Position posting

[Temple Hoff]

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Warning: the following is message is pure rant.
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Alex is absoultely right!  There is nothing like a good rant to kick the 
day off.  Maybe this could help me kick my coffee habbit.  Na!!

This is a great discussion.  We seem to be dancing around a central issue 
of the value of a degree.  I don't have one personally, and I'm far to 
busy keeping up with the ever expanding skills needed to do my job in the 
bullet-train field of technology to even think of taking the time to get 
one. 
	I know the librarians I work with all say that that what the 
presently do, and what their degree trained them to do are vastly 
different.  This may not be true for a recent MLS grad.  
	
	In the technology field this is even more true.  Someone with a 
CIS degree from the eighties or maybe even recent grads, depending on the 
program and institution, essentially have a histroy degree.  This field 
is going to fast for University curricula to keep up.  If you want 
someone who knows the layout of the battlefield as it now stands, get 
someone from the trenches.  If you want someone who knows what the battle 
field looked like yesterday, get someone who studied yesterdays satillite 
photos.  If you're degree is more than a few years old, then what you've 
done since then is far more important.  
	As true as this is, it leads to bad things.  There's starting to 
be a stereotype in the technology field that anyone over thirty can't 
possibly know what's going on with todays technology.  This stereotype is 
feed by CIS types with old degrees and mainframe ideas.  I'm thiry and 
starting to recognize this "atrophy" in my field.
	The same sort of thing seems to be happening in the Library 
field.  Those librarians, recent grads and not, with the forsight to 
expand their horizons and skills past the Dewey system are hitting the 
same kind of wall.  There is a stereotype of librarians that don't want 
to give up the card catalog, insist that all data is their domain to 
organize, and that are forever insulted that these techies would go out 
and build a World Wide Information source without asking their permission 
first.  While I'm sure these librarians are not the norm in the field, 
they are loud, and very established, and seem to tote their musty old 
degree with much more wieght than what they've done since then to expand 
their minds.
	As for the idea that one must go to college to get a "mind set" 
for the field.  WHAT!!!!  That's so full of wholes its not worth flaming. 
 Oh, o.k., a little flame.  Have you taken a good look at our education 
system in this country lately?  
	Maybe that was a cheap shot at an easy target.  Everyone 
blames the education system.  But, would you rather have someone who has 
spent the last several years successfully doing the job, or someone who 
has spent the last several years "getting the mind set" of the field?  
All they really have is a peice of paper from some institution claiming 
that they can do the job.
	

Wow, I feal better! 

End of rant. 
-- 
Temple Hoff                  E-Mail:temhof at mohave.lib.az.us              
   
Library Services Coordinator           Phone:(520) 692-5703  
Mohave County Library District           Fax:(520) 692-5788