The History Librarian

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)