Library Revolution

Jeff Scott at Gather No Dust posted about what he learned in library school.

Here is what I learned.

In Public Library Marketing (a three day weekend seminar in the summer given by a marketing professional who knew nothing about libraries – and that’s a good thing!) I learned that libraries are crappy at marketing themselves. CRAPPY. Shamefully so. Marketing is relegated to the absolute bottom of most libraries’ priority list. And this is one of the things that will kill us.

In Information Literacy Instruction (6 week summer course), I learned the importance of learning to teach as a librarian. Really teach, with solid technique, objectives, presentation skills, followup, well-designed lessons, and so on. I already had teaching experience, so maybe I read more into the class than some of the other students. But it gave me a good chance to reexamine the librarian’s role as a n educator and sharpen my teaching skills.

In Library Administration, I learned that any jackass can run a library. Maybe not everyone can run one successfully, but they can at least keep things afloat.

I think those are valuable lessons, and I have used all of them in my professional career.

In all of my other classes, I learned… well, really nothing of interest or real relevance. I learned nothing of technology, practical skills, philosophical issues in my profession, or even critical thinking skills for use on the job. The classes were boring, outdated, not nearly up to the level of previous graduate work I had done, and altogether meaningless. And expensive.

And I did well, too! I mean, I wasn’t blowing the thing off at all. I wanted to do work, learn, and come out of the Library School experience as a knowledgeable professional. I did not get a 4.0, but I came close (one A- in Introduction to Libraries!!!!) which to me means the professors thought I took from the classes whatever they were trying to offer. I guess they just weren’t offering much. Which is too bad.

If I had it to do again, I would go to library school. Frankly, I needed the degree to advance in the field. But this time I would blow it off, and not spend so much energy mad that I wasn’t learning anything. My experience was that there is a lot of important knowledge and skills required to be an effective professional librarian. But, for me at least, these were nearly all learned elsewhere.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Etc., professional development. 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.