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Celia Emmelhainz

Can We Talk About the MLS? | Editorial - 0 views

  • Public libraries in rural areas really don’t have a large enough donor base to make extensive fundraising worthwhile. The other problem public libraries have with outside fundriasing is that if you start taking in a lot of major gifts and donations, then your steady stream of revenue, the local government, may just wind up cutting your funding.
    • Celia Emmelhainz
       
      True with school libraries as well; can't fundraise because can't lose current funding, but then feel sense of lack of control over revenue streams? = ick.
  • “Students who pick their major based solely on postgraduation salaries, as opposed to passion for a field, will in all likelihood struggle in both school and career.”
  • would agree that public librarians questionably need a library specific degree, or a degree at a graduate level anyway, as evidenced by the wealth of paraprofessionals who often do at least as good a job in that setting, though for management I think you would want someone trained in public management with library experience. In an academic setting, there is a credibility issue that begs credentialling in the areas of research and education, and credentialling to a higher standard than is now present in library schools, hence the inadequacy of the degree university libraries particularly, or at least that degree alone. The degree needs to be reinvented and would best partner to at least confer joint degrees in librarianship and business, education, and other disciplines
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • The piece I was missing was how to develop workable ideas that were well researched and aligned with the basic tenants of Librarianship.
  • philosophy and values of librarianship. It also grounded me in supervisory skills, in library management, and collection development.
  • Paraprofessionals here have been the ones leading the discussion on topics such as fair use, copyright, RDA, cataloging standards, FERPA, etc. There are several levels of paraprofessionals from pages/shelvers, circulation desk workers, catalogers (copy & original), acquisitions, IT Systems, ILL , etc. MLS Librarians are mostly reference & instruction positions, collection development and/or managers. Education is absolutely needed for some positions, but experience should be recognized as well. Our newly hired MLS people would be lost try to perform original cataloging, acquisitions/budget or ILL just as the paraprofessionals may lack the knowledge in instructional pedagogy, management/leadership, etc.
  • Much of my practical learning during grad school came from my classmates that had worked in libraries for years and were just then getting the degree. They had a MUCH better context for what was going on than I did at 23 and straight out of my undergrad
  • Require the masters in a specialized field rather than the MLIS. That could definitely work in academia. And you can require directors and managers to have the MLIS, but not necessarily the librarians at the reference desk or running a department like circulation.
  • But why do acquisitions, CD, or e-resources librarians need the degree? Those are practical jobs, that you do need practical experience for.
  • Any self-starter with a library job could easily supplement training and hands-on experience with reading books from leaders in the field on the subject, starting a blog, getting involved in conversations in the library community.
  • But for colleges, this becomes a game of perpetual growth – to secure funding and improve programs, we need more students, more alumni to donate! Job markets shrink, shift and dry up all the time, but rarely does a degree program shrink proportionately
  • Why I couldn’t pick up a book here, attend a webinar there, and get the same place eventually through grit and dedication like the librarians just a generation before me.
  • I am a Library Director in a hamlet (pop 3,000) in NH. The likelihood of my ever advancing to a larger library is categorically denied by that degree requirement. It doesn’t matter what experience I bring. Paying for another degree (I have a B.A. and an M. Div.) is out of the question for me, and, certainly, out of the question for the trustees of the library I serve
  • Laura is correct – being in a rural library is actually very challenging. There are far fewer resources for our patrons – so good luck directing them to the resources they need.
  • The public school teachers (including the school librarians) in my area have a starting salary that is about $10,000 higher than the starting salary of the public library system. Yet only the school and (some) public librarians are required to have a Masters before applying for their jobs
  • They are responsible for recruiting too many librarians, and the schools need to take responsibility for over saturation. If not, how are they any different than for-profit colleges or career colleges.
  • This is a women’s profession. Women are not valued. Hence any professional education we may have is useless in the eyes of…. us. Ah, feminism we’ve come so far. I realized when I went to library school that it was merely a sham union card for a lowly paid job.
  • Library school does need to emphasize more about management – not just one class. This is what will make us more useful. The best library directors are those who kept their libraries afloat during the economic downturn. This is because they have the fundamental ethics of a librarian coupled with mad management skills.
  • This isn’t just in the public sector. Academic librarians have crazy politics to wade through as do school librarians.
  • What if we migrated from our current degree to a B.A. in Education (with a focus on libraries); an M.A. in Education (with a focus on a particular library type or area); and a Ph.D. in Education (with a narrow focus on a particular library type or area)? This would also serve to define who we are (educators) and what we do (education: through self-directed, research assistance & instruction, instructive & enlightening experiences
  • Honestly, I privately refer to this as my fake master’s degree.
  • There is no unified body to convince that the MLS is somehow superfluous to needs; you have to convince these individuals, 99% of whom have an MLS and probably can see the value in it.
  • When I first became a librarian, I found that my past experience working in a bookstore was far more valuable to me than my MLS program.
  • For many, it clearly does not provide necessary or useful theory and practice opportunities.
  • I think some programs, like the one I attended, relied a lot on theory, and that meant that my dream, of creating better technology, was not quite realized as I needed the practical skills at building technology
  • A classmate of mine jumped ship and attended a business school in New York, and now works at Goldman Sachs…I stayed on board hoping to do meaningful work; that hasn’t quite happened yet, really because of the emphasis on theory..I think my classmate saw the writing on the wall and made a smart calculated move; I do not like to start something and leave it unfinished,
Jamin Henley

Is the Internet hurting children? - CNN.com - 6 views

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    "Amid the buzz over the Facebook IPO, the ever-evolving theories about how Twitter is reshaping our communications and speculation about where the next social media-enabled protest or revolution will occur, there is an important question we've largely ignored. What are the real effects of all this on the huge segment of the population most affected by social media themselves: our children and our teens?"
Allison Burrell

Welcome to WebCHECK! - 22 views

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    WebCHECK Professional, designed for educators and Web designers to use for (1) assessing the quality of Web sites used for assignments and learning activities and (2) determining how to improve the quality of locally-designed personal, classroom, library and/or school Websites. · WebCHECK Senior, designed for high school students (grades 9-12) · WebCHECK Middle, designed for middle school students (grade 5-8) · WebCHECK Junior, designed for elementary school students (grades 2-4) · WebCHECK for Facilitors, designed for K-12 educators, administrators and higher education faculty to use when assigning a single Web site to be evaluated by groups or classes of students or by educators in an in-service or professional development workshop. What makes WebCHECK unique: · based on a foundation of instructional design and motivation theory. · available online, fully automated, and free. · both fun and easy-to-use. · a powerful instructional and learning tool. · generates a full evaluation report to share results with teachers, administrators, students, parents, etc. · uses graphs for visual representation of scores and text for details and interpretations. · On the WebCHECK Web site, you will find all of the instruments, as well as more than 30 lesson plans, designed by school librarians nationwide, that incorporate WebCHECK at various levels and subject areas.
James Whittle

Study: Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy - 21 views

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    Abstract Readers of fiction tend to have better abilities of empathy and theory of mind (Mar et al., 2006). We present a study designed to replicate this finding, rule out one possible explanation, and extend the assessment of social outcomes. In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled for, along with two other important individual differences: the tendency to be drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting for these variables, fiction exposure still predicted performance on an empathy task. Extending these results, we also found that exposure to fiction was positively correlated with social support. Exposure to nonfiction, in contrast, was associated with loneliness, and negatively related to social support.
Judy O'Connell

You've Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media - 14 views

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    "You've Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media is intended for anyone who doesn't know where to begin in managing born-digital materials. It errs on the side of simplicity and describes what is truly necessary to start managing born-digital content on physical media, and it presents a list of the basic steps without expanding on archival theory or the use of particular software tools. It does not assume that policies are in place or that those performing the tasks are familiar with traditional archival practices, nor does it assume that significant IT support is available."
Robin Cicchetti

The Business Case for Reading Novels - Anne Kreamer - Harvard Business Review - 14 views

  • in fMRI studies of people reading fiction, neuroscientists detect activity in the pre-frontal cortex — a part of the brain involved with setting goals — when the participants read about characters setting a new goal. It turns out that when Henry James, more than a century ago, defended the value of fiction by saying that "a novel is a direct impression of life," he was more right than he knew.
  • they discovered "a significant relation between the amount of fiction people read and their empathic and theory-of-mind abilities" allowing them to conclude that it was reading fiction that improved the subjects' social skills, not that those with already high interpersonal skills tended to read more.
  • It's when we read fiction that we have the time and opportunity to think deeply about the feelings of others, really imagining the shape and flavor of alternate worlds of experience.
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    Data on the benefits of reading fiction.
Carla Shinn

Keeping Public School Libraries Relevant - 13 views

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    "Public school libraries have always served an admirable purpose in education. In an indirect way, K-12 libraries have given students support in learning endeavors and been a go-to spot for information. With that being said, as the first Internet-generation rises through the public school ranks, libraries need big changes to remain relevant. It is not enough to simply "be there;" school libraries need to reach out to students and pull them in with helpful resources that combine traditional and contemporary theories in literacy."
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