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- Path: sparky!uunet!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!gatech!paladin.american.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!vms.csd.mu.edu!BLACKWOODS
- From: blackwoods@vms.csd.mu.edu
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.circplus
- Subject: MLS debate rages on
- Date: 28 Jan 1993 19:37:30 GMT
- Organization: Marquette University - Computer Services
- Lines: 18
- Message-ID: <00967499.E29A9C00@vms.csd.mu.edu>
- Reply-To: blackwoods@vms.csd.mu.edu
- NNTP-Posting-Host: vmsa.csd.mu.edu
-
- While the Library of the Future may, indeed, not look like that of the past
- or even today, I need to be convinced that working in Circ would ever require
- an MLS degree. I'm not even convinced that Reference Librarians or Catalogers
- need MLSs. (How's that for subversive thinking.) I think that,as far as
- Circulation is concerned, it depends on whether the site is Academic or
- Public. It MAY be appropriate that in a University Library, some higher level
- of education would be desirable, if only to help the Circ worker or super-
- visor better understand the environment. However, on the pure mechanics of
- the job, something as "grand" as an MLS wouldn't be necessary. I come from
- a school of thought that Librarianship is not a true profession but a skilled
- trade. A College education would be desirable for this trade but after that
- a prospective librarian would be "apprenticed" to a Master Librarian. Call
- me medieval but I believe that the work world could benefit from the old
- guild system. Libraianship would definitely benefit. Such a system would
- value experience as first among many qualities essential to a productive
- worker.
- Steve Blackwood
- Marquette University
-