Should you get an MLIS degree.

tl;dr NO

Wow, it's been a really long time since I have posted something.  Since my last post my jadedness and disenchantment with the public library and librarianship peaked.  Budget cut after budget cut, with no hope in sight.  Maybe I should have kept up my online ranting sessions for my own sanity.  Either way, here I am typing away.

Every week or so, there's a post on /r/Libraries asking if the OP should get an MLIS degree.  The characteristics of most thread starters are unshockingly similar:

- young
- about to graduate from college/just graduated
- has no idea what to do
- degree in History/English
- has never worked in a library before
- loves to read books
- library-delusional: thinks it would be cool to be paid to read all day
- already made up their mind about getting an MLIS, but just wanted affirmation from online strangers

9 times out of 10, I do not think that they should waste their time on an MLIS.  Let me count the ways:

- "The greying of the profession" is complete crap
- if the library actually chooses to fill any open full-time positions there are two things that usually happen now: turns into 1, maybe 2, part time positions and/or make the positions paraprofessional so ultimately getting an MLIS is moot
- if your only experience in the library world is as a patron, you have no idea what it's like behind the reference desk
- the majority of library jobs lies in the public library field, and they are struggling to stay afloat


I will upvote every person who cautions the OP to reconsider and downvote those that openly and enthusiastically encourage people to obtain an MLIS.  I find it completely reckless and moronic to do the latter.  Usually the encouragers give the following reasons:

- they had a full-time library job lined up before they graduated
- they weren't regionally restricted, so they took a job across the country
- they love books too!
- they used their network connections they made by being members to every god-forsaken library-related association out there
-you can totally use your MLIS degree in other places outside of a library


These people are the 1%, the exceptions to the rule.  For every one of these boasters, there are hundreds of those who are quietly disgruntled and underemployed.  Sure, take a job in the middle of no where, with such an overabundance of MLIS job-seekers, there's a reason why those library positions are open.  Honestly, I've always thought the idea of working in a library just because someone loves books as utterly ridiculous --- you do know that you'll have to weed the collection right?  I hate when people say that joining ALA/SLA/PLA/your state library association is the key to finding that dream job.  If the return on investment for this was truly as good as these people make it out to be, EVERYONE would be a member of these groups and employed.  Again, this is the vocal 1%. 

Do you know why so many people with MLIS don't work in a library setting --- BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T FIND A LIBRARY JOB.  People that say that their MLIS is helpful and worth it in non-library settings is in the biggest state of denial ever.  As it currently stands, and maybe always has in the library world, you cannot take someone with just an MLIS and no library experience and throw them behind the reference desk and think they'll do just fine.  What makes you think an MLIS can better prepare you for a non-library job if it can't even properly prepare you for a library one??

The only rare times I would say investing in an MLIS is worth it, is if your employee is paying for it and/or you already are in the library and you're in a position for a promotional opportunity for getting the degree.  Other than that, save your money and go for a paraprofessional positions, it's the exact same work minus the crippling tuition debt!

It's just an MLIS, really...

A couple of weeks ago, my family went out to dinner to celebrate my graduating from Library School.  Yeah, it's a couple months late, but I was more nonchalant about it, much like the whole grad school thing, because it's just an MLIS.  To be honest, I almost felt guilty for celebrating such a non-event.

Last week at work I came across The Grad Cafe website for grad students and they had a forum for prospective MLIS students.  I know that I have a completely different outlook on librarianship and MLIS's, but is it normal for people to apply to more than one library grad school program??  I know that's the thing to do for undergrad programs but for library science graduate programs!??!  What a waste of money on application fees.

Not only do people apply to more than one school, but they also apply to schools across the country.  The school I went to is nearby.  If by some reason I wasn't accepted, I would have gladly taken an online only degree program.  No sense in moving somewhere, anywhere, for an MLIS.  Here's how it will probably go down, genius applies to a handful of schools, genius moves across the country to attend a "top rated MLIS school," genius gets degree, genius cannot find any local jobs, genius applies to library jobs all over the country, genius ends up moving somewhere else to take a library job that pays incredibly low wages.

EVERYONE gets accepted into an MLIS program.  There are only a couple of reasons why a college wouldn't accept someone's money, sorry - I mean application.  I guess if someone has a horrible undergrad GPA and even worse GRE scores, maybe, just maybe a school would say no.  I read that some schools only accept a certain number each semester.  Why -- I don't know, colleges love easy money and it doesn't get any easier than the MLIS department.  Seriously, you don't need anything special to give an MLIS lecture.  In reference to the BCG Matrix, they are the cash cows of the universities.  So as you can see, EVERYONE get accepted into an MLIS program.

Not only does everyone get accepted but everyone also gets the degree. 
"YOU GET A DEGREE! YOU GET A DEGREE! YOU GET A DEGREE!"
 All you have to do is pay the price tag.  Now, I know that just because I don't know of anyone who has dropped or failed out of library school does not necessarily mean that it hasn't happened.  But c'mon now, who knows someone who has?  And if anyone has failed out of library school, there probably is some special program, much like a witness-protection, that will relocate said failure and give them a new identity for fear of a life of mock and ridicule.

Getting an MLIS has to be the easiest graduate degree to obtain.  It's like getting an Xbox Achievement for inserting the game disc and starting the game.

MLIS schools pump out degrees like an automated assembly line.  To keep the cash flow coming in, they have to keep them moving.  Why would a college care if there already is a flood of MLIS holders out there and not enough jobs?  They already have your money, they don't owe you anything more than that piece of paper that says you're some certified info-hustler.

Anyone who claims that they went to a "Top Ranked MLIS School" should be forced to read every single romance novel written.  Their argument has no solid ground, the difference between one MLIS school from another is minimal if even measurable.  They all use the same textbooks, they all offer the same courses, they all tell you to read the same horrible "library research," and they will all tell you the same ALA spiel.  Do you really think that just because you went to the "#1 Rated MLIS School" you can copy-catalog better than another?  Or that it'll put you in top consideration for a position?  Sucker....

To those that want to argue that there is some prestige in an MLIS degree, I must say that you are highly delusional.  There is no "prestige" or "honor" with the degree.  Hey, don't be mad at me, I'm just as disappointed.  These library schools have no standards.  If they did, they would not allow every single applicant into the program.  If they did, not everyone would pass every class.  If they did, not everyone would walk away with a degree.  Of course, if a library school were to have any standards and reject people, those rejects would just go to another school and pay for the degree.  So no library school will up their standards because doing so would negatively affect their cash flow. 

Just because someone pays for the courses, does that mean they deserve ("earn") the degree?

Push your MLIS Degree Mill somewhere else.

Reddit Thread

I came across the above offending Reddit ad last week.  At first glance I thought it was a joke, but then I clicked the link and realized it was for real and for Syracuse's iSchool.  Does the library field really need more MLIS degree holders?  Also, advertising on Reddit, really? 

I usually am a lurker on Reddit, but I actually replied to the post to let it be known that this is not a good time to pursue an MLIS.  The "Greying of the Profession" is one of the worst conspiracies around and I will call it out every chance I get.

Tip for MLIS Presentations: Don't Be 'That Student'

This evening will be the last MLIS lecture I will ever have to attend. I will be presenting my final project with my Collection Development group. With it being grad-school you would come to expect some level of common-sense when it comes to presentations. Unfortunately, this was not the case for one of last week's groups.

Last week, one group decided to choose the font CURLZ MT for their PowerPoint.  I am pretty sure the person in charge of the PowerPoint was one of the older ladies in the group, you know the second-career students.  Bless her heart, I know she might not have had the privilege of having PowerPoint around for her undergrad classes so she's really gung-ho about it now.  If it wasn't bad enough she chose Comic Sans' black sheep cousin as the only font, she also used the retina-searing color combination of white on red.  I was literally crying from their presentation.  Don't be that student that tries to have a "creative" PowerPoint by using "fun" fonts and seizure inducing animations.

That group also had the pleasure of being asked ridiculous questions by a student peer.  It was quite obvious that the group created their collection development for a made up but for some reason this girl started asking serious questions: "Is it a town or a city?" "How big is the population?" etc..  Really?  You're going to ask these stupid questions about a made up place?  Don't be that student who drags lecture on longer than usual by asking stupid questions and don't put your peers on the spot by asking hardball questions that make them look bad because they can't answer it.  

On a side note, I actually did this to one group in one of my undergrad business classes.  During our peer review session, this girl completely trashed my group's business model.  First of all, I was the only one in my group who was born in the States and spoke English as my first language.  She wasn't very constructive in her criticism and it made my group-mates feel stupid.  So I personally felt like it was my responsibility to do the same to her when her group presented.  They were presenting on Nvidia and they erroneously said that Xbox 360 used Nvidia's chipset.  C'mon now, that one won't slip by this gamer.  Funny thing is, is that 2 years later in my last business class, that girl and I ended up teaming up together and became friends.

The Harvard of MLIS Schools...

I punch a unicorn every time I read an online post or hear someone say that they graduated from a "top-tiered" / "top-ten" / "nationally ranked" MLIS school.  Adding a superlative before 'MLIS school' creates an oxymoron.  Don't even get me started on the "U.S. News and World Report College Rankings."  It's like the Hallmark-Holidays for magazines, people only think it's a big deal because they're told to.

Nearing the end of my illustrious MLIS student career, I have come to believe that every MLIS program out there is perfectly equal with the next.  Honestly, what resources does your school offer that mine doesn't?  What do you think, you have better books than other schools?  We all use the same databases, so we're using the same crappy journal articles for our school busy work.  Okay, one might argue that their school has the 'Dream Team' of MLIS professors, but unless they teach some MARC secrets that no one else knows about that does not count for much. 

Still not convinced?  If two statistically and demographically equal MLIS grads applied for the same position, do you really think that library HR would be more inclined to hire the one who graduated from 'the Harvard of MLIS schools?' 
LHR: "OMG, this person went to the #1 ranked library school in the Western Hemisphere!  We have to hire them before the neighboring library system offers them more money!  They would definitely be better schooled to answer patron questions on where the bathrooms are and how to deal with paper jams."

When it comes to ranking MLIS schools, don't believe the hype...

Library Research S-U-C-K-S...

If there is one big thing I have taken away from my almost complete MLIS degree, it is that library research is absolutely THE WORST.

It is completely ironic and sad.  Librarians claim to be "information professionals" but yet as an MLIS student I have come across lackluster, half-assed, and erroneous articles.  Librarians are always talking about how important it is to check your citations and sources.   So when it comes to disappointing library research, I am fairly certain that I am not the only one to realize this.  Just this week, several students held presentations on various library related topics and they all mentioned how bad the so-called "Peer-Reviewed" articles they read were. 

I have heard that some academic librarians are required to conduct research and publish like other professors.  A lot of their articles seem rushed and as though they were just published just for the sake of saying the author bragging that they are published.  It is not just articles from fully-fledged librarians either.  My school's list-serve is constantly bombarded with requests from professors for students to submit articles for so and so organization.  Let me keep it real, I have done group work with these individuals and I cannot for the life of me understand how some of them have come this far in life with such horrible writing skills.  It's bad enough I have to wade through these crap-tastic articles from librarians, I'd rather not risk information BS overload with MLIS students' work. 

The research is so bad, but it's worse when every other article cites the next crap one.  Oh, and heaven help them if there are any numbers/statistics involved.  If you are going to publish an article based on a survey, you have to have an adequate amount of respondents to make sure the population is properly represented --- Survey Errors 101.  I bet that if I wrote an article about how bad library related articles were, it would get published and circulate just as well as the others. 

MLIS Progress: 5/6 Complete...

DAMN these past two years flew by. Summer session has come to a close and I only have Fall before I can consider myself a full-fledged librarian.

Out of the 12 classes I have/will take, I will have a total of 11 different professors, I choose to only have 1 professor for two different classes. I had some bad professors and I had some really good ones. I had some interesting classes while others not so much but it's kind of hard for certain subjects/lessons/lecture overlap.

For example, I honestly cannot understand why Ranganathan's Five Laws of the Library Science was so important/emphasized. For one class we were supposed to do a paper and presentation on a famous library figure. Since this was one of the required courses, this was one of the first classes for a lot of students. The professor handed out a sheet with some pre-approved figures. I could only recognize the names of a few: Dewey, Cutter, Pearl, and Ranganathan.

I only recognized the last one because my friend mentioned him before.  During a break in lecture, I did a quick Google search and decided on Benjamin Franklin . When I told the professor who I chose, she gave me an incredulous look and said, "oookkkaaayyy," like I just chose to swim with Jaws instead of Flipper.  Maybe it's my going against the hype/traditional-route attitude but I felt Ben deserved to be acknowledged for his contributions to the institution *gasp* IN A LIBRARY SCHOOL PROGRAM.  Of course I titled my presentation, "It's All About the Benjamin's," and I used the following image.  This certain professor felt that Ranganathan was so important that he deserved two presentations by two different students.  Really??

I personally feel like the library school looks at other grad curriculum's with envy because of all the "cool" rules and what I can only call "lessons in an acronym."  There's the 5 P's in Marketing, in general there's the 80/20 rule, even boring Accounting has A.L.O.E., F.I.F.O. and L.I.F.O.  What does the Library have --- classification tables.  What I'm trying to say is that it really isn't needed and it comes off as trying too hard.

If there is one major lesson I learned from these past two years in library school, it would be the librarian's / library's never-ending struggle for proving one's worth and relevance, and longing for a sense of belonging and struggle for self-actualization --- Hello Maslow.  I feel like it's a reverse self-fulfilling prophecy with nonstop ALA-approved press releases about libraries being more important than ever.  It makes me wonder how much the debate and doubt of the library as a necessity vs. budget-cutting luxury is really self-inflicted. 

Cut-Throat Librarians.

Last night during my Tech Services class, the professor had us run through a process analysis activity as a group.  It's something I would have expected in my Operations Management class in undergrad, but I don't see how feasible that would have been with 40+ classmates, so it worked out well in this small class setting.  Without getting into a long drawn out explanation, it involves 6 people doing 6 different tasks while being timed.  It starts with one person and works its way down from person to person, it continues until the 20th completed item reaches the end of the line.

We did 6 different runs with different variations in the process to eke out the most efficient process before we hit the point of diminishing returns.  It took a little over an hour and after we were done the professor mentioned that the activity was created by one of her business professor coworkers.  They have run the activity through different academic disciplines and "the librarians" seem to do it differently.  This has been done numerous times with different majors so while this isn't scientific, its results can be taken as quite realistic.

Apparently, you librarians(in-training/ in-theory) want to do as much to help the person that comes before and after you.  Other schools tend to focus on what they, personally, or someone else could do to speed up the process instead of balancing out the workload among their peers.

I can say from my personal experiences as a business school undergrad student that this is true.  It was repeated in all of my classes: Finance, Marketing, Accounting, Economics, Management, and Operations Management that "we", business students, were the number one cheaters in school.  Not much of a shocker when you look at all of the business school predecessors involved in all of the corporate scandals this past decade alone.  It was because of them, that I was constantly drilled about this thing called ethics in every single class I took.  It became so mind numbing that I think the main message was entirely lost on most of my peers.  This was well apparent during finals.  While I love the subject of marketing, I did not see myself happy in that kind of setting.  This is one of the reasons why I chose to pursue my MLIS, I like working in a library environment.

Can one link the on-going debate of  the relevancy of librarianship to the unavoidable librarian stereotype found in libraries and library schools?  Personally I think so, you cannot expect much change within a field when it's filled with a bunch of yes-men.  I wonder what an all-about-business, cut-throat librarian would look like?  Out with the "shhh's" and in with the "STFU."

MLIS Progress: Beginning of the End...

Question: Why is it that near the end of every semester professors decide to assign all of the projects and assignments at the same time?

Man, FUNK DAT!  Enough with the busy work!

If you don't get the early 90's reference, well, Google it if you're that curious.

This week marked the beginning of the end of my illustrious MLIS journey.  If all goes well, I have registered for my last two semesters (this summer and fall).  Apparently they are not offering Home Ec so I had to settle for Collection Development.

Exactly one year ago I was in my first semester and now I am half a librarian, maybe closer to 7/12ths, uhmm, I think, I was never really good with math.  I have learned more about the profession as a whole more than I have about what I can transfer to any librarian position.  More about that later, right now I have to get back to all the busy work I've been assigned.

I Got My MLIS from Oxford, Suck on That!

So it is official, I am halfway through my MLIS degree.  As long as my plan goes accordingly, this time next year I will have a paper that says I am fully accredited in aiding patrons Facebook stalk and solving printer jams.  But a lot can happen in a year so I'm keeping my expectations low.

Last week, I received this generic spam letter in the mail.  My mom got all excited, still is, at the prospect of the so called "bragging rights" of an Oxford bound son.  What sounds better than paying for 9 credits at an 18 credit premium, and better yet, credits that do not even apply to my degree.

Maybe if I had a million sitting in the bank, but then again why would I be getting an MLIS.  It just does not appeal to me.  I want to get in and get out, I have a two year plan for this degree and no stuffy resume filler will deter me from it!  I can get decent fish and chips here anyways.

This Semester's Final-Final Finally...

 Last night I did my presentation on Federal Depository libraries.  Taking a Government Information class sounded so like a great idea, but was I wrong... Apparently you can get all you want from Wikileaks... Should have taken Cataloging.

So that's one down, I have a take home exam due this Thursday which would round out my final school work for this Fall semester.  Organization of Information... What did I learn from that class?  That adjunct professors are to be avoided at all costs.

  

So was I busy working on it today? -- No, I was in a casino stuffing my face at the buffet.

I had to post this video because it is epic in its winness = Lego + Guns + Explosions

This is What You Do in "Library School"...

My coworker and I were extremely bored in tonight's lecture (shocker). Luckily we came across this guy. She named him Jacques, I couldn't think of anything better than "Stinky," so her name won. He kept us awake and amused for the rest of the night. Less than a month til this semester is over, woooooooot!

Semester of Suck...

I really should be working on my midterm projects that are due next week but I can't bring myself to it.

Isn't the semester over yet??  One class is utterly boring but has an enthusiastic professor, while my other class is an important required class taught by someone who puts more effort into making jokes than lesson plans.  I've registered for Spring semester: Cataloging and User Interfaces.  Should be a better semester, I hope.

I've done everything else but schoolwork.  I've been browsing pictures of posters from last Saturday's Rally to Restore Sanity and or Fear.  When I came across this one:

f

Where it all Falls Down...

So this week marked the first week of Fall semester... SIGH...  It was just last week I was enjoying the ocean breeze.

I am taking one class with my friend/coworker, this is her last semester and she reminds me every single time I see her (punk).  Exactly half of the class is male, not only was this one of the first observations my friend made, but also the professor.  And yes, I have spotted the one annoying classmate.  The one whose comments/questions make class longer than necessary and are completely irrelevant.

They also tend to be socially awkward and do not notice that the whole class is irked at them.  To make matters worse is that she is the female version of Napoleon Dynamite.

Statistically speaking these people suck the life out of any class:
Only 1/8th of their comments contain some sort of relevance to lecture or add something to class and 1/10th of their questions make any sense.  That's makes them 7/8ths a waste of seat space and 9/10ths certified stupid.

My other class is much more entertaining, and not so much the fact that it is dominated by "younger" females, but the professor seems to have a sense of humor I can relate quite well with and I don't think she owns any cats.

So here's to the start of another semester.

Gotta Suck It Up...

T-minus 40 days and counting til I take my GRE, or as I have come to call it the "G - R - Eazzzy." I have no qualms with the verbal part, it's the math that I'm stressing over. I have not taken a math course in over 2 years. Which I am sure is more recent than some other test takers, but I am not those other people. So here's to finally sitting down and studying. Wish me luck : \