“People doing the work of our field deserve the title Librarian”. They deserve recognition, sure. But if they want to be considered a professional Librarian they should bite the bullet and go to library school. I mean, if it means so much to them, why wouldn’t they be willing to invest the time and expense in getting a degree? If they don’t want to do so, then I guess that is that. There are plenty of dedicated, knowledgeable medical professionals that aren’t doctors. Or lawyers. Or nurses. Or etc.

As for your snide remarks about Library School . . . how else can I say this . . . screw off. I workerd hard to get out of dead-end industrial jobs and work my way through college and grad school and don’t appreciate that acheivement being denigrated by comparison. No, it isn’t medical school. It isn’t law school. But it’s certainly more comprehensive than other gatekeeper educational requirements, like basic teacher certification. Or maybe you prefer that your nurse or radiological technicians have only on the job training. Yes, Library School is pretty easy fare compared to medical school. But then we are discussing two different fields. And just because one field doesn’t have as steep a certification curve as another doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have one at all. That, also, is stupid.

“Working in a library provides only practical skills; library school gives you the theoretical underpinnings necessary to be a true member of this profession.” True. Attack this all you want, but OJT does not a career professional make. When I took over the job I have now there was a lady who had worked in the library for years who had been running things in the interim until a new librarian could be found. She was smart and far more administratively competant than me. But the interlibrary loan system had lapsed because she didn’t really understand it. New book were being incorrectly catalogged because she was mimicking the work of the librarian before me and using the limited instructions that substituted for an understanding of what cataloging is and how it works. Gee whiz. What a waste of time all those “theoretical underpinnings” are.

“Let’s draw the line between qualified and unqualified”. That’s what the MLS/MLIS does. And while you may not think that library boards care, I guarantee you that one way to ensure that they won’t is to devalue the degree within the profession ourselves. I worked hard for my degree and I don’t want to see this profession go the way of so many others in America.

Nuff said.

Ain’t nothing out there says you *have* to work in a library once you’ve got the degree. Hell, working in the neighborhood library, happily pulling $40K a year, might be the worst thing you could do!

Look at all the ads for competitive intelligence positions, and the executive search positions, that are hiring MLS graduates. Hell, think of how useful the MLS would be to an investment banking analyst, or even to someone working in real estate.

And, you want the actual academic degree, well, that’s also why there are library and information science phd programs.

Indeed. None of the MLS (& MLIS, & MISt &c.) programs I’ve looked at have a mandatory thesis or major research paper requirment. At least in Canada, no “academic” masters’ program could (or wold want to) get away with that.

Heh. Thanks. And I’m glad to be on librarians’ side.

I think it might be worth considering that the “theoretical underpinnings” of Library Science are hardly the sole provinence of librarians. Sure, only librarians have to take a class called “Cataloging,” but most of that is practical not theoretical.

If LS was like medicine, why are so many of the authors of LS books not “doctors”? Take Susan Leigh Star, co-author of _Classification and Its Consequences_ or David Weinberger, author of _Everything is Miscelleaneous_. Their degrees are in Sociology and Philosophy respectively. Clay Shirky has just a BA.

Besides, in my experience, many professional librarians have neither interest nor aptitude for the theory, and understood their degree as career training, not academic preparation. This career preparation is quite real–and should give them an edge over people without it. But this isn’t a case of physicists and lab techs.