Another tale of library school woe

The BBQ Pit
21

Lordy. I googled “Wheel Model of Ethical Decision Making” and clicked on a few of the items that came up. I could not force myself to read beyond a paragraph or two. I wouldn’t have believed that anyone could write about the topic without at least one demonstration figure, but two of the three I tried were just text. Lots and lots of text.

I believe, but am not certain, that they were discussing the need for the wheel and the theory behind it, without descending to any discussion on how to use the wheel. The article with the words ‘roulette wheel’ in the title, on the other hand, had figures and demonstrated using the wheels. There was a comparison of a pie chart to a wheel, and further modifications to make, not only a “Roulette Wheel of Decision Making” but also a “Dart Board of Decision Making.” The article was using the decision to have yearly prostate exams or not as its base question, so I don’t think the wheels were confined to ethics.

The articles made me want to: A) not read them and B) grab an ethical magic eight ball. Sadly, I now have an urge to pull up one of those articles and write about the “Tarot Card Model of Ethical Decision Making.” I think I’ll go lie down until the urge passes.

Oh, and bless all librarians, everywhere.

22

Tenure-track academic librarian checking in here…my research agenda is titled (in my own mind): Why Library School Sucks. Here’s hoping that the ALISE people don’t read the Dope.

Justin I just wanted to say that I feel your pain. Good luck and keep your chin up. It sucks but it doesn’t last that long.

What area of librarianship are you going into?

23

This thread is blowing my mind – I had no idea I had it so well. My cataloging classes were so practical, stimulating, and (do I dare say it?) fun (for serious!), that I went into the program with a concentration in archives management and left with a concentration in cataloging. Every one of my assignments in the four cataloging classes I took were practical (I know how to create an authority record from scratch, I’ve built a thesaurus for a specialized collection, etc.), with just enough theory and updates on how RDA is going to change things to keep the practical in perspective.

My technology class was all practical (mostly building web pages), my reference class was practical, my children’s lit/collection development class was practical… the only heavy theory class I had was my intro to archives.

Simmons College

(I am absolutely glad it’s over, though. That Abstracts and Indexing course nearly did me in.)

24

I must have been lucky then…everybody I met in the UCLA library school (early 1980s) seemed to be pretty sharp.

Uh-oh…

Thankfully I never met anyone of this description. At the time I mentioned, everybody was pretty excited about the possibilities of computer based systems and online databases. And, remember, I’m talking about a time of 300-baud modems to use which you had to place the ends of telephone handset into two suction-cup-like receptacles on the modem.

We thought it was Real Neat that UCLA had managed to convert its entire catalog to the greenscreen electronic catalog of the era–all the way back to 1977!

On the other hand, an older woman that the father of a friend of mine was dating, worked in a library and was always saying how much she disliked computers. My friend kept calling her a librarian, but she was actually a clerk–another thorn in the side that librarians have to deal with. In this case I think librarians’ resentment at being confused with clerks is justified. No true librarian worth their salt would be so dismissive of computer tech.

25

GAH! Yes, didn’t understand the reason for it, made the entries up the day before it was due.

26

If here he doth lurk, then thou hast already said too much.

27

Not really; he’d never think of himself as Nutjob but as an Innovative Educator. :rolleyes:

A question for all who have gone to library school in the last 10 years or so, did they require you to take courses in web page design/maintenance? I ask because I was really irked that mine did not (in fact they only offered one and that just once a year at the same time as a requirement) and this is something that is or can be VERY important and certainly looks good on a resume.

28

If I’ve said too much, then I’ve said too much. But if he holds it against me I’ve got enough documentation to show I did all my work and never mentioned his name or the school.

I took the Intro to Information Technology course (the only tech class I’m required to take) a year and a half ago. We had a short crash course on web design and we only required to make one page using basic HTML. There are other computer classes, but none focused soley on web design.

29

I’ll join the general rant. I now possess a MLS. Whoopee.

Well, maybe not that. I really want to be an Adult Reader’s Advisor, but will have to wait until some of the crones who feed off book bindings and the empty printer cartridges die in the rafters above the second floor stacks and their desiccated bodies fall to the floor…
But let’s bitch about professors or rather, “instructors”. Here are few of the gems I had. (I also had some absolutely wonderful, innovative, extremely intelligent and intelligible, amiable profs).

  1. The IT guy aka The Jerk. He was a guest lecturer on (IMS) systems analysis and data base creation, who had us deconstruct the website Library Thing per Ferber (entity etc). Perhaps I have it muddled–he mumbled and digressed and didn’t bother to explain anything.
    At one point, I raised my hand (this was the oncampus session) and asked timidly, “what about the end user? This seems very complicated and abstruse for a user.” His reply told me basically everything I needed to know about why I loathe database interfaces and why I agree with Karen Schneider re OPAC etc. He said, “You are the designer: who are you going to make this job easier for? It’s human nature to make it easier for yourself.” Well, that is as may be, but seeing as how we’re in a service industry, I have some issues with that, Jerk! Especially when many, many users cannot even spell–how about doing the Google thang and making an option: did you mean? (this is not for Library Thing, this was about databases in general). :mad:

  2. My cataloging instructor. I called her the Autistic Smurf, and shouldn’t have insulted autistic people like that. She (this was an online class) complained constantly about her “workload”–she had a TA; her kids were always her excuse for not returning grades and work etc. 'Cause, you know, it’s hard to have 2 kids and a dog and be a distance teacher and all.
    Her best teaching “method” was assign us something that dealt with AACR2 or “find waterbuffalo using [something I have mercifully expunged from my brain and want no part of]” and trace it backwards or whatever. She does not tell us how to do this or even give hints. We are to just find this stuff in the catalogue. And then we are to put it into appropriate MARC format (or AACR2). THEN, after we have fumbled and blustered and emailed one another and thrown AACR2 across the room in frustration–the NEXT class time, she tells us all the things we did wrong. By this, we are supposed to learn How To Catalog. There literally was no instruction in that class. I cannot identify one thing I learned in Cataloging–except that I don’t want to be a Cataloger (which I can’t even say with certainty, since it wasn’t given a fair shake, IMO).

We (the cataloging class) took a field trip to the Ag Library on campus where we had to look up bits about pork processing and the animal husbandry industry–in Dewey. UofI is (I think) the only major library to have its collection in Dewey. She mentioned Lof C in two lectures. (Now, I loves me some Dewey–for smaller public libraries/schools-- but come on!). Bonus: we had a library worker who did cataloging and was in school for his MLS–he used to bait her in class, sometimes. He said he didn’t really know what she was talking about and he wasn’t sure she knew, either…

She also like to make up stories about cataloging–not incredible MARC errors she’d found, but I mean actual fairy tales that she told us in class. IMS, one involved a village where [insert some bunch of MARC fields] lived and yet, they had to do extra work! So they got other “hats”, that is, they subbed for other fields. We, of course, immediately started riffing on this with this MARC field doublecrossing/cheating on/ committing welfare fraud on other MARC fields–all the while helpless with laughter, when we weren’t appalled by what we were paying to listen to.

I do so wish I was making this up. Sadly, the way my mind works, I remember the vehicle she used, rather than the content she intended us to “learn”. I know fuck all about MARC after this class, but I know that some of the “fields” wear extra “hats”. Go, me!

And then there was the tag team set of profs who taught Adult Public Services, but used the class time to extol the virtues of Second Life. I learned more about Second Life than issues such as the homeless in the library, adult illiteracy, community outreach etc. :rolleyes: These folks actually act as librarians in SL, the ultimate busman’s holiday if ever there was one.

30

I believe the great and mighty New York Public uses Dewey even for its research collection.

And I loved Indexing and Abstracting. Took the USDA indexing course but never persued it further. Indexing is awesome!

31

I’ve worked (save for a 3 month first job) in academic libraries of varying sizes (I much much much much much much much prefer smaller to larger: the reference desk at a huge research library can be akin to being desk clerk at a Prick Convention). One thing I’ve noticed about my colleagues is that the best at customer service and the best as colleagues in general tend to be the ones with non academic life experience. I don’t just mean “over 30” or whatever, but I’m talking about the ones who had careers outside of academia before taking their bibliographic holy orders. The ones who’ve never had a non-academic job (I’m discounting jobs worked as teens or in college) tend to be (whether male/female/gay/straight) by far the whiniest and most thin-skinned.

Case in point: my favorite job- one I’m considering going back to (it’s open and I’ve been asked to apply by my former boss) was at a college in Georgia that had a HORRIBLE reputation for infighting in its library. Literally, an article was written, pseudonymously, in CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION about how dysfunctional we were. I actually liked the person who wrote the article (she never identified the university but you’d have to have NO research skills not to be able to identify it with just a modicum of searching from the clues she provided), but lost a great deal of respect for her after that, due especially to the fact that she presented herself as an innocent victim of the byzantine intrigues and factions. She never mentioned that

1- she was the chief byzantine plotter
2- much of the friction was because she and two other employees (both of them in the “no real non-academic experience”) simply WOULD NOT GET OVER some events that had happened years before
3- that she had left the place and then practically begged to come back only 5 months later- and was rehired even though there were candidates just as qualified

Anyway, there and elsewhere, and not just in libraries but in other academic departments, those who’ve not worked outside academia seem to think they have some Creator-granted-right to never be offended and they see “harassment” and or cause for official complaint in places where I (and most other ‘not kid’/‘corporate work experience’ people) would at most just see “man, that guy’s a dickwad” (yes, he was a jerk to you- he’s a jerk to everybody- but he didn’t harass or berate or oppress you or pelt you with rocks and garbage, he’s just generically rude or condescending- choose your battles). Another thing that drove me NUTS was when they’d talk politics with students doing reports- to me that’s extremely unprofessional. I’m gay, I’m left of center politically and I’m agnostic or atheist depending on how you define the term, but if a student/other patron should come to me and say, politely (i.e. not deliberately provoking) “I’m writing a paper in which I’m arguing that the Constitution is based on biblical teachings and therefore gays should not be allowed to marry and I need sources”, then I’m going to help them find sources that support the argument gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry because of biblical teachings and theocratic basis of government. Other than perhaps suggesting “and here’s some material that argues from the opposite perspective— so that you’ll know what the opposing arguments are in formulating your own” (nudge nudge wink wink) or perhaps correcting a factual error for them (i.e. if a student wants information on Mark Twain’s THE SCARLET LETTER then I’m going to do the ref.int. to find out if they mean Mark Twain or if they mean THE SCARLET LETTER, or if I were asked to find information on Obama’s Muslim past I’d probably point out ‘he doesn’t have one’) but my job is to remain objective. I’m not their poli-sci or English or government or whatever professor, I’m not they’re life coach or sensei.
These other librarians I mentioned (same place): I mention who didn’t have a career before academia- not so, they’re going to make commentary: “Well, our government isn’t based on that and ajfoijaod fjaoijd faij alfj a” and they’re correct and I agree of course, but that defeats the purpose of the student’s education (at least the part they exercise themselves).

Anyway, sorry for a hijack- I’ll end it here. But I will say, the best librarians are those who’ve experience life outside academia, and have seen things happen almost daily in other jobs that would get you fired in a heartbeat in a college setting and that academia, while not the ivory tower lofty world many seem to think it is, really isn’t indicative of the corporate/for-profit world.

32

Dude, you gotta at least give me a hint as to where that is.

33

I have to agree with Sampiro–some of these librarians/academics seem so naive when it comes to the real world. I’m not sure if it’s ivory tower-ness or just living in a bubble. Very odd, whatever it is.

34

I know this is way more than 10 years ago, but in the 1980s UCLA’s then independent library school required us to have a college level programming course as a prerequisite, although a lot of us had to make it up during the first year.

35

We had to do a simple HTML page in Notepad, that’s all. You’d have thought they were asking for some of these brain donors’ first born, though.

Seriously, I mean, they gave us examples. You could have just put your own text into them, really.

36

I’m currently in library school, and, though they don’t require it, they offer a course dealing with web design and maintenance just about every semester. I’m definitely taking it in the fall, as I know it’s more or less mandatory for me to have an idea of what I’m doing in regard to web design and “crisis aversion/management for computers” in this field. I’m also testing my ability to handle cataloging this summer by doing some copy cataloging and helping to set up an actual ILS for a small not-for-profit organization. (Am I insane or what?)

I discovered as an undergrad that a lot of academics need the TAs as babysitters more than they’re needed as actual assistants, but I have met some relatively “I can take care of all my own stuff” professors as well. I feel lucky that I’ve had a fairly large amount of customer service work for my age to help prepare me, and that I’m getting my “library experience” in a public library main branch; you learn pretty quickly what to let slide, what to make a big deal out of, and how the “what’s that smell?” game is played. I’m not sure which area of librarianship I’ll end up in yet, but a public library would not be out of the question as long as I don’t have to be a children’s librarian; I know I don’t have the patience or enthusiasm for that kind of position.

37

Public librarianship. I already work in a great public library and this little piece of paper is all I need. I’ve learned way more from my co-workers then I have so far in library school.

38

Hello fellow GSLIS grad! It sounds like we had some of the same instructors. I was just as frustrated by the emphasis on Second Life at UIUC. I wanted to direct some of them to the SA threads lampooning SL.

39

Question on this – do you mean that you couldn’t use the Internet to find source material, after which you pull the references that you got from the Internet from library shelves/periodicals/journals/microfiche, etc.? And if you did that, how would the professor know, as long as you gave him the end material rather than the method you used to get there?

40

I sooo wanted to tell them–Hey! Get a first life! but figured I wouldn’t ace the course, if I did so…

We had to make web pages or sites–more than one. But we were given “tutorials” in this, which while well planned and executed, did not help me, much, because I would learn the (for lack of a better word) algorithm, but then not need it for 3 months and would have forgotten it by then. I still struggle with basic computer terminology. Perhaps I’m a brain donor. Or perhaps I am on the wrong side of the digital divide. I managed to make two attractive websites in Sea Monkey, but I did so by calling tech support repeatedly. It’s not a skill I can say I mastered by any stretch.

I have to say I feel like I worked (not very hard) for 2 years and learned (almost) nothing. The thought does not make me happy.