There is no “I” in “team”. There is, however, a “me”.
Cool! Say, do you guys still use card catalogues over there, or is it all computers now? The private library the wife and I belong to over here, the Neilson Hays Library, is in a beautiful 19th-century colonial building and uses the old-style card catalogues.
I had good groups in LIS and piss poor ones. They were an interesting study of group dynamics, but I have to say I don’t exactly like them. They’re only as good as the people in them are communicators, self-starters and mature adults. These people are sometimes hard to find, sadly.
What I found through LIS and in my stint as a page (I lasted one year, got pneumonia and quit. I have better ways of making money–I did it because I thought it would add to my LIS experience. It didn’t.) was that while there were some really nice people who worked in this library, most of them were seriously naive about how the world works.
Well, not quite that. I found in my suburban library the worst cases of entitlement and bitchery/whining. What is with the put upon attitude of some of these folks? You work the circ desk–it’s your job to answer questions. Ditto the reference desk. It may well have been just the cultural at that library, but almost all the women (there was only one male in the place) complained constantly about how much they had to do.
Coming from a job where I was 12+ hours on my feet, knee deep in shit, vomit, blood and fear, no lunch and never a thank you, I found and still find this laughable. They don’t know how good they’ve got it. One employee complained to me vociferously that she had had to go up the stairs to adult fic 5 times that day. The sheer horror of it! Oh, the humanity!
I’m not saying librarians don’t work hard–fielding Ref questions while getting your other work done, juggling the needs and wants of a population vs the wherewithall possible is difficult and can be exhausting. But come on, people-- You’re not abused and neglected and treated badly. The pages there are–they are not invited to staff functions such as the Christmas party at this library. How about that? 
:rolleyes:
I still find it puzzling the degree of disconnect between the theoretical library I learned about and the actual one I worked in. I really, really hope this library was an anomaly.
I like the variant "There is no “I” in team, but there are two in “Kiss my ass, biatch!”.
Pretty much all computer. There was an article in Chronicle or Library Journal or some such a few years ago that actually had photos of dozens of card catalogues in landfills (they were all from the same library system). With the need for space and the convenience of computer catalogs it’s just not justified except perhaps for particularly pretty or old pieces.
The exception is that a lot of catalogers will keep some for various records, or really really old records that have yet to be entered into the database (that probably never will be) such as special collections or government documents or whatever, but for 99% of the collections in 99% of libraries it’s the computerized version.
I should mention that’s in academic libraries and most larger public libraries; I understand that a lot of elementary/high schools/small-rural public libraries still use card catalogs.
Believe it or not, hippies have something to do with the computerizing of the collection into a database. During some of the student demonstrations and riots at Berkeley and other schools, one of the popular tricks was to remove a huge stack of cards from the catalogue and burn them or rip them apart or just steal them. This was a nightmare, of course, for the catalogers had to figure out just which cards needed replacing, and it was at Berkeley that (according to one source I read) it was first decided (late '60s) “let’s see if our computer gurus can make us a database so this won’t happen again”. Probably only hastened it by a few years if at all, but still demonstrates one of the advantages of the computer version.
There is no “I” in Mongol Horde.
Hm, I might have to look that up now and see the story myself. I went to Berkeley as an undergrad and was very fond of the giant card catalog, not to mention the old main library stacks (which were incredibly cool). By my junior year they were both gone. 
My first semester, I took the basic Library Science course that would earn you a stack pass if you got an A–and they promptly got rid of the whole stack pass system–but it was a fun course.
My first job as a real librarian, in 2003 or 2004, was in an art library, all by myself, underpaid and neglected. There was a card catalog and a huge pile of items waiting to be cataloged. The program you printed the cards out with was on a 5.25 disk and showed up as green letters on a black screen, and to say it was persnickety would be something of an understatement. Of course, managing a card catalog wasn’t at all covered in library school.
Oh, also, they were exhibition catalogs, an enormous pain in the ass.
I used to have nightmares about dropping a drawer after I took the rod out. That first scene in Ghostbusters? Yeah, I don’t like it much. 
(Note, however, that the cards in that scene are missing the holes for the rod.)
A great fictional treatment of library chaos post-catalog disappearance can be found in Neal Stephenson’s The Big U, a generally hilarious book.
Seriously, if it weren’t for all the books, I would probably be forced to the conclusion sometimes that 90% of our patrons were in fact illiterate idiots.
Bonus from yesterday: If you just walked past one sign and are inches from another explaining the libraries hours, and it says the library closes at 6 on Saturdays, and now it’s 5:59, and someone inside the building is locking the door you’re trying to open, that means the library is closed. No, we will not let you in for just five minutes to check your email, because the two employees there both really want to go home.
I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this one. How can a library school student be “afraid of the university library”? In your dealings with people like that, have you managed to get a feel about what it is that scares them?
You should become an Archivist. We may not be any smarter, but we can fake it better since nobody actually ever encounters us!
A small collection of quotes from either professional librarians or fellow students. The point? If librarians aren’t morons you would have figured that they’d have improved their curriculum over the past few decades. Although, if you read through the two currently ongoing LIS threads, you will note the general consensus is that library school sucks, is a waste of time, and just a hoop a person needs to jump through in order to become a librarian. So if we all basically agree library school is a waste of time… oh, yeah, it is because we’re morons.
Ok. No. I don’t mean to be so down on librarians. But seriously, why is library school so asinine? And why hasn’t something been done to change this?
Ah, but the conference drinking makes up for the sadness of library school.
The problem, IMO, begins with the accrediting body for U.S. library schools - ALA. Because there is significant variation in library programs as far as the courses offered, the accreditation standards are vague and don’t necessarily (AFAIK) judge the quality of the courses, but look at expected faculty/adjunct ratios and the like.
Of course, I could be making this up because the ALA site pisses me off every time I have to go deal with it. It’s that bad. For a profession that is supposed to be focused on the organization of information, it’s really bad that the major professional body can’t put together a decent website.
Actually I quite liked my library school. A lot of it was focused on working in an actual library, though. I’m still using stuff I learned there.
It’s big, you see. It’s underground. There are no pretty covers on the books. The carpet is orange.
It isn’t just LC call numbers, I don’t think. A LOT of people are intimidated by university libraries. You obviously have no excuse if you’re a library school student, especially since you’re supposed to have a bachelor’s degree (guess you didn’t go to the library then either), but I see it in all levels of education. People know what to do in the public library. For one thing, you walk into the public library, what do you see? Books! I’ve been in a lot of academic libraries and one thing most of them have in common is that you can’t even figure out where the books are unless you ask somebody or just give the elevator a try. At Emory I asked and somebody directed me through a hard hat zone.
Also, academic libraries do just tend to have a forbidding atmosphere. They tend to be super quiet. They tend to have special collections with funny rules that you have to ask about, and Reading Rooms, and such. Some of them have closed stacks, which is really intimidating. Most of them have total pain in the ass OPACs that give you extremely confusing information (“where’s the business library? Is it in this building? Does this mean that it’s just at the Aiken campus? What’s the annex?”) and the building you’re in can have several different “libraries” within it. What if you need to go to Gov Docs? What the hell are those call numbers? Where is Gov Docs?
I mean, I do get why people who have no experience with large academic libraries would be intimidated. It doesn’t help that a lot of them were obviously originally closed stack libraries, too. You walk in and have the feeling that you just don’t understand this system and you don’t know how to operate it and you’re afraid to ask somebody; at the public library, the librarian is the lady who read stories to your kids. At the academic library, the librarian might even be a man. In a suit! But, seriously, library school students? No excuse.
And as to why we don’t do anything about fixing library school? Because library school is different from librarianship. My library school was considering adding a Ph.D. program. My parents said, why don’t you go and get your doctorate? I laughed until I saw stars. What kind of douchebag gets a doctorate in library science? <looks around at library school instructors>… never mind. It’s like education - you don’t get your doctorate in it if you actually want to practice it.
Another reason we’re afraid to fix library schools is that we (for good and bad reasons) jealously guard our professional status. I am a librarian because I have a masters’ degree; the other person sitting at the desk next to me is a paraprofessional. Too many libraries are saving money by replacing librarians with paraprofessionals. (Kind of an insulting word, IMHO - in the offices where I worked before grad school, a “paraprofessional” was a temp.) So we cling really hard to ALA accreditation, etc., to defend the profession, when what we really need to do is dump the “library school” people and replace them with librarians. Let the profession take over the academic discipline and we’d all be better off. That Gov Docs class that actually challenged me? The only class I had that was taught by a working librarian.
[Sunrazor reads the OP, skips all responses and goes directly to “Post Quick Reply”.]
I’m a graduate student at the University of Norhern Colorado (Greeley) and have spent many, many hours in Michener Library. Our librarians, especially on the reference desk, are absolutely wonderful. They are helpful, professional, knowledgable and enthusiastic. Even the student assistants who do the scut work are helpful and eager to please. I can’t say enough good about 'em.
[Ted Knight]
Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu …
[/Ted Knight]
My favorite library school professor practically begged me to go to Chapel Hill and get my Ph.D. so I could come back and teach with her. For her sake. So she wouldn’t be the only sane one, you see.
I’m the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of a regional library and I have a question.
Do you receive any training related to actually running a library? I’m not talking about ordering books, doing reference work, etc. I’m talking about actually running an organization? The executive director of our library is an OK librarian, but he’s an abysmal administrator. The staff lacks direction, he has no public relations skills at all (the poor guy stutters and stammers like Mel Tillis having a stroke) and that’s VERY important in that we receive very little public funding, and he’s just bad at actually doing the non-librarian part of his job.
Anyone want to run a regional library that serves two rural (but growing) counties, has only a handful of paid staff, volunteers that need alot of hand-holding (but are getting better), and has a budget of a about $250,000 a year?
My library school (and I assume all ALA-accredited programs) required 2 management classes. One was the general “Library Management” that I think you’re thinking of. We covered stuff like personnel, budgeting, dealing with the board, supervision. Every librarian I’ve ever talked to about their “management” class has said that it’s the most useless class they took in library school.
Yeah, the management class was useless. The class where I had to produce a detailed profile of an actual library was a lot more helpful.
Our poor rural county system just got a wonderful guy who is great at all that administrative stuff and is saving our butts after years of a Peter-principle-admin. You can’t have him plnnr! But they do exist.