Home1st Congress What I Really Learned in Library School

Congress on Professional Education

Papers on Library and Information Studies Education

Creativity is prized only if it will get you future employment.

Working in teams is good.
Autonomy is bad.

Never assist your classmates with homework assignments if you are not specifically told to work in groups.

Looking in two or three sources is not enough to sufficiently answer a reference question. Trying at least two print sources, two websites, and perhaps a Dialog search is ideal.

Sucking up really does get you somewhere.

Libraries are never about politics.
Libraries are always about politics.

Taking a business administration approach to librarianship is to be desired.

All intelligent and talented librarians invariably wind up working in the private sector, as well they should.

If you feel like you're in an MBA program instead of an MLS program, it must be a good school.

"Librarian" might be a dirty word. Use "information professional" to be on the safe side.

If you don't want to learn programming or how to implement databases, you have no ambition.

If you don't want to go into administration, you have no ambition.

Reference librarians answer over 50% of reference questions incorrectly because they didn't go to *our* school.

All good reference librarians want to become information brokers or information consultants.

All good catalogers want to catalog internet sources and nothing else. they should also be experts in SGML and metadata, otherwise they are not to be taken seriously.

Outsourcing the cataloging of all printed materials is a good idea.

Children's librarians are masochists. nobody understands them and nobody wants to.

Anyone without an MLS who calls herself a librarian has delusions of grandeur.

Taking yourself and your chosen profession less than seriously is verboten.

Distinguish yourself only by scholastic achievements and not by personality traits.

Collection development is all about balancing budgets and dealing with vendors. No intellectual activity should be required.

Filtering the internet is bad unless: a) it's the children's section or b) your library board wants it.

While corporate librarianship is ideal, academic librarianship can also be acceptable if it is in an ACRL institution and you are tenure-track faculty.

Political activism is not allowed at work unless you win.

If you can't quote Ranganathan's 5 laws of library science verbatim, you suck.

Don't wonder (aloud) why the techies in your department aren't in computer science degree programs.

Don't expect any of your professors to have worked in an actual library any time in the past 20 years.

Don't expect any of your professors to have worked in an actual library any time *ever*.