Thoughts on Library Education

July 24, 2006 at 6:16 pm | In education, libraries | Leave a Comment

Meredith has two very interesting posts (One, Two) regarding library education and technological competence – she’s thinking aloud about how library schools could better prepare students to cope with technological change in the workplace.  Something that she mentioned caught my attention:

I actually have given some thought to getting an MBA, because I really want to learn more about the management side of things. My management course in library school was fascinating to me, but reading some theorists and creating a strategic plan just didn’t feel like enough. Ryan suggests other important skills for librarians including communication skills (seems like a no-brainer, but it can be difficult to really reach different audiences), problem formulation/policy analysis, and accounting/budgeting. All very good and very necessary skills for any librarian, especially those who want to one day be in a management position.

Two thoughts, really: 1) business-type skills would be very useful for librarians to have – basic budget mgmt., workplace communication (very important!), marketing – since libraries are in many ways a kind of business; 2) why can’t the MLS be more like an MBA?

This second thought particularly interests me.  Take a look at an MBA curriculum.  Here at GSU (for the Flexible MBA), there are foundation courses (accounting, business analysis, microecon, marketing), 3 core courses (law, communication, and “Managing in the Global Economy”), 12 more credit-hours of “functional core” courses that elaborate on the foundation courses (each are 1.5 credits), 2 capstone courses, and then electives.  It’s a lot of credits, but there are some good things in here.  First of all, not all library courses have enough content to legitimately deserve 3 credits; furthermore, core areas of librarianship are often best learnt by doing, so why spend a whole semester reading articles?  Why not offer 1.5-credit library foundation courses and/or core courses?  The extra time can be spent on taking other 1.5-credit courses like workplace communication or project management or UNIX or whatever.  There would still be an important core, but it wouldn’t feel so mind-numbing.  It would also be interesting to add in a capstone course, where students could think about librarianship as a profession, reflect on what they’ve learned, and get ready for their first job.  Maybe a capstone course could also include tips on job searching or interview skills?

So maybe a new library curriculum would look something like this:

foundational courses (basic tech/computer skills, professional communication [from doing presentations to writing proposals], organization of information, history of libraries/librarianship or maybe libraries in society)

core courses (management, evaluation of collections/services, digital librarianship, reference, cataloging)

electives to build on foundational and core courses

internship/practicum of some sort (of course!)

capstone course (maybe different ones for public, academic, or special libraries)

Today’s MLK Update

July 5, 2006 at 7:26 pm | In MLK Papers, history, libraries | Leave a Comment

Taylor Branch addresses the MLK sale in today’s AJC and, Ralph Luker notes, David Garrow has a piece in today’s Newsday (The Hidden Price of Hawking History) that reiterates much of what he has said before (actually, it looks like a verbatim re-publication of his LA Times piece of June 30), especially concerning the larger problem of people profiting off family manuscripts at the expense of the public.

UPDATE (7/6): Since yesterday’s post was so short, I thought I’d add to it a piece in today’s Fulton County Daily Report, Scholars: Rescue forgotten MLK papers, that discusses in more detail some of the access issues and particularly issues about the condition of the King Center archives. [link from Ralph Luker/Cliopatria]

Discrediting the Opposition?

July 3, 2006 at 4:33 pm | In MLK Papers, history, libraries | 3 Comments

Another day, another MLK story. This one is kind of weird, so I would have waited for Ralph Luker to address it, but apparently his computer is down. So here’s the deal: op-ed piece in the AJC today called King’s Papers Tell the Truth, written by Willy Siegel Leventhal, a former field staff member of the SCLC during MLK’s leadership of that organization. In this op-ed piece, Leventhal mentions that “Garrow’s recent criticism of the sale of the King papers is a reasonable gateway into a more serious discussion. Garrow claims that the King papers are not worth $32 million to the Atlanta community. Given that a Klimt portrait recently sold for $135 million [...], it is a wonder that the press even takes Garrow seriously.” Then, Mr. Leventhal criticizes David Garrow [and also Taylor Branch] for having written about MLK and relying heavily on FBI files for evidence, noting that Harris Wofford (former U.S. Senator for Pa. and former Civil Rights advisor to JFK) has found Garrow’s scholarship lacking because of his over-reliance on FBI files. Mr. Leventhal further notes:

Few reviewers have fact-checked the Garrow or Branch use of the FBI counterintelligence files — even after it had been acknowledged that certain FBI surveillance tapes had been spliced to alter the content and context and reports were rewritten to give Hoover what he wanted.

This seems like a fairly obvious, if intellectually suspect, rhetorical trick – Wofford’s criticism of Garrow’s scholarship has very little to do with Garrow’s criticism of the King papers auction. As we have seen, Garrow is concerned with access and the family’s penchant for hiding the very papers that Leventhal indicates will “tell the truth;” he is also concerned with the way that the King family has cherrypicked items from a larger archive (thus compromising the integrity of the archive), the deteriorating state of the King papers currently residing in the King Center, and the questionable legality of selling items from a collection for which the government had paid the King family to ensure public access. Instead of addressing the issues at hand, Mr. Leventhal has chosen instead to make ad hominem attacks on Mr. Garrow and his scholarship. Whether or not Garrow and Branch have written good books on King is irrelevant (though, quite frankly, part of the reason that they relied on FBI files was apparently because the King family wouldn’t give them access to the MLK papers), and Mr. Leventhal should be ashamed of his spurious attacks on them both.

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.