not be a place to critique specific programs or faculty members. Instead, we hope to give voice to students and recent graduates who have only been able to participate in this general discussion as passive listeners. Be a part of shaping library education for the future. Give light to your own education, your search for work, skills you were glad to have learned and those you wish you had. Gain perspective on where LIS education is heading. Although professors and administrators will be invited to attend, the voice that will be heard will be yours—the student or recent graduate, with the hope that this will be an opportunity for those who are used to teaching to learn from us, the students.

I wish I were going to be in the country for this (I’ll be on a public librarian mindshare trip to China). If you are going to be around, and you care about the future of librarian education, please try to make it to this forum.

Tags: ALAMidwinter2006, conferences

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 10:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.