As a law librarian, I can attest that my position puts me quite at the nexus of two separate professions which do that equally well.

At the last library I worked, the public service desks were staffed nearly exclusively with non-degreed “reference assistants.” Well, since those are the people patrons see, they think they are the librarians. The administration and a few of the MLS-holders were so upset they were debating having the “real” librarians wear a special vest or smock (imagine Wal-Mart) to denote them as actual librarians. Thankfully, that idea was never put into practice.

And I see lots of librarians who sign their e-mails “Jane Doe, MLIS”. Really?? Is that necessary?

Frankly, the public we serve could care less if we spent $20,000 on a degree (or more). They want to know if we can give them the information/item they want or need. That’s it. For those who don’t work directly with the public; their work supports those who do. And there are some positions that do require an advanced degree. But for the majority of library work – no MLS is required. You just gotta help people find what they need.

After one semester in library school, I realized how much I was being cheated. But I wanted a library job, so what choice did I have? Now I have my degree and my cushy library job, but I’m out a whole lot of money.

And to those who try to argue library school is hard; I worked a full-time and a part-time job and finished my degree in 2 years. Without breaking a sweat. Sure, occasionally I had a challenging assignment. But mostly it was just a big huge waste of time. Very little of what I worked on in library school is useful to me in my library job.

A large number of librarians just need to get over themselves. No other profession (and I’ve been in plenty of other professions) spends as much time and energy telling themselves how smart and useful they are.

As for distance programs…yawn, yes I worked on my degree online. I also worked in the library full-time at the same time. I had no one to support me, so I was unable to quit my job and go to school full-time. But I did work online 7 days a week, every night after work (sometimes until 1:00 am) and on my days off. Oh that was sooooooooooooo easy! Ayup!

What made the degree easy for me was my infinite actual full-time library employment experience.

My pay is pretty damn good as are my benefits….I may not be getting a raise for the next two years, but I am getting the cost increase of my health care insurance picked up.

So Al is a “Harpy”? So what??? I had a patron tell one of my staff members that I’m a BITCH (I wouldn’t cancel his & his wifes fines)!!! 1: being a Crabby Bitch is just part of my charm. 2. Babe In Total Control (of) Herself! You betcha!

One of the problems with library school, however, is that we get a lot of people who wash out of other graduate programs, and while some of them do so because they decided late in the game that they just didn’t want to pursue that particular field of study any more, you also have some people that have the problems listed above, and can’t or won’t deal with them before moving on. I graduated from library school at a time when about the only people in the country that were hiring in any numbers were the three New York City public library systems, but they were hiring a lot of people, and a number of my class decided that they’d accept the relatively low pay because a) it was a foot in the door and b) freakin’ NYC, man! (I was one of them, and man, such times we had…) But there were also several people who refused to consider even the possibility of working for a public library, even the vaunted NYPL, because the only job that they would settle for was one as an academic librarian in the field that they’d previously failed in. And that was when the job market wasn’t nearly as depressing as it is now.