Taking Sides on the MLIS

The police called to tell the library director they were coming to interview the staff. A suspect had told them he was at the library when the crime was committed. Steeped in the policies and pronunciamento of the profession on patron privacy, the director phoned the young woman on duty at the public desk. “Just wanted to alert you and remind everyone that it is OK to answer most of their questions. But if they ask what books patrons have checked out, or what they are working on on the public computers, you have to tell them they'll need a subpoena.”

“I know that! I'm in library school,” the young woman on duty responded, proud of her MLIS studies.

A new recruit told me why she entered library school: “I want both intellectual stimulation and intelligent discussions of the issues and values of that field. I want to know more about the culture and philosophy of library science and more about what goes on in all kinds of libraries.” She had asked my advice on selecting a program.

“The bachelor's degree is common now. Graduate school is just the next step in your education,” said a very recent graduate now in his first job. “I learned the values of the field and a strong sense of the culture of librarianship. I wouldn't say it was a rigorous program, and it didn't give me much I could apply on this job. Still, I'm glad I went for it. It has helped me understand and appreciate the totality of what we do in libraries. I don't think many people know about us,” he said when I asked what he got from the LIS program.

After reading those reactions to MLIS study, check out the discussions of those seeking their first job in our field (I read the NEWLIB-L discussion list). Browse the debates of library educators on the JESSE discussion list over the recommendations of the American Library Association (ALA) Task Force on Library Education to establish “Core Competences” and the responses to them from ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) and schools in the iCaucus. Then read Norman Oder's “MLS: Hire Ground?” (LJ 6/1/09, p. 44-46).

While most library employers, educators, students, and recent graduates give pretty strong lip service to the MLIS, very few are happy with the content of the curricula, the skills learned, or the ALA accreditation process.

The graduates are doubtful about the practical content of an ALA-accredited MLIS course. The ALA Task Force, of which I was a member, said its “competences” should be taught in LIS programs and be standards for ALA accreditation. This brought very strong opposition from ASIS&T, apparently convinced that all professions and disciplines are subdisciplines of something called “information,” a highly arguable bit of sophistry.

The Information Schools (iCaucus), slightly less than half of which offer library degrees, had dean John Unsworth (Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, University of Illinois) write a dense letter opposing the task force's recommendations because they were prescriptive, and that is not the current fashion in academe. Actually, LIS programs have always opposed any authority telling them what they should teach.

I feel compelled to take sides in the debate about the MLIS (or whatever monogram is given to our basic credential). Like the others, I give it lip service and even recruit students to get it and join our profession. I have high hopes for it. I don't think librarianship or any other profession is some kind of subdiscipline of that ill-defined, overbroad field of “information.” Those who do think that way, though, ought to revisit the literature of that “discipline” and see how difficult it has been to define the term information or decide what should be taught in its schools. I believe the shift of once “professional” duties to folks without the MLIS is more often driven by budget woes than good management. We've been debating those issues forever. It's time to do something about them.

While we wait, I'll assert that librarianship is a profession because it has an ancient body of knowledge, a set of valid core values, and a broad practice that improves the lives of its clients. The MLIS at least tells an employer that a candidate has learned that much.