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Curricular Issues

Page history last edited by Micah Vandegrift 13 years, 2 months ago


 

Social Issues

 

Should library schools offer (or point towards) a class in social work? (Classes/curricula that focus on underserved groups.)

How do all the complexities surrounding race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. play out in the library?

What prejudices do we as librarians bring to the table, and how does that affect service (and what can we do to address it)?

 

"One of our professors includes a section on either serving or researching the needs of those who may have different information needs because of their situations (i.e. the homeless, battered women, etc). Something else we should be focusing on more in our ‘core readings’ is an understanding of hierarchical cultural dynamics within the library. On a related note, front line librarians usually become de facto social workers one way or another.For schools that have social work programs, this seems like a great option, especially as an elective for students seeking to do public librarianship." - Quote from GDoc.

 

@booksheaf: “Know how info is organized: catalog & online search techniques. AND marketing, digitizing, research methods & internships” 

Are they taught well enough in current LIS curricula? 

 

Public libraries are moving in a social services direction, with partnerships with other government agencies and helping patrons connect to social services through e-government (see many of John Bertot and Paul Jaeger’s articles)

 

Marketing

 

Digitizing

 

Research Methods

 

Project Management/Budgeting

 

From @rmazar (a librarian already graduated from LIS program):

- “I have strong feelings about teaching decent project management skills.” When asked if any classroom projects aided in this: My supervisor taught me how to manage a project...over a year and a half. Never seen any program as good as her. :)
- We should stress practical experience! There are some things that you just can’t learn in a classroom. “basic meeting management would be a bonus, too; formal meetings, chairing a meeting, time keeping, minutes...” 

- Also “communication methods, that would also be useful. How to reach your audience in a variety of means.” “Strategic planning is great, how to set yearly personal and institutional goals...”

“Managing a budget! Managing student employees' time! Making a project plan for student employees!” 
“Assessment: how to assess a service, how to collect and parse feedback, how to construct usability testing programs...”

 

Acquisitions

 

"Acquisitions! This entire subset of librarianship is routinely ignored in all library school curriculum. After conducting some unofficial research, the only time Acquisitions is covered in library school is via Collection Development courses--and even then the topic only merits one or two classroom sessions. I know that library schools expect you pick things up on the job...but this is just ridiculous. The ALA is only group that offers an official “Intro to Acquisitions” study module. How do we, as a profession, expect to fill libraries if we don’t know the practicalities of purchasing those excellent materials we learn about in Collection Development?" - Random HackLibSchool Member

 

Technology Literacy

 

Learning how to play with new tech.

“I spent several months a year helping our lib staff to get comfortable playing with tech; should be mandatory in lib school!” (My response: “It should be! I feel like a lot of students don't realize how important that playfulness and willingness to explore is”)
“Yes; I think that's truly the mark of technological literacy. Most people don't have it!”

 

Information access

 

Could we talk a little bit about how the user, library researchers, and librarians/info pros will search for and access information in the future? Maybe talk a little bit about the Open Access Movement (see for example: Peter Suber), student and professional journals in the DOAJ, etc. Some mention of subscription fees and censorship as barriers to access as well?

 
Open Access student journals as a way to encourage students to publish and share: i.e. Library Student Journal. What other student-specific journals are there? I know that the University of Iowa’s SLIS has B Sides as a place for our students to publish, but I don’t know if there are other journals for other departments at other schools.

 

Internships/Professional Development

 

What requirements show up most often in open positions and how do we meet them while still in school?
Experience! Work in libraries, volunteer, intern. I would not have even been interviewed for my current position if I didn’t have experience in library settings.
Know about current technologies.

 

Most entry level public service/reference jobs will have an instruction aspect, and many interviews will require you to teach a sample class. Instruction needs to be part of the curriculum, including things like instructional design, learning styles, critical pedagogies, etc. Being familiar with the kinds of debates that happen in education more generally is really helpful, both for teaching well and for connecting to faculty in the disciplines.

 

"Expectations for practical training are not always true. There is quite a bit of theory and technical details one learns in school that is unexpected.

Most library schools offer a practicum or field project course. If you want practical training, those are the way to go.

Also, internships are highly encouraged. In fact, I’d say it should be a requirement.

If not, volunteering is another option for getting practical experience.

One of our professors (Patricia Katopol) brings in a lot of guest speakers from the field, and that’s a great way for students to learn about the different options available and get a sense for what those jobs are like."

 

Academic Scholarship

 

Jim Elmborg (director, University of Iowa SLIS) uses the phrase ‘scholar-librarians’ to refer to his vision of how he hopes to prepare SLIS students. Is this the right approach? Should we be given practical skills and also given skills to conduct meaningful research and engage in scholarly discussions? Is it too much to fit into a 2-year program? Are there things that can be added/removed?

Many faculty have info science PhDs and other NON-librarian professors (eg a PhD in Philosophy and Ethics), but no actual library work experience, whereas most students are hoping to be librarians, not academic researchers. Perhaps this is what the PhD in LIS should be for? The MLIS as the professional degree and the PhD as the academic counterpart?

 
"I was stunned that I had started a program where only one professor had ever been an “actual” librarian (and hadn’t worked in a library in many many years). Waking up to the first class of your MLIS degree and finding out that the professors are all have an Economics Ph.D is unpleasant. Students or those considering a degree should be told to carefully look at the professor profiles from schools they are considering. Especially if the student is looking to be a librarian and not an academic researcher." - Random HackLibSchool Member

 

Discussion:

For those of us considering/enrolled in LIS PhD programs, what should we do to ensure that we’re still ‘plugged in’ to the current state of the field? Keeping on top of trends through social media and an RSS feed of some good blogs is a great start, but what else? Monthly faculty meetings that serve as ‘continuing education’ with guests from various local libraries?
If you’re getting your PhD in LIS - I hope you have practical experience FIRST!
I would agree--however, I’m starting a program next year and friends are already in PhD programs. I wonder if we could consider building in some practical library work into the PhD program as a way to keep students/new professors/even tenured professors up on their game. I primarily do research, and that’s what I love, but when we are teaching LIS there does need to be more first-hand knowledge about libraries that we can bring to the classroom. 
Many of my professors do not have a background in libraries, or even non-academic work experience. This made it difficult to relate concepts to libraries and work we would be doing.

     --Something I would like to address for those of us at the PhD level is how we can best serve students as future  educators. I want to make sure that what I am teaching is relevant and useful to students who are going into the field, but I also do not have the time to pursue a PhD and gain the practical experience mentioned above. Does anyone have ideas for how we (as future professors), or our professors, can best achieve this without a major change in the directions of our lives?

 

Metadata vs. Cataloging

 

People confuse metadata with ‘cataloging,’ then feel confused because there’s talk about cataloging being less of a requirement. Giving a better understanding of metadata and its various incarnations (i.e. Dublin Core versus a library catalog) is important, and teaching students the value in metadata while encouraging discussion about it (i.e. worries over ‘everyone’ tagging and thus creating messy metadata).

 

Discussion:

"Now that I’m actually a librarian, no one talks about metadata. All of that discussion now feels like wasted time."

     I add this in here because it would be interesting to talk more about how relevant our current emphasis is...

 

Programming/Coding/Information Technology

 

What role should programming have in LibSchool? 

 Even better: How is programming related to library-specific tasks like cataloging and classification?

Knowing the difference is important and knowing web languages is important (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, etc). Having that kind of knowledge in-house would be a huge advantage for any library. However, I think most librarians know that to deal with programming - go to IT.

 XML seems very important but was glossed over in my classes. I’m still not positive what it is.

XML is the language used to organize the content (HTML), while CSS provides the styling. 

Programming Languages?

There should be at least a “programming literacy” - knowledge of basic programming fundamentals and concepts. From there, people can go on to learn specific languages, but they should also learn what the major languages are capable of so people can determine the best tools for the job.


What role does Design play in libraries?
IT doesn’t understand what the library user needs or wants out of a website, so making sure a library site is designed for the patron is on the shoulders of the librarian. It’s all about usability for the patron, not just pretty websites.

 

Related Pages:

Concepts that I wish I knew more about

 

Software\Technology that should be taught and discussed in LibSchool

 

Comments (2)

Jennifer Parsons said

at 2:29 pm on Nov 4, 2010

Well, I guess I'll be the rain on everyone's parade:
1. I like a lot of what's in this article.
2. Unfortunately, this article is difficult to read and navigate because there's so much in it.

Do we want this to be a sort of "primary page" that we mine for information that goes to other pages-- for example, the "Concepts that I wish I knew more about" and "Software/Technology" have already been reproduced on "Concepts LIS Education Should Include" and "Software/Technologies," respectively, so I deleted the text and left the links to the other pages.

I've also started putting some navigation links at the top for fun-- I think we're going to have to start cutting and pasting stuff around.

Micah Vandegrift said

at 7:26 pm on Jan 8, 2011

Jennifer, just getting around to editing this now. Great suggestions and yes I think we do need to weed through this page and send some info to other pages. Working on it!

Thank you for all the work you've done so far!

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