Comments on: Skills for the New Generation…They Look Familiar, Sort of

By: question

question — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:11:34 +0000

@Techserving You–

Your thoughts about management a breath of fresh air! I have worked for two different incompetent library managers who I swear figured management skills were superfluous to library work, & never bothered to learn them. One of them had been to library school, one had not. Which, I’m not so sure how people land these management jobs without training of some sort.

By: Techserving You

Techserving You — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 02:53:21 +0000

(I’m not saying I think true management skills are best learned from a book – but it seems that many librarians don’t learn it on the job, either – the nature of the “profession,” I suppose. Unlike being able to pick up cataloguing skills on the job, librarians simply don’t seem to pick up management skills of any kind. It’s the rare librarian who is an excellent manager, with or without formal training. But it’s best if they at least have some sort of exposure to the various elements of management.)

By: Techserving You

Techserving You — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 02:45:35 +0000

Interesting, Andrew. Where did you go to school? Database management and development was a required core class for all students (whether they planned to go into librarianship, knowledge management, or archives) at my school. I graduated in 2007.

The students were all interested in tech stuff – at least the application of it. The big thing the students in my program railed against was the required management class. “But I just like books, I don’t want to be a manager!” I’m glad that the prof – who also had an MBA – stuck to her guns. Sooner or later most librarians need to manage SOMETHING or SOMEONE and it would be good if they at least had the bare bones knowledge of project management, writing a vision statement, staffing, etc..

By: Techserving You

Techserving You — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 02:40:20 +0000

Ignoring the main thrust of this article… I’d just like to mention that Puerto Rico is not Florida. It has a very consistent temperature – a mean temperature of 82 or 83 all year ’round. It’s not any worse to be there in August than it is to be in most parts of the US.

By: FinallyaLibrarian

FinallyaLibrarian — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:58:14 +0000

I graduated May 2010 and landed a Librarian position in July in the system I already worked as as asociate. Most of the tech skills I have were accumulated over decades of working in IT, not in library school.

By: Spencer

Spencer — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 14:24:24 +0000

@Jaded-

It makes me feel so good that other “new” librarians get it. It makes me feel like things could get better. Then I realize what a small percentage people like you are and it makes me sad again.

By: Jaded_MLIS

Jaded_MLIS — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:11:08 +0000

As a recent LIS graduate, one of my biggest problems with library school is in their desperate attempt to stay alive they let just about anyone with a pulse and the $$$$ enroll. Like Spencer, I would hire only about a handful and the rest I would politely eject from this “profession” altogether (assuming that we will ever actually be a profession but that’s a gripe for another day).

Most of the people in my library school were not there because they were interested in libraries, information technology, archives, etc. but because they failed as teachers or because they “wanted an easy job.” A good number of my fellow graduates struggled to do the most basic coding and database searching but thanks to the ancient wisdom of “group work” they could get by.

That said, I’m not all that impressed with some of the older generation librarians either. Few even bother to continue educating themselves in new or developing technologies that are immediately affecting their own place of work. I’m not asking that they understand the latest and greatest in cloud computing or Google+ but it wouldn’t kill them to know which datbases their library owns and how to search them. In sum, at any given moment I question whether more than half of our profession is competent enough to run the coffee machine let alone if they even care whether or not they are (in)competent. Maybe that’s me just being all negative though.

By: Formerprof

Formerprof — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:50:14 +0000

When I think back about my time in libraries, I’m struck by the general lack of any distinguishable skills necessary for being a librarian. So you’re an analytical thinker…you’d be good at cataloging. Not a very analytical thinker? Be a children’s librarian. Want to be a detective? Try Reference. Don’t want to be a detective? How about BI or collection development? And so forth. The range of duties a librarian can perform is sufficient to satisfy any combination of skills/attributes you might (or might not) have.

The “skills” listed in this article (and similar) are applicable to nearly any worthwhile job. And by the way, if you possess all (or even some) of these qualities, your worth in the marketplace is far more than libraries will ever pay. And the professional satisfaction is greater too.

If you’re reading AL (and feeling annoyed), you’re well on your way out of librarianship. Come on out!

By: Sherry

Sherry — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:34:52 +0000

I am inclined to agree with both comments above. I recently graduated from library school in 2010 and have been working as an academic librarian for a year now. I would say that the majority of my education has come from pursuing continuing education on my own and through my experiences at work. I work at a graduate university and there have been many moments when I have kicked myself for not taking that extra class or asking the instructor to delve a bit deeper into the content. Many factors could contribute to this, but what I truly believe that today LIS programs need to strengthen their curriculum.

I also agree with Spencer that there were definitely only a handful of people in the majority of my classes that could be deemed as the “new generation.” I internally questioned my peers’ reasoning for attending library school

By: canlib

canlib — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:43:18 +0000

In my experience most working librarians do have these skills – today’s job market means that chaffy applicants don’t even get an interview – but they sure didn’t learn them at library school. I went to one of those schools that was slightly ashamed of its library roots and, therefore, spent a lot of time pretending it was preparing us for a career in some vague high-tech “I” career. As with the previous poster, most of the skills I use today in my librarian job I acquired as a student librarian, coop student and on various professional experiences that I organized myself.

You can be sure that I’m very grateful to Ms. X who hired me for my first student job – setting me on the work experience/work ethic path that’s managed to keep me a step ahead of most of my classmates.