are you now, or have you ever been, A Librarian?

Best A/V Club Graduate
Kevin Crothers
If you've noticed the steady increase in interesting events happening at the Charleston County Public Library, the dedicated man to thank is media specialist and A/V department head dude Kevin Crothers. Crothers, a lifelong musician and general A/V guru, actively works to bring culture to his corner of our small town through the monthly Film Movement series, in which independent, art-house films are shown on the big screen in the Main Library's auditorium, and his ongoing efforts to promote local music during Piccolo Spoleto through his Local Blend series, in which a diverse lineup of local bands perform in the auditorium at times that work for all age groups. Perhaps best of all, each live musical performance at the library is captured on digital audio and video equipment and put on the library's website for future enjoyment. Not to mention the mountains of new CDs and DVDs Crothers has brought into the library's collection. Bravo, Kevin, and thanks for keeping your inner A/V geek entertained and entertaining for us all. --Sara Miller

librarians r cool.

Where do you live now? I go to Catholic. I chose between Catholic and Maryland. My choice came down to location (I lived here already). I chose Catholic because I like smaller schools and there was a tuition discount which made the two schools comparable in price. Though I think Maryland has a better reputation so maybe I made the wrong decision

Those are all great schools that you got into. Are you interested in a certain concentration that one school offers? Are you interested in living in a particular area? Are you interested in working in a certain area? I think Michigan has the best reputation of all those schools, but I'm not sure it matters that much. At Catholic, most students are part-time and work full-time and are pretty much adults. That works for me. I'm not sure a full-time collegiate-type program would be the best thing for me, mainly because I just don't find the coursework that interesting. I couldn't imagine doing it full time,

Is it worth it? Only if you want to be a librarian or some other related career. In my view, it's just not that intellectually stimulating, such as a liberal arts degree. Can you get financial aid from any of the schools? The jobs are generally low paying once you get out so I would try to keep loans to a minimum. Also, experience is really important so if any of the colleges offer you a work-study position that would be great.

If I were you, here's where I would go, in order of preference:

Pitt: Good school, nice city.
Pratt: Great city, expensive school.
Michigan: Highly rated, possibly over driven classmates.
Texas: Good school, college town.

Good luck. Let me know if I can be of any more help.

(Pratt would have been my dream school but even when I was in NYC I was thinking more in terms of Queens and St. John's. Also, I already have one vanity M.A. so am trying to be more practical this time around.)

Michigan gave me a scholarship for 50% off (though it is still expensive) and texas is pretty cheap...I don't know, I am really interested in academic librarianship, and maybe also archival work? What think you hivemind? Anybody know any other good skools?

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/lib/brief/libsp1_brief.php

Texas or Michigan would give you the opportunity to investigate both academic and archives.

uh...since i have nothing to offer besides this, i will just second what mary said re: pratt. if you "live near nyc" and don't mind the commute, the palmer school has, to my knowledge, a fairly good rep too.

i mean, there's still plenty of mundane grunt work to be done (shelving, flagging, registering people who use the library for the first time, etc). the only other library work i've really done before this was volunteering to shelve books in my hometown's local library post-renovation, so i'm not experienced in the ways of, say, reference desk work, but there's something very stimulating/taxing about spec/col also. currently, i'm organizing and processing an entire collection for research purposes which, when given to us by its donor, contained about 35 boxes of paper files and as many, if not more, boxes of videotapes. i've been working on the same project since july - i'm not finished yet and probably won't be until THIS july, and they've even got someone helping out with the videotapes. it's occasionally frustrating and i get a bit overwhelmed by it much of the time, but i think i'll be sufficiently proud in the end result and, more practically, it'll look great on my resume.

hopefully that's the kind of personal library experience you were looking for. i remain in the dark about a lot of the larger bureaucratic stuff at nyu, but i do really like my immediate bosses in the library. and speaking as an undergrad, i'm glad i'm getting experience in this field now, as it's consistent with what i want to do post-grad (not library school per se, but archivist/curatorial work.)

I did research once at Fales when I was in grad school. (I studied 19 c Brit Lit so Fales was the place.) The interesting thing about Fales seems to be that besides the typical special collections, they have also the downtown nyc stuff.

Geez, for an undergraduate you are getting a great experience, especially if you are intereted in going in that direction in the future. When I was an undergraduate I did nothing beneficial work-wise.

I don't have any experience working in an academic library. I loved those libraries as a student, so I thought it would be a good fit, but I've gone to conferences and meetings and etc. that give me a different impression of what working in that field would be like. To really find out, though, I guess I will have to try it.

I went to UNC-CH for grad school (alas, not for an MLS) and loved both the school and living in Chapel Hill, so I would highly recommend that aspect. Most (actually, all) of my library time there was spent in the medical library--there must be some people who specialize in medical library stuff, yes?

Anyhow my husband does fine salary wise working in a law library (and he doesn't even have an MLS!), and my boss does way more than fine doing kind of managerial stuff for NLM, so salary prospects are not necessarily totally depressing but still best to minimize student debt as much as possible, or course (not that I actually followed my own advice. . .).

To answer the question of the thread: I did work in a public library while I was in high school as what was then called a "library page" - shelved books, kept them in order, checked them into library, cleaned shelves, and other random tasks as come up with by head librarian. I liked it, but library school itself was exhausting, the program required you to spend time at school in a different state at the time (and I had just gotten married), and I couldn't afford to pay for classes. I do know four librarians who all seem happy with their jobs, and I've met one person who just graduated from the program I left and is looking for a library job.

http://www.azcentral.com/style/gifs/1015fashion2.jpg

Is there anything that you like about your job that you could build on? For instance, if you like finance and management>>MBA. If you like databases and computers>>Systems Management. I'm not sure there is any MA that leads directly into a satisfying career.

We also have a penchant for booze. This sadly is not part of the librarian stereotype. Something needs to be done about this. We will drink you under the table, or atleast until we fall down from said table.

But I'm rambling!

Yeah, Informatics! What is it, exactly? It was linked to our Communications Dept. (as was the MLS program), but when Informatics bit the dust this semester, the MLS program was sent back to the School of Education, which makes sense to me.

Oh! And ALA just slapped UB on the wrist, actually, for closing its Informatics Department:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6363891.html

This is what the ALA site says:

Conditional: Some entries have a notation of (Conditional) next to them. This indicates conditional accreditation — a status assigned to a program that must make changes to comply with the 1992 Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Studies to enable accreditation beyond the date specified by the Committee on Accreditation (COA). Please note that these programs are fully accredited under the Standards.