Managing a collection is not a data-entry job, it requires you to know about stuff. Which book on, say, the middle-saharan 17th century tribes do you get, and which ones don’t you get? Is the new one better than the old one? Which old works are to be digitized and which ones aren’t?
Also included is actually running the library itself, helping people use it (from little bobby who wants that book about a mole who wants to know who pooped on its head, to a PhD student researching said 17th century tribes and what art they produced). It includes copyright law, information ethics, conservation, etc etc etc.
It’s really much more broad than “Someone who works at the local library”
Source: me, someone who once worked at the local library, and seriously considered doing it for a living… untill I saw the effort required and the pay.
Your library experience was very different from mine. We mostly just told people how to sign up for the wait list for 50 Shades of gray, what programs we did for the kids, and putting away the books everyone left everywhere.
The pay is what scared me away. Branch Manager, highest position I interacted with, couldn’t afford their own transportation, and was going through their second green card marriage for money because they were desperate. Had 2 Masters.
How would you choose which book to get on middle-saharan 17th century tribes anyway? You can’t know about everything. You’d just have to ask a bunch of experts in the field, right?
You seem to be pointing out that formal education isn’t needed to learn something. That’s obviously true. The person you’re responding to seems to be saying that being a librarian is a job that requires a nontrivial amount of learning. That learning is on the level of something like a masters degree. This is also true
Let me chime in with a simple question: what temperature and humidity should books be stored at? How many copies of one book do we need to have in a university library to last for ten years? Do we rotate books on the shelves with ones in a storing room elsewhere and if yes, then on what schedule? How do we keep track of what books are where and need what? How do we arrange everything that needs to be done? How is keeping a library of 1k books different from 100k books? How to get prepared for expansion of library?
Etc. etc. etc. None of those is a trivial matter
Sure, you can ask 10 experts, and get 11 opinions.
Researching books, authors, subjects, and determining which ones are appropriate and which ones aren’t is complex stuff.
You would, for example, research the authors prior publishing history of books and journal articles, read peer reviews of their articles, check their references, research the history of the authors of their references ECT to build an idea of what sort of author you’re dealing with. Do they know their stuff, or are they just a book mill? Is any of the subject matter contradictory, controversial, out of date, or incomplete. Repeat for 30 books on the same subject to find the most comprehensive work for your collection.
Managing a collection is not a data-entry job, it requires you to know about stuff. Which book on, say, the middle-saharan 17th century tribes do you get, and which ones don’t you get? Is the new one better than the old one? Which old works are to be digitized and which ones aren’t?
Also included is actually running the library itself, helping people use it (from little bobby who wants that book about a mole who wants to know who pooped on its head, to a PhD student researching said 17th century tribes and what art they produced). It includes copyright law, information ethics, conservation, etc etc etc.
It’s really much more broad than “Someone who works at the local library”
Source: me, someone who once worked at the local library, and seriously considered doing it for a living… untill I saw the effort required and the pay.
Your library experience was very different from mine. We mostly just told people how to sign up for the wait list for 50 Shades of gray, what programs we did for the kids, and putting away the books everyone left everywhere.
The pay is what scared me away. Branch Manager, highest position I interacted with, couldn’t afford their own transportation, and was going through their second green card marriage for money because they were desperate. Had 2 Masters.
How would you choose which book to get on middle-saharan 17th century tribes anyway? You can’t know about everything. You’d just have to ask a bunch of experts in the field, right?
Research skills that you acquire during your master’s (incl. but not limited to, talking to other experts)
You can talk with other experts without having master’s
You seem to be pointing out that formal education isn’t needed to learn something. That’s obviously true. The person you’re responding to seems to be saying that being a librarian is a job that requires a nontrivial amount of learning. That learning is on the level of something like a masters degree. This is also true
And we both are intrigued by what exactly in librarian work warrants a masters degree.
Let me chime in with a simple question: what temperature and humidity should books be stored at? How many copies of one book do we need to have in a university library to last for ten years? Do we rotate books on the shelves with ones in a storing room elsewhere and if yes, then on what schedule? How do we keep track of what books are where and need what? How do we arrange everything that needs to be done? How is keeping a library of 1k books different from 100k books? How to get prepared for expansion of library? Etc. etc. etc. None of those is a trivial matter
Sure, you can ask 10 experts, and get 11 opinions.
Researching books, authors, subjects, and determining which ones are appropriate and which ones aren’t is complex stuff.
You would, for example, research the authors prior publishing history of books and journal articles, read peer reviews of their articles, check their references, research the history of the authors of their references ECT to build an idea of what sort of author you’re dealing with. Do they know their stuff, or are they just a book mill? Is any of the subject matter contradictory, controversial, out of date, or incomplete. Repeat for 30 books on the same subject to find the most comprehensive work for your collection.