Librarians everywhere hate me

[Prudence]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Which program did you go through?

What's weird about that is that of the three major reference specialties, the humanities is the worst represented on the internet. Monographs are the primary method of scholarship in the humanities and while the digitization of those resources is finally beginning, the more journal-based scholarship of the hard and soft sciences has been electronic since well before the World Wide Web (god to I miss my DIALOG account).

University of Washington. They got a shiny new Dean a few years ago who was all into dropping the library science and being about "information science." If that would have meant a focus on user behavior studies and information seeking behaviors and so forth, I could have bought it. Instead, the focus is now on training database administrators.

And I'm with you on the weirdness. That was basically the focus of our class - that unlike the other specialties, most of our work would NOT be on the internet. Thus, we needed to learn about print reference sources. Heck, I work in the health sciences and have degrees in the humanities so I know first hand about the journal/monograph dichotomy. That was why it was so absolutely INSANE to have the DEAN of a library science program utter such inanity.

I wanted to be an academic librarian, but the field currently requires two years experince as a full-time librarian just to qualify. And the local public libraries require 2-5 years part-time experience to qualify for full-time employment. In fact, one of the major public library systems, King County, now has a application process where you have to WORK FOR FREE in three different branches in three different functions while they observe -- and that's just to get into the applicant pool! This information I have from someone who actually went through that humiliation. One of my classmates finally took a job she hates -- at a prison! including "close" custody and "special offender" units! the other library staff members are inmates! -- just so she could get full-time work and get the two years' experience she needs to qualify for academic library positions.

In my case, I'm the primary wage earner so I can't afford to take low-paying part-time work to "pay my dues." I've worked as a paraprofessional in a public library and I don't think that I should have to work as a librarian in a public library for x number of years if that's not what I want to do. That's just perpetuating the perception that public librarians aren't professionals committed to their jobs. The library where I volunteer has librarians just marking time until they can qualify for a job in another type of library. There's this alleged "librarian shortage," but entry-level positions get applicants with 5+ years of experience who've been laid off from elsewhere. It's nearly impossible to break into the field now.