CC image courtesy of dev null on Flickr

Last week an MLS student interviewed me for a project. The last part of my reply to her was this:

Find a job you love. No one goes into librarianship for the money. We go into it for love. There a plenty of bitter, disenchanted people out there in all professions. If you don’t love what you’re doing, do something else.

I think it bears repeating.Similar Posts:

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I recieved this email from one of the students in the Collection Development class I taught at Mizzou and thought in addition to giving my answer I’d open it up for the hive mind.

I had read somewhere, it might have been on your blog in fact, that it might be a good idea for library school graduates to learn some web design languages. I am thinking of picking up in my spare time (whats left of it) some web design language and I’m not sure what would be appropriate in the library setting. Which brings me to my question. Do you have any suggestions as to what technical languages or proficiencies would be good to pick up? I have thought about HTML, ColdFusion, ASP, and JSP, but beyond knowing a little bit of HTML/XML I am unsure what would be most useful. What do you think? What would you like to see on someones application if you were hiring?

What advice can you give Chris?

Some other blogs that have addressed this

• Why every Library Science student should learn programming
• Technology education and the “real world”
• Core skills: Curiosity
• technology advisory

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It’s a question many of us with an MLS,  and those without, struggle with.  Just take a look at the Library Day in the Life blog entries.  You’ll see a wide, and I mean WIDE, range of variety in how we spend our days, weeks and years and our education levels.

Matt Hamilton wrote a post with some observations on the field,  he’s about to graduate with an MLS and he’s the Library Innovation and Technology Manager at the Boulder Public Library.   He points to some problems in the field, namely the wide variety of what we do.  I agree with him when he says :

The field is not in good shape. I don’t think adding “information” to the MLS is the answer, either. I don’t think that by further genericizing the profession by calling ourselves “Information Professionals” is any kind of an answer either..

I don’t completely agree with his solution.

It’s time to stop making our field generic in the I-schools, and to let our students get the specialized skill-set they need. And I don’t mean that you take a “track” that consists of three classes providing a shallow introduction to your area of specialization. I mean we need real, exceptional, challenging programs tailored to the specific specialties within our field.

Or Karin Dalziel (a recent  MLS graduate) – Why every Library Science Student Should Learn Programming

But the thing is I have to give them credit for trying.  I mean it.  That’s not snark.  Because the thing is, I agree with the problem both of them are discussing, I just don’t know what I think the solution is.  So I’ve been practicing the fine art of shutting up if I don’t have anything of value to add.

Then I realized I do have something to contribute. I may not have an answer, but I can spread the message and the more people that are aware of it, that think on it, that talk about it, that work towards a solution, the more likely we are to come up with an answer.

Do you think we have a problem? What do you think the probelm is?   What do you think is the answer?Similar Posts:

• There Are No Magic Beans You Have To Do The Work
• Round Up: What It Means to Have an Masters in Library Science, or Information Science or…
• What programming should a library science student learn?