What type of librarian do you want to be?

This Foundations course is designed to teach you about the profession and give you a taste for the types of work each type of library / archives / cultural institution entails. 

There are four major types of libraries; public, school, academic, and special. There are archives and record centers, historical societies and museums. Special collections and rare book libraries are usually part of academic libraries or museums. When you consider special libraries, those that focus on a specific topic or trade, there are information centers, corporate libraries, law libraries, research centers and think tanks, and more. 

Museums have both libraries and collections of objects including art, artifacts, animals, and minerals. Historical societies collect objects, printed materials, and records or manuscripts.

When we delve into the information science side of LIS, there are information centers, usability labs, knowledge management functions and skills, search and retrieval centers, organizations that deal with information, data, metadata, databases, and the accumulation, aggregation, and dissemination of data, big and small.

Within this broad and expanding field there are opportunities to work in tradition jobs, such as reference and cataloging, and non-traditional jobs like scholarly communications and first-year experience. New jobs crop up every day including digital curators and digital humanists, electronic records managers, and human computer interaction specialists. 

This ever growing list is just a taste of the professionals and niches out there for LIS students and practitioners. What should you specialize in? I've always felt that general knowledge is best, but over the years I've come to realize that students need strong technology and searching skills, the ability to approach a website or database and determine how to retrieve data using the available access points and limitations. Digital skills are essential these days, even for analog librarians and those who gravitate toward the printed book. 

Most of all it is important to explore the various fields and permutations of LIS and determine how your skill set resonates with the required or perceived skills for a practitioner. Explore the field, it is ever changing and challenging, yet holds many opportunities. 

Over the past year or so, I've been reading an interesting blog "Hack Library School." 
Library science students talk about their impressions of the field, provide advice for fellow students, and suggestions on viewing themselves in Hack Library School http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/   This blog should be read by professors of LIS and by practitioners who want to know what students are concerned about. The current post http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/things-to-consider-when-applying-to-library-school/   is particularly enlightening as is today's post (Sept 23, 2013) "Working, Volunteering, or Interning Before Library School" http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/working-volunteering-or-interning-before-library-school/#more-7885

What type of information professional do you want to be when you grow up?

Two libraries - preserved and preserving our heritage

As we consider the history of libraries, we recognize that many from the ancient world do not survive. In fact, many collections of tablets, stone, and papyrus materials are records that document legal and administrative matters, such as the collections at Ebla, Tel El Amarna, and even the Linear B tablets found in Knossos and Mycenae. There are several wonderful books about the discovery of these collections and the decipherment of their records. The most recent is by Margolit Fox The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Codewhich describes the discover of Linear B tablets and their decipherment by Alice Kober and Michael Ventris. These tablets contain annual inventories of goods shipped and received at administrative centers in the ancient world (1800-1400 BCE).

We have all heard about the Library at Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy Soter and expanded by rulers in Egypt, burned by Julius Caesar, expanded by Marc Antony and Cleopatra, burned, expanded, and finally destroyed so that there are no scrolls or codices, merely archaeological ruins buried under the modern city in Egypt. One library that survives and is still being recovered is that at Herculaneum 
The city was destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE spewing lava and ash over Pompeii and Herculaneum. Today, using refracted light and much patience, scrolls uncovered in the late 1700s are being digitized and preserved. The National Geographic video describes how the papyrus scrolls are unrolled and read today. http://youtu.be/rQBgoLZZjHM

Down through the ages, libraries have come and gone, some surviving and still in use like the Vatican Library that we discussed, others disappearing, known only through comments in the literature, letters, and historical references. Many of the national libraries today are working separately and jointly to preserve the historical record. The Smithsonian Libraries is one example. Again a very nice marketing video talks about the vast collections at the institution. http://youtu.be/bi75-k-7hrE

How does your library document its history? What does it collect that documents and preserves the history of your community?

Alternative Careers with a library degree

There are lots of jobs and careers out there for librarians and information scientists. Researchers and writers are just some of the traditional positions graduates seek.  Today I read the blog for Amanda Brenan, graduate of Rutgers, who calls herself a Meme Librarian and haunts forgotten places and files on the web.  If you want to know what others with MLIS degrees are doing, check out her blog http://biblioboard.tumblr.com/post/60750440586/when-i-began-library-school-in-2009-i-had-no-idea

As to my career, I've been a researcher, a consultant, a librarian and historian at large, and most of all a teacher. Somehow with all these positions and vocations, I use my degree every single day.

What non-traditional positions are you looking at?

Exploring symbols

I was thinking about the first week of Foundations of Library & Information Science, where we explored the Ampersand symbol, its meaning, origin, and definition., as we discussed the need to look up symbols, terms, and concepts for library patrons even if we know the answer. On one of the listservs I frequent, there is a posting for an article in the current New Yorker (Sept 6, 2013) about Hashtags, Manicules, and more. The article written by Keith Houston is entitled "Ancient Roots of Punctuation" http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/09/origins-of-hashtag-manicule-diple-pilcrow-ampersand-explained.html
 The article explores the origins of various symbols, including the number sign which can be used as an abbreviation for Pound, or lb. As with Ampersand, I was amazed that I use this symbol frequently and had no idea of its origins. If you are intrigued with the article, you might look at his book Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks . 

What did you learn today?