Laurabelle’s Blog

Dorothea says some really good things about the love-hate relationship between library science and information science, although she doesn't put it exactly that way. The fact is that there are a lot of stereotypes going around between old-school librarians and technologists, and none of it is helping the mutual-good-feeling points, but we all need each other. Though Dorothea doesn't explicitly address the working world (the real world), I think this is where systems librarians come into the mix. Our job is to talk to both sides and make them either understand each other or, at the very least, cooperate. We're the mediators.

But academia is another beast entirely. I'm trying to envision a systems librarian sort of role in a graduate school, and it just doesn't fit. I can't imagine one person having enough of an effect on an academic department to make it all jive. On the other hand, I think that in spite of the fact that UW's old School of Library Science is now the iSchool, there is a substantial component of library science still in our program. We still learn AACR2 and DIALOG, but we also learn about new technology like SQL and XML. My only gripe is that I haven't taken many of the systems classes, because they would be far too easy for me! Why waste time taking a class on what I already know about networking or programming?

The problem with the MLIS program is that although the majority of students still want to work in libraries, an increasingly significant percentage of students intend to apply their information skills elsewhere. The program has to fit everyone, and it's a hard stretch. There aren't enough electives to go around, and the natives (both librarian and non-librarian) are restless.

I think my management class this quarter is an excellent example of the program's schizophrenic nature. The prof hasn't taught library students in 4-5 years and has no clue what we need or want. He spouts stereotypes about librarians (assuming that we all want to be librarians) but teaches us with dated examples and case studies from the IT industry 20 years ago, or the dot-com industry 5 years ago. He's out of touch with both sectors of his audience.

On the bright side, even if there aren't too many of the dually enlightened in the academic population, at least there are a significant few among my fellow students. The best example is Jerome Woody, who is a hard-core techno-geek if there ever was one but has the LC classification schedule for information science permanently tattooed on his forearm. (No, I'm really not kidding.)

I don't know exactly what all that adds up to, but I think there's reason for Dorothea and me to hope.