LIS Radio and librarian education

My library school has started an LIS radio show called First Tuesday. The first First Tuesday, in September, featured nextgen librarian Rachel Holt discussing library employment issues.

Last night's second First Tuesday was an interview with Robert S. Martin, coming off his stint as head of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Professor Seavey began the discussion by referring back to the Holt interview, so employment was a primary topic for this session as well.

The employment topic segued nicely into a discussion about the training of librarians, particularly about Michael Gorman's recently published opinions about "Why Library Education Matters" (part 1 in the August 2005 American Libraries and part 2 in the September issue--puzzling that AL doesn't put the President's Message up full text on the web like the other regular columns).

Part of the discussion seems to be about whether accredited library schools should offer a core curriculum of required courses or not. Gorman says that there should be a standard core curriculum in all library schools. Apparently, others disagree.

As a student, I'm not sure I have a broad enough perspective to discuss librarian education at the big picture level. I will say that my program has required courses and I feel they have served me well. We take Reference, Cataloging, Collection Development, Introduction to IT, Research Methods, and Management. We also have a practicum requirement.

Reference, Cataloging, and Collection Development seem like no-brainers as required courses to me--how could you be a librarian without a basic understanding of those aspects of librarianship?

I think Introduction to IT was originally meant to level the playing field when some students were coming into library school never having used email. It has obviously had to evolve over the years. It still seems a useful forum for getting across the message that librarianship is a pretty technological field and one should be prepared to keep up with it.

I wrote my thoughts about Research Methods last summer.

I'm taking Management right now and I'm way too enmeshed to have an intelligent opinion on how it's taught, whether it should be taught, or whether it should be required. I am finding it a useful vehicle for thinking about how I'm going to make my transition from full-time student to full-time working librarian.

So, fellow students and former students, does your library school have required courses? Was it a good thing? Did anyone have a program without required courses? How does that work?

For any podcast fans out there, I asked Professor Seavey if he could get them to put up a feed for the LIS radio shows. He thought they had already. I can't find it, but I may have more information about it later.     #

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