Posted on 03/23/2005 7:01:30 AM PST by Rodney King
Thanks for the defense. I used to put be one of those assistants, for over eight years. It helped pay my way through my first few years of graduate school.
"Ok, sure. We've all got our little preconceived notions about what librarians are and what they do. Many people think of them as diminutive civil servants, scuttling about "Sssh-ing" people and stamping things. Well, think again buster.
Librarians have degrees. They go to graduate school for Information Science and become masters of data systems and human/computer interaction. Librarians can catalog anything from an onion to a dog's ear. They could catalog you. Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field and Stream magazines. They can find data for your term paper that you never knew existed. They may even point you toward new and appropriate subject headings.
People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says otherwise."
http://www.librarianavengers.org/worship.shtml
*****
I am getting a doctorate in information science. I have a masters in information, w/a concentration in information economics, management and policy. Before returning for the PhD, I worked on national technology policy, including helping the Fed Elections Commission revision online campaigning. I did this with a new version of a library degree that's becoming popular, the information degree. My classmates are computer scientists, psychologists, human-computer interaction researchers, digital librarians (how do you think all these scanned documents are gonna be catagorized and searchable online, fella?), and, yes, old fashioned librarians who still believe in libraries as a public good or understand the need for academic or corporate libraries (you don't get around much do you, if you aren't aware of the use of digital knowledge systems in corporate environments - managed by librarians).
I don't consider myself a 'real' librarian, but I'm part of the information profession and I stand up for my peeps.
Clearly I was dicussing university libraries.
I did two years as a student aid in the library. Even after two years of wandering the stacks, and being a pretty good researcher to start with, I could walk up to a librarian ask them where to get information on something and they'd come up with half a dozen ideas I didn't. I learned a lot in there, one of the things I learned is that most of the people you see working at a library aren't librarians and the actual librarians WILL get irritable if you bestow the title on the wrong people.
Then you should know librarians don't shelve books. That is a job for library assistants and in a university library, usually a job for work-study students w/minimal training.
If you needed subject matter expertise for research, you would not ask the book shelver, you would ask a librarian, who often has 2 masters degrees, one in the subject matter, one in library and information science. Perhaps you have not had the need for high level research assistance using a qualified information professional.
Your rant seemed so "clearly" ignorant of what librarians know and do, I was sure it wasn't limited to academic librarians.
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