Traditionally, any ‘science’, after Aristotle, has involved a mixture of theory, practice, and technique. Library schools are continually revising their curricula – they were when all of today’s practitioners were at school. The accreditation process makes this crucial in the US and Canada. I know that CILIP is doing some amazing things in the UK, and knowing Oz to be a crucible of innovation, I’m confident that things are in hand there too. I’m willing to assume that continual revision is happening across the globe. (This particular set of assertions can be backed by empirical evidence).

Regarding the “craft” aspects, I’ve always been reminded of a distinction my medieval history prof made between the stonecutter and the master mason. The master masons who built the great cathedrals of Europe had the “big picture”, based on careful study and analysis, theory as well as practice and technique, while the highly skilled craftspeople knew only their own specialties, though, of course, they knew them very well. The master masons were probably crude stonecutters, but their edifices – as wholes- still stand. Library schools are meant to develop masters.

However, citing the wisdom of C.S. Forester’s ‘Captain Hornblower’, “The men won’t respect an admiral who’s no sailor.” One of the main criteria for working in a library, as on a ship, must be “learning the ropes”. iSchools mustn’t forget that.

However, the reality of today’s higher education scene is that departments and schools are battling one another for survival. This has been happening since just after WWII. Arguably, the ‘theory’ side translates more easily into grant-money, at least in the minds of administrators. As well, junior academics _must_ put research and publication ahead of teaching, or they will not get tenure. Those things are true in every academic discipline, not just LIS.

I’d suggest that the change that’s needed within academia is not isolable to iSchools. The professorate as a whole has to reclaim the notion of ‘faculty governance’, which has been its bulwark at least since the revolts of the Paris Masters in the 13th Century. Otherwise, departments like library science, English, and others in the humanities and social sciences, will be forced to merge themselves into oblivion.

Scholars in their respective fields – in the natural and social sciences and in the humanities- and not the bean-counters – need the latitude to define the norms of their disciplines. Otherwise, that which is ‘science’ will be determined by short-term fiscal objectives, not by lofty principles like the increase of knowledge or the good of the profession(s), their publics, and society as a whole.

The university is the place for free and open investigation. Societies can afford that – it’s relatively cheap. In fact, they probably can’t afford _not_ to enable it. (There’s a good premise for a thesis or two – the long-term payoff of higher education?).

Finally, by the time one reaches graduate school, one should be interested enough in a discipline to take some responsibility for one’s own learning process. Your personal inquiries are _not_ limited by what’s in the curriculum. If something excites you, pursue it!

As librarians, we pay a lot of lip-service to our being ‘leaders’ – so lead. [And yes, learn to follow too. Good leaders must learn what it means to be good followers. But don't just follow]. The professorate can lead the horses to water. But they have to want to drink.

If, on the other hand, (like carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and other tradespeople), library students spent four days a week working, 2 nights (2 hrs a piece) and one day (8 hrs) in classes, and did this for 2 years, I believe that several things (AT LEAST) might be accomplished:

1. MLIS graduates would actually have the skills and knowledge to step right into a job and be useful. (At the very least, they will Not require extensive, exhaustive, frustrating training and help from the paraprofessionals on the job being paid half their salary)

2. The people in the paraprofessional/lower echelons of library service would be there BECAUSE they wanted to progress in the industry, only making customer service and libraries in general better. If the only way to become a librarian is to apprentice as a Library assistant, and be sponsored by a library system, the people who sought libary jobs would be shooting for a career rather than just a “job that sounds easy.”

3. In a trades-apprentice type program, the amount of candidates could be kept even with the amount of positions, and, (speaking of ideal and impractical solutions) everyone would be the best at their job because they had to earn it.

Just some food for thought. Having a lot of experience working in large public libraries is making library school somewhat ridiculous and excruciating. But it also makes me very aware WHY all those newly-graduated hires are so useless and that it really wasn’t their fault. It’s how they were trained before they got here.

Your post is well stated and refreshing. I am the coordinator of an undergraduate Library Information Technology degree program, and an Information Studies department. Our degree program and department actually addresses many of your concerns. Our program and department is run by practicing librarians that also that run our college library. We are both library practitioners and library educators. As practicing librarians that share your views, we made sure to construct our teaching department as a part of the library. Of course we had much more freedom to do this since we are a community college and our librarians are full members of the college faculty.

Our degree program curriculum provides our students with interdisciplinary courses and we require all students in our Associate of Science in Library Information Technology degree to take an information ethics/intellectual freedom class (INFS 2500: Information Ethics and Legal Issues), and a liberal arts class INFS 2600: Ideas, Censorship and Politics that is open to all students at the college. As a result, the library paraprofessionals that graduate from our degree program most likely have more in-depth grounding in the core intellectual freedom/social responsibilities values of the library profession than some graduates of MLIS programs. And like MLIS programs we also infuse the discussion of intellectual freedom/information ethics in our other program classes.

Related to what you say in your library students bill of rights, our library faculty teach a required freshman information literacy class that approaches information literacy from a broad critical perspective, starting out with a serious discussion about the political, economic, and cultural contexts in which information is created, distributed, and organized, and how certain knowledge is privileged and other knowledge is marginalized. We continue to weave this discussion through the entire class. As practicing librarians we have designed an in-depth and comprehensive information literacy program that is required for all liberal arts students, three courses in information studies that are part of the liberal arts curriculum, and an Associate of Science in Library Information Technology degree program. Our MLIS course work did not prepare us to develop curriculum or to teach classes. Many in the library profession continue to argue against librarians developing and teaching credit bearing courses in information literacy or information studies. I would argue that one way to make academic libraries more relevant is for librarians to realize that they have unique and important knowledge to offer the broader society. In academia we have the potential to develop and teach unique classes that students will find engaging and compelling. But in order to develop such classes and programs we need library education to be restructured along the lines discussed by Char in her library students bill of rights. The type of library education that Char has proposed would allow more librarians to develop courses such as our “Ideas, Censorship and Politics,” or Necessary Illusions: A Critical Introduction to the Information Age,” classes. Or to teach classes on information policy and society, or critical information literacy classes.

If the MLIS is to remain a relevant degree major changes need to be made to the curriculum. Our LIT program attempts to prepare library paraprofessionals for the realities of the job they will enter, which means we need to provide them with both the intellectual and theoretical knowledge related to all aspects of the library profession as well as the practical skills they need to do their jobs. As a result, we have created a demanding curriculum that provides both theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills instruction. We also provide an educational framework that situates library work in its broader social context. Because of the very ideas that Char has expressed in her Library Student Bill of Rights, we are currently working on the development of a new course in community outreach and civic engagement that will become a requirement for students in our program. We feel that all library workers should be engaged in community outreach and understand how their library is, or can become, an integral part of the civic life of their community.

Program web site

Course Descriptions