Librarian Way

The San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science is having a Second Life Campus Grand Opening on May 16, 2007. See the announcement at slisweb.sjsu.edu/slis/secondlife.htm.

This is fun! While researching what librarians are saying about social software, I came across Librarian Trading Cards in a note on Steve Lawson’s blog. He also links to a librarian trading card of Michael Stephens on flickr.

This is a fun way to market librarians as cool people.

Karen Glover argues for the value of an online MLS/MLIS degree in Don’t Discredit My Online Degree in Library Journal. I think this is useful reading for both librarians who are hiring and who are biased against those with online or mostly online MLS degrees, and for those who hold these degrees and are just getting started on job hunting.

The San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science has both a traditional degree program and a distance program. Most faculty in SJSU SLIS are located in San Jose, but there are a few faculty in the south campus for the program, which is located at California State University, Fullerton. Though distance students can take a lot of their classes online and thus have the chance to take classes with San Jose faculty, it is probably impossible to get through this program without attending at least some weekend classes. So, SJSU SLIS is not a totally online distance education degree.

Everything that Glover mentions in her argument applies to the SJSU SLIS online classes. We have mandatory online discussion boards, where we interact with our peers and the instructor, maybe even more so than in a traditional class setting, as no one can just sit back and listen. She pointed out that most people enrolled in online degrees do not have the option of moving within commuting distance of the library school because they have other commitments. Because distance students often have families to care for and jobs to go to, Glover argues, they have obvious strengths that are valuable to an employer: “We multitask and organize. Our time management skills are impressive, and our commitment to our education is unmatched.”

Another thing to remember is that there are only around 56 ALA-accredited LIS schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, so there are not a lot of options. Some states don’t even have a library school. Distance education classes leading to an MLS degree are critical if the library world wants to expand the number of degree holders. It is the ALA-accreditation that is important, not whether the program is mostly online. The 2006 list of ALA-accredited LIS schools, including advice for prospective students on choosing a school, is available on ALA at: LIS Directory.