Two Years Later: Why Library School Isn't So Bad After All

Seeing as final exam time is upon us, and I find myself, for once (for all?) free from the usual deluge of papers and tests, I thought it an appropriate time to write about the topic of grad school. Fall in particular seems to be the traditional high season for moaning, reflecting, and issuing doomsday warnings about graduate school in general and library school in particular. Letters to a Young Librarian and Academic Librarian have recently published some of the many classic "Things I Didn't Learn in Library School" posts, and Hack Library School regularly features posts about library school life (most of which I wish were more brutally honest).

Outside of Libraryland, the off-the-wall Penelope Trunk (whose blog you should really read if you don't already-be warned of occasional foul language and adult content) has numerous posts addressing stupid attitudes towards graduate education (see also here, here, and here), with many pieces in other media outlets trumpeting the same tune. Usually theses posts, and those written by librarians, serve as opportunities to complain about the vast inadequacies and injustices of LIS/grad education, for which there is ample justification. But here I would like to take a slightly different tact, and highlight some of the reasons why I found Library School (and life afterward) to be a refreshingly different experience than graduate studies in other liberal arts or social science disciplines that I could have pursued otherwise.

Ave atque Vale!: Libraries, Virtue, and the Sacred

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."

-J.R.R. Tolkien 

After a more chaotic than expected finals week, and completing the last of my MLS coursework, I can now call myself a bona fide librarian! As much as graduations merit at least a little reflection, they are almost always, in my experience, occasions more for chaos than ceremony, and so, after a couple weeks of being whisked along by the momentum of final projects, last days at work, bidding final farewells to friends, paperwork, packing, and moving, I finally have found a few spare moments in which to write. I cannot say that mind all the distraction this time around. My relationship with Bloomington has not, on average, been far from adversarial. I will, however, miss the excellent public library, the huge selection of good Eurasian restaurants, the year-round farmer's market, the university's vast library system, and the walkability of the town. While my home for the past couple years is not my heart's paradise, I cannot say that my time here was time wasted, for my understanding of, and capacity for humility and detachment have grown immensely in this place.

A large state school is, for me, particularly well-suited to purging self-importance, pride, and attachment to success and spiritual comfort. These conditions seem, to me, to mirror the opportunities for humility and detachment provided by libraries and librarianship itself. The immensely diverse and compassionately wrought backgrounds and philosophies of my colleagues is a constant source of humility, gratitude, and challenge. I am very grateful for this, among other things, in my profession. This simple truth, however, would hardly be appreciated in a library school application essay, or in public declarations of the value of librarianship.

In my fledgling career, I have had the luck and privilege to work at some of this country's most prized institutions, if only as a humble page and intern. Their collections, steeped in tradition, history, notoriety, and appraised at astonishing monetary value, are cause for wonder, especially to those setting their eyes on them for the first time. Libraries, for this reason (among others), remain one of the only universally recognized sacred spaces. I still remember vividly the adrenaline-ridden gravitas of my first encounters with ancient Greek papyri and a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, and that rapturous first visit to the British Library's Treasure Room. In my childish delight and awe, I truly felt that these were portals to other worlds and times, and my student-imagination romantically imbued the handling (and viewing) of these items with a sense of sacred ritual.

Thoughts on the Working World, Education, and Librarianship

Once again it is not a completely decent hour for me to be writing. I blame evening classes (thank goodness I only have to endure 2.5 more weeks of these impertinent disruptions in my natural work and rest patterns) and my chronically restless mind. But I digress.

Although I have the good fortune of having some temporary work immediately following graduation, launching my post-student career and nurturing my future professional life have been heavily on my mind.  In light of the continually stagnant economy, the struggles of finding work and the value of education are being heavily discussed today. "Educational Return On Investment" seems to be a popular topic of discussion, flanked by contentious debates about student loan debt and encouraging purely utilitarian attitudes regarding educational choices. LIS degrees (Library and Information Science, for the non-librarian folks) tend to be brutally attacked in these discussions. A recent Forbes article listed an MLS as one of the worst educational investments one could make, mainly based on salary data. Despite the [wildly fallacious] rumors of an aging librarian workforce, librarians are now retiring late, and once they do, they are not being replaced (although this pattern cannot continue forever without the workforce entirely dying out). Many, like these sisters, ponder if a university education is really all it is chalked up to be for the price. In another realm of the debate on educational value is the ever popular undergraduate degree in business, which has come increasingly under attack for its apparent inability to produce professionals that can think critically and creatively. Alternatively, liberal arts degrees are being attacked (as they've been for a while) for their apparent inability to generate earning power and produce graduates who can make themselves truly useful. Bitterness abounds. More on the education debate later.

It isn't easy studying what matters.