[Web4lib] Skillset for new librarians

[Lisa Rabey]

I think I see a lot of good requirements and suggestions from across
the field coming across these messages, but I would like to add a
caveat to all the great suggestions:

As a recent (May '10) MLIS grad, my school (Wayne State) decreed,
starting with my incoming class, we're to take a "intro to technology"
class, if you will, that is to cover a lot of the basic groundwork on
MS Office/OpenOffice, HTML/CSS, lan/wan and hardware/software. Kind of
a plethora of a lot of things into a single class designed to give
introduction to things many of these students have not seen or heard
of before but will need to know as they go deep into librarination.
The idea is great in theory, but in practice it was an utter
nightmare.

The problem? Complete and utterly overwhelming sense of chaos and
"we're in too damned deep" panic, coupled with poorly written
textbooks and inept professors who aren't the specialists in these
subjects and thus couldn't properly or fully explain the material.
The students are caught because they don't understand the material but
have to pass the class because if they don't pass the class, they
cannot continue on with the program. Rinse, lather and repeat.

For me, as I have a background in tech (my last position was a senior
network engineer for a tier 1 internet provider) and I'm personally
heavy into tech, so the course was a cake walk for me, but I saw a lot
of my friends struggle because there was too many concepts, ideas and
information was thrown to them in a short amount of time. One week
we're working on an excel spreadsheet and the next, building a website
using HTML/CSS by hand. The connections as to why these things are
important to know were not pointed out by the professors or the TAs
even when asked, so, frustrated students are frustrated students.

Roy Tennet wrote:
"Uh...does everyone realize this is 2011?  If we're taking time to
teach MS Office to masters students, then we may as well just pack it
in right now."

Well yes, where are our teleporters and flying cars? :)

In all seriousness, I agree with this statement BUT I also think this
statement is pretty arrogant. It assumes that all students have the
same access to the same technologies with the same learning tendencies
and that is simply just not true. I worked in a graduate library for
nearly two years (ending in 2010) and stopped being amazed at what
masters and doctoral students should and should not have knowledge off
within the first two months.  Most people have experience with only
one or two types of office suite products (say word processing and
powerpoint) and have absolutely no knowledge of the others
(spreadsheet or database) simply because they never had a reason to
use those products before, but it certainly does not mean they are
unqualified or inept in becoming a masters student or hell, even a
librarian.  Wayne State's library system offered intro courses, free
to anyone on campus, to learn how to use software such as MS Office /
Blackboard since these are vital across all disciplines.

>From conversations with my peers at other SLIS schools across the US,
it seems a lot of the "intro to technology" classes kind went the same
way as mine did: too much, too soon, too many buzzwords/jargon, no
connection made to every day life as to why this was important. It
also seemed that a lot of professors were not subject specialists or
had a deep knowledge of the topic since these classes are essentially
a gen ed of SLIS programs, so anyone could teach it. However, Wayne
State ALSO offers additional classes in the SLIS grouping such as
information architecture, database design and development, web design
and web scripting (to name a few). There is an IT certification track
under the MLIS. A lot of library programs now have this type of track
built into the curriculum. It's not perfect, but it IS getting better
and future librarians will be better prepared.

My point, that I'm now getting to, is no matter what you choose to
teach during you intro course or for how long, please make it
relevant, to the point and that it flows. Jumping from one extreme
(creating spreadsheets) to another (lan/wan) without a middle will
only confuse the students. Don't try and jam everything into a
section. Cover only the big topics with information on how to research
others. For example, for Web2.0 teach FB/Twitter/LinkedIn (because
those are the top three everyone uses) but give information on other
rising applications like geolocation software (Foursquare) or social
sharing (Evernote/Dropbox). Use everyday analogies to make sense of
the buzzwords and jargon. "How does email know to get to it's
destination?" "Just as we know if we're traveling from San Francisco
-> San Jose, we can choose a number of routes to get there, and if
need be, we can stop and ask for directions. Email works in the same
way. It has a certain path, and if that path isn't working it will get
directions from the server to route down another path to the
receiver."

Lastly: Teach for the lowest common (tech) denominator. Yes, it is
2011 but if Pew reports/ALA findings are to believed, not everyone is
still on the same wavelength in even having a computer, let alone
having access to the internet. Not having access does NOT mean lack of
interest.  I'm hugely interested in owning a Bugatti Veyron (at the
low, low price of $1M USD) but I have yet to have the cash to own on.

Returning you back to your conversations,
Lisa




Lisa M. Rabey
----------------------------
digital.biblyotheke
http://biblyotheke.net