oops read that libertarian and went why?
Well if you just look at surface level ideological claims it’s fairly simple, black folks have all too many reasons not to trust state power.
Then you start diving in to the actual beliefs and the people using the surface level suckers to push deregulation of environmental and safety regulations and it all starts coming apart, and then you read the founding thinkers arguing to bring back slavery and it becomes obvious the right wing “libertarians” think the real problem is they’re not the state.
That’s a very niche pornhub category
There’s lots of BBL content out there
My man!
Looking good.
Not to take something away from this, as myself I volunteered for a couple years in a school library. But what exactly is it with these random master curricula? Wtf is thought in masters of library science exactly? Not anything needs a higher education certificate FFS.
I trust someone with a MLS more than someone with an MBA.
Agreed. The world would be much better off with more MLS degrees and fewer MBA degrees.
That’s more of an evidence of MBA uselessness.
What about a blue collar with 20 years of experience in their trade?
I’m trying real hard but am having a real tough time figuring out what point you’re trying to get at.
Should we trust people in trades who have been doing it 20 years? I mean yeah, probably? And…?
My point is that in my opinion library science is not well suited for academic education and should rather be tought like a trade with a licensed trade school and apprentiship, or learned on the job after getting a literature degree.
In my opinion there are not enough abstract knowledge in how to manage a library and the subject is a manifestation of a proliferation of subjects used by universisties to advertise rather than something useful for society or students.
I am of this opinion likely because of my bias as a stem graduate that makes me naturally arrogant. I am trying to assess if I can find someone to change my opinion.
I failed for now.
Depends. I know some real shitty tradies. I also know some real cool ones. So maybe like MLS then tradies then MBA.
A Master plumber? Yeah.
Librarians are not book waiters. Maintaining a library requires a ton of work and knowledge.
So does being a plumber? But there is not a master of plumbing sciences, that would be an engineer. My point is that there is no need to make everything an academic faculty, there should be prestige in the trades too.
Librarian is not a trade, because the job isn’t ’receive book, hand out book’. That’s what the volunteers and assistants do. Working as a librarian requires constant learning and updating yourself on new information and studying the needs of the library patrons. You can read more about other duties here: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Librarians.htm#tab-2
The trades should be more valued, but the way to do that isn’t by denigrating the amount of education that other jobs take.
A plumber does not just cut and paste pipes or unclogs sinks either. You are denigrating trades in your first phrase by equating them to simple mindless menial jobs my dude
Not what I was going for but I can see how it can be read that way. My point was that librarian is a job that requires a lot of academic training because it’s a job that heavily relies being able to navigate academic work, which really isn’t the case for plumbing or other trade jobs. That doesn’t make the work mindless, you obviously have to engage your mind to engage in any skilled work. It’s just a different kind of mental engagement, I don’t think anyone who has worked a ‘traditional’ academic job and a trade job would contest that.
So… plumbers require education, too. In the US it’s apprenticeship, trade school, or community college to get licensed. In the UK it’s similar, so not just a US thing. You do one of these routes to prove you can do the skilled labor, and receive a license for doing so.
There is not a “trade school” for a librarian, because to prove you can be a librarian, you need to prove you can learn consistently and over a long period of time. That’s not possible without longer education.
Your argument makes it sound like plumbers don’t require education (not your intent, I know), but denigrating the librarian trade doesn’t help, either.
Do you have any idea if what it takes to manage a library or are you just guessing that it doesn’t take a higher level degree?
No idea tbh, that is why I asked in the first place. For now nobody has answered something that convinced me 2 years of academic degree are necessary to learn what is essentialy a building manager with strong foundations in literature and or history.
Please note, I am not saying they should not have a degree in history or literature, just that library science seems hyperspecific to check off some box on a university advertisement.
The core skill missing from literature and history is curration, how do you grow, prune and organize a collection of books to meet the needs of the community.
Then you’ve got maintenance, repair and handling of the books themselves which is super important if you’re working with rare items.
Finally, most librarians are basically running a community centre filled with children, and you have all the skills and safeguarding concerns that go along with that.
All these do not sound like stuff you learn in an university but stuff you learn from a master of the trade?
I think what a ton of people are missing is that librarians also study and teach HOW to research and gather information. Quite literally something that is best served by someone well versed in that through a masters. Source: one of my university mates is a university librarian.
You could say that about any job
https://www.findamasters.com/masters-degrees/?Keywords=pipeline+engineering
So it has a different name than “masters of plumbing”. So what? Literally what is your point?
But what exactly is it with these random master curricula?
Libraries have required masters in library science for decades.
Running a library is a significant management and administrative undertaking. In the same way you’d expect a museum curator to have at least a master’s in the subject of that museum (whether history, art, natural history), you’d want the person who actively manages a library’s catalog to have significant education/knowledge about which books to buy, which periodicals and electronic services to subscribe to, which titles to get rid of, operative lending agreements with other libraries, the budget and personnel issues that come with operating a library, the grant applications and other funding requests that come with running the budget, etc. Then, there’s a benefit in further specialization in the database tech, archival practices, supporting education/research for specific institutions with need for in-house libraries (schools, universities, law firms, labs, etc.)
The ALA has long recommended that librarians have MLS/MLIS, and the librarians I’ve worked with definitely had useful specialized knowledge at helping me navigate sources and subscriptions for identifying good materials and accessing those materials. It should be a highly educated field with highly educated workers.
None of those things require a master’s degree worth of courses and most of them would actually be learned on the job.
I just fundamentally disagree. Undergrads tend to have a pretty rudimentary understanding of research methods, and it isn’t until grad school that most people genuinely engage with the process. Developing expertise in research methods requires familiarity with how publishing and peer review work, how different knowledge is stored/archived, indexed, searched, and retrieved, and how the different tools and institutions fit into that broader research ecosystem.
Yes, everything needs to be learned on the job, as well, but I’d expect that to be built on a solid foundation. And a master’s degree seems like an appropriate amount of schooling for that foundation.
Compare to lawyers, doctors, and university professors. You expect them to have some level of broader academic background before specialization, and an ongoing obligation to continue to learn through professional development, throughout the rest of the career.
None of this is a new invention. The MLS isn’t a degree that some degree mill invented 10 years ago. The ALA defined that as the baseline educational standard in 1953. And the trend is towards opening up more entry level positions to those who only have bachelor’s, which is an important counterpoint to the comments that seem to believe that this is some kind of credential inflation, where you need more education today than 25 or 50 years ago, in order to do a particular job.
Actually, “None of these things are anything I know anything about, therefore it must be simple and stupid” is what you meant to say. I know words are hard; you’re simple and stupid.
Library science is more about curating and organizing information than running a library. Most people with MLS degrees don’t work in a library.
What an ignorant take. Please just go read about it instead of denigrating librarians, educators, libraries, archivists, and yourself by displaying your ignorance and your hubris.
Volunteering in a school library would show you very little of the skills needed to, for instance, conserve valuable rare books, assist seekers of obscure information and arcane knowledge and/or thrilling tales, (okay yes you probably did some of those last few for the kids) supervise book lending between branches and to individuals across a city or county, get volumes digitized, maintain the ability to lend tools, kitchen and craft equipment, and various non-paper media, preserve local history, negotiate with political boards and potential donors, manage teams of professional and volunteer employees, and keep the fascist book-burners at bay.
Science of information are about how knowledge, information and data is structured and stored. It is quite close to informatics but informatics has a greater focus on computing science which are the leading technology for doing just that today. Yet, they are many technology that was and are still in use to deal with information, wether it is about historic information saved in a pre-computer area or today in many places and for many reason.
It is a very deep subject, very academical and many way to practice it the most visible way to practice it is thought a computer but museum, archive, library, fond, place were electricity is not available for security or fourniture reasons are also looking for that kind of worker.
Semester 1, you learn how to alphabetize.
Semester 2, you learn how to scan a bar code
Semester 3, you learn how to whisper “quiet please!”
Semester 4, mounting periodicals on wooden rods
Semester 5, operating small change cash register
Semester 6, book trolley physicsGraduation!
I keep stumbling into this post and I keep liking those damn shoes. I thought I never liked brown suit shoes but damn… those are some good shoes.
its also rare to see them in stem as professors too, like physicists.
There’s a reason for that but you wouldn’t like it
LibrariMan
That’s actually sick, very nice.
Local library fan from Illinois here, and I say hell yeah!
Finally someone who knows how to pair brown dress shoes!
Congratulations! Libraries are cool! Thanks for doing what you do.
Libraries (and Librarians) are awesome! Thank you for all you do to curate and share the collective knowledge of humanity!
Awesome, agreed. Not to forget, themeaning of library has expanded since my time at school. It should include data and data formats and objects which didn’t exist in the 60’s. I love knowledge and librarians to systematise it and store it, and let me use it.
Besides the obvious books, movies, and video games, my public library less than 2 miles from my house also has a maker space staffed by the library including 3D printers, dye sublimation printers, 4’ wide format vinyl printer, 4’ wide paper/adhesive backed paper printer, flatbed scanners, and even T-shirt and ceramic mug thermal image transfer machines.
Libraries are awesome!
Congrats good sir, it must feel brilliant to be living your dream & for that I salute you
Lavar Burton was a librarian…in his guest spot on Leverage.
