Rantity: Librarians(except those who read to kids) are the most useless group of people.

Rodney King ^ | today | Rodney King

[Rodney King]

Why would anyone need a degree to be a librarian?

Librarians are some of the most unproductive people on the planet. They put books on shelves. Woo-hoo.

Got to have a degree for that. Perhaps it made sense when they needed to be experts on the Dewey Decimal system, but now we have a thing called computers.

If a clerk at Borders can put books on the shelf without a degree in Library Sciences, why can't he/she do the same thing at a library?

Libraries themselves are a waste. Go to any major college library and all you see are people there to study, yet 95% of the library is taken up not by study space but by books that nobody reads.

The books should be scanned online, and then the originals sent to a nearby warehouse in case some Poindexter really needs to get his hands on the actual book. Then, university libraries can be full of study areas with computers for research.

Fire all the "librarians" and replace them with book store clerks. All Librarians are is glorified clerks anyway.

It would seem that degrees in Library Sciences exist solely as a barrier to entry to prevent clerks from competing for "librarian" jobs.

The exception to this rule is libarians in schools and community libraries that read books to kids. Not that they need a fancy degree to do that.

[Rodney King]

Really, so does the clerk at Borders know how to use the Periodic Guide to find the most recent article on the moral questions involved in gene splicing?

For one thing, I knew how to use the periodic guide in 6th grade. For another, does one need a masters in library science to know how to do this? Couldn't the clerk from borders just get a few hours of training on the Periodic Guide?

[discostu]

That's nice for you. Not everybody learns that stuff in 6th grade, and most of the people that did learn it learned from a librarian. Problem with the idea of a few hours of training is that the periodic guide is one of dozens of reference books librarians use on a regular basis, nobody is going to put a minimum wage employee through two weeks of training on reference guides which won't even be useful to them (since Borders doesn't store microfiche of past issues, or most of the books that are in a library, that kind of information woun't do you any good at Borders).

[Rodney King]

Problem with the idea of a few hours of training is that the periodic guide is one of dozens of reference books librarians use on a regular basis, nobody is going to put a minimum wage employee through two weeks of training on reference guides which won't even be useful to them

I would suspect that your average starbucks employee didn't know how to use the cappucino maker before he/she arrived, as well as all the other procedures at starbucks. I find it laughable that you beleive a masters degree is neccessary to know how to use these information sources. Clearly a little bit of training is all that is needed.

[discostu]

I never said a masters degree was necessary, I'm saying librarians are far from useless. But it's far from a little training, maybe it should be a masters program, but it sure isn't the level of training minimum wage employees go through either.

[Xenalyte]

The library looks the same as it did 31 years ago. Al walks in and looks around. He spots something on the desk and his eyes widen. The bowl of sugar is still there. DeGroot, still fat but now gray-haired, grabs Al's shoulder and he turns around.

Al: You're alive!

Miss DeGroot: And you owe us $2,163.

Al: Wait a second. You're charging me $2,000 for an overdue library book?

Miss DeGroot: Perhaps if you didn't ignore the overdue notices we sent you for the first ten years, you wouldn't be in this pickle. Sit down.

Al sits with some effort

Miss DeGroot: You made me a promise and you didn't keep it. So now you must pay the piper. For you see, even the road to ruin has its tollgate. Now, will you be paying cash or food stamps?

Al: Can't we make a little deal here? Now, I'll tell you what. Suppose I tape a, a doughnut to my driver's license and slip it to ya, you give it back and the doughnut just mysteriously "disappears."

Miss DeGroot: Could it be that you don't have the $2,000? Could it be that I was correct when I made an educated guess that you would fail in life?

Al: Could it be that the nails that hold your chair together are from the planet Krypton?

[johnb838]

Hmmm. my schools usually had at least one libarian. Maybe budget cuts have changed that.

[scott7278]

Did you owe a big fine or something?

[Physicist]

Bibliopath ping!

[DocH]

Man, I wouldn't use that screen name, even IF it enabled me to have a catchy tagline.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Most libraries have their entire collection of books, microfilm, CD-ROMs, video, and audio on a computerized catalog, which needs to be maintained and often have the software customized. In addition, compatibility between all the information sources and catalog databases, and the computer hardware and software for client use, needs to be updated regularly. In addition, many subscriptions to journals and other information sources are online, and require libraries to maintain secure access to prevent unauthorized access by non-paying users (i.e. users not formally affiliated with the institution), and many universities make these online sources available through student and faculty accounts on the university's main computer network, requiring maintenance of system of controlled access from remote locations.

A quick Google search pulled up the following required courses for an MS in Library Science from the Univ. of Kentucky:

"The required core courses are LIS600 Information in Society, LIS 601 Information Sources and Services, LIS 602 Information Storage and Retrieval, and LIS 603 Management in Library and Information Science. Qualifying technology courses are LIS 636 Microcomputers in Libraries and Information Centers, LIS 637 Information Technology, LIS 638 Internet Technologies and Information Services, and LIS 668 Information Systems Design."

While this is obviously not the equivalent of an M.S. in Computer Science, neither is it equivalent to an M.A. in English or History. Any many people who get these degrees do a lot more technology coursework than the basic requirements, in order to qualify for better jobs in large specialized libraries.

The average circulation desk clerk at a little public library doesn't have or need a degree in library science. However, university and professional libraries (e.g. law firms private libraries) do require these specially qualified professionals.

[dead]

That was a fun rant!

Personally, I save my vitriol for highschool guidance counselors, and their overpaid corporate counterparts, human resources.

[tfecw]

Right, That's fine. The people writing or managing that software and databases aren't librarians. They get people with degrees in comp sci/comp sys and system admins handle that. I've worked on projects for library's before. I (the computer scientist) was writing the db interface for the web, not the librarians.

Your average Office work who deals with spread sheets, Access databases, or even the management of web applications doesn't need a degree in computer science to use those tools. If they were writing those tools at a code level (as opposed to a macro in excel) Then yeah, they need a degree or some other training or experience.
I would be interested in what actually goes on in those classes that mentioned some IT work. I conceded that Librarians might need to know some basic IT work, they don't need to know any Computer science work though. IT isn't computer science, that misnomer gets tossed around and i was making an attempt to clean it up.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Many graduate schools offering Library Science degrees are also offering "Information Science" degrees and combined "Library Information Science" degrees. These tend to be more tech oriented, and usually require some basic programming courses, and other computer training that goes beyond how to use software that somebody else wrote. Senior librarians are often in charge of large budgets, including choosing and purchasing hardware and software, and thus need to be qualified to evaluate various systems' capabilities vs. cost. It's nowhere near the level of "computer science" that's involved in creating such systems, but still a highly technical field.

A childhood friend of mine who was a hardcore computer geek got her undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Rice University, and later went on to get a graduate degree in Library Science, which was most definitely focused on advanced applied computer science (since I know she wasn't interested in anything else).

[AndrewB]

"Books, young man. Books!!"

Sam Cogley would be spinning in his grave after reading your rant... If he had been born and had died yet, that is.

[RadioAstronomer]

That's not what librarians do. Librarians assist in research, help teach people how the library is organized (either Dewey or LOC), keep up on the latest publications to be able to steer people towards current information, and make decisions on what should be in the stacks. It's actually pretty involved and difficult work, but for their trouble they get to spend all day surrounded by books so it's got a nice payoff. Aids and assistants put books away, librarians USE the books.

Nice reply. :-)

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping. :-)

[Tax-chick]

Phoop.

[Rodney King]

That was a fun rant!

Thanks, some people missed the fun angle.

Personally, I save my vitriol for highschool guidance counselors, and their overpaid corporate counterparts, human resources.

Well, my wife's high school guidance counselor told her to train to be a secretary. Instead she went to an Ivy League college and a top 15 law school. Don't even get me started on human resources. You want to increase corporate profitability in the US? Eliminate all the HR people.

[RightWingAtheist]

I got used to these kinds of comments back in the day :-/

[k2blader]

I wish I could be a librarian. :-)