Caveat Lector

Just as well I enjoy proto-librarians, because I ran into yet another one at this week’s chorus rehearsal. Nice woman, as overeducated as I am, looking at going into academic librarianship.

So we got to comparing our programs (seeing as how I’m a recent grad and all), and it turns out that several of her courses have been abysmally taught. This is no great surprise to me; so were a number of mine. And another no-brainer: the worst-taught courses are the so-called “core” courses.

I really hate to say it, but this appears to be a library-school universal. I’ve never heard anyone express unequivocal satisfaction with the core courses in their librarian education. And before anyone asks, yes, we understand that pedagogical quality is going to vary, and that we’re going to like some subjects more than others. I’m not talking about ordinary vagaries of teaching here; I’m talking about library schools falling down on the job. Classes that suck, rather than merely not rocking.

Which class gets the most complaints? Well, in my school it was “Organization of Information,” and my interlocutor at rehearsal agreed about her school’s variant. The person who taught me this course was pleasant—and completely clueless. Why, after all, should she have a solid understanding of the subject matter? She does statistical research into software usability and design. Frankly, except for the MARC bits, I could almost have taught that course better at the time I was taking it.

Some schools (such as my interlocutor’s, apparently) have revamped this course to toss a bunch of IT concepts in, and that is helping not at all, given the average tech-savvy of your average LIS faculty member… so much is it not helping, in fact, that my interlocutor said of her course, “It makes me really scared of taking a course in databases or web design.”

Insert horrified shriek here. I hope I changed her mind, but I’m not sanguine.

No bloody wonder librarians can’t, don’t, and won’t code. The precise course that ought to give them confidence in handling digitized information (be it in MARC, XML, an RDBMS, some combination of the above, or something else entirely) is driving them away from it in droves because of heinously poor teaching.

Oh, and before M-ch–l G-rm-n or his pet bullyboys get all up in my face, let me just point out that this same course is typically the prerequisite for cataloguing, so if it’s taught poorly, the librarian world ends up with fewer cataloguers. (And judging from the job postings I have been monitoring for New Librarian, that doesn’t seem to be so far off from the truth.)

In library schools’ defense, these Info Org courses are viciously hard to teach. It’s a lot of material, some of which is banal memorization (yes, I can recite the main Dewey and LCC divisions from memory, how about you?), and much of which exercises modes of thinking that are new for most non-geeks. Scary bad combination.

Moreover, if the teacher doesn’t understand the technologies to be taught (hush; MARC is a technology too, folks) well enough to get across why they exist, what problems they solve, how they think about their problem domain, and how we need to think about and use them in order to get our work done—well, how can we expect proto-librarians to?

And library schools are also fighting against the research-faculty grain to get coverage for these courses at all. Or they’re turning to guest lecturers who are practitioners, which sounds like a fine idea but has the bad habit of crashing headlong into a busy practitioner’s Real Job. I heard a hair-raising story about this at rehearsal: a course with no assignments, no papers, no projects, no tests, no evaluation whatsoever because the guest lecturer was too busy with the Real Job to grade anything.

There’s no easy answer. Honestly, though, my reaction now is the same as it was when I was taking the courses: get the core stuff taught and taught well or stop pretending to be a library OR info-sci school. All of this poseur nonsense helps nobody.

This is not to say that I disagree with Andrew Dillon and April Norris’s conclusion that the G-rm-nesque “library education crisis” is a trumped-up pile of baleful bile, because Dillon and Norris are quite right about that. By and large, library schools are at least interested in teaching the right stuff.

They’re just not interested enough to get it taught right, that’s all; and buried at the end of their article, Dillon and Norris say in a pianissimo whisper that they agree with that assessment.

Speaking of Andrew Dillon (who has a new blog, by-the-bye), I’ve been reading and enjoying the second edition of Designing Usable Electronic Text and wondering why I’d never seen the book before.

The conclusion I came to is that the book makes a lot of people uncomfortable. (So it’s only natural that I’m loving it, eh?) It makes researchers uncomfortable because it isn’t afraid to point out that the emperor of digital text usability research is naked as a jaybird. It makes practicing text artisans uncomfortable because hell’s bells, we aren’t even paying attention to the little research that there is. It makes librarians uncomfortable because… well, librarians are always uncomfortable.

And it makes M-ch–l G-rm-n uncomfortable because of its spirited, drily funny defense of human-computer interaction as a worthy—indeed, necessary—topic of inquiry. G-rm-n, you see, would prefer not to admit that humans interact with computers at all… never mind actually programming the beasts.

Which brings me neatly back to my post title. Librarians can’t code because too many librarians and library schools have their noses so far up in the air about computers that they are neither recruiting coders (which is purest, sheerest madness—why are we not using the exodus of women from comp sci to our advantage?) nor creating them.

Joy had a presentation that went well, not that that surprises me.

I only wanted to add a Point the Fourth to her three: you should present at a conference while you’re an LIS graduate student. Presentation is a vitally important job skill, and getting your name and face out in front of people never, ever hurts.

Frankly, I find presenting far easier than a lot of the other stuff that comes under the heading of “networking,” and it works just about as well, as far as I can tell.

So do it. Present. It won’t kill you, and it’ll make you stronger.

By the way, I know it’s been quiet around here lately. Combination of work weirdness (that very definitely needs to stay off-blog, but it’s nothing that directly harms me, so nobody should worry on my account) and work for a TAG client eating up huge chunks of my time at home.

(Bet you thought I’d never post to this category again, huh?)

Glory hallelujah, my alma mater redesigned its website, finally. Type’s a bit small, layout isn’t liquid, and I wish the colored hover in the navigation was all-over hot-clickable (hint: put display:block on your a tag and use span as needed inside), but it’s still pretty darn good.

It was embarrassingly ugly during my tenure there. We (the student LITA group, that is) made some noises about redoing it, but I and others got distracted and the politics got byzantine, and… well, it never happened.

Glad it’s happened now.

For those who always wondered what newly-minted librarians look like, check out SLIS’s catalog of graduation photos.

I don’t think any of them are me (which suits me fine), but I’m still going through them.

On the soppy sentimentalism front, I bought a couple-three pictures from the mob graduation at the Kohl Center. The one of me shaking Tammy Baldwin’s hand is purely for me, but they caught another good one at some point (I’m not sure when) that I got a few copies of for parents and work-display and whatnot.

ETA: Spoke too soon. There is indeed one of me in there, the crowd shots I’m part of aside. Gosh, these are fun to look at, though! Big silly grin surfacing again.

ETA part deux: Two of me. Well, I didn’t have a picture of the magisterial regalia from the back before now, so I guess I’m reconciled. I am such an elephant, though.

ETA and this better be the last time: Three of me. The third is remarkably good. I’ll add these to the Seekrit Graduation Piccy Stash, for those of you who have asked for access. (And if you asked and didn’t get it—I’ve been dropping email left and right lately; send another ping.)

New resolution: Always ask to look over anything written about myself before it goes out.

The entrepreneurial award I won carries the price prize of a press release and web profile from the organization that funds the award. I just got copy for the profile, and… yikes. Phrases like “extremely adept at all the technologies that…” just set my teeth on edge. (Not that I’m not good at what I do; I am. But nobody’s adept at “all” technologies in any sphere.)

I’m busily whittling down the go-me rhetoric to what I hope is a reasonably tasteful minimum while adding a concrete accomplishment or two. I’ve no notion what’ll get put back in by the time this thing hits the photons, though.

And, as usual, I’m finding the whole deal horribly, horribly embarrassing.

Ed Cortez, for all he like to killed me when I told him he’d won the student vote for faculty speaker (I ran the survey), was his usual charming, articulate self when he got up to give his address. I value the two courses I took with Ed, and UW-SLIS is assuredly going to miss him.

I got David to pin my little “librarian” pin on me after the SLIS ceremony, and wore it proudly all day. I’m looking at it on my desk now and grinning another of those lunatical grins. Watching the long, long parade of new bachelor’s degrees cross that stage, I was drawn to people with grins like mine—utterly thrilled with their accomplishment, and not ashamed or afraid to show it. I thought about all my Spanish students from back in the day (they’re long graduated by now, all of ’em) and wished them well.

The weather behaved itself with notable courtesy, staying bright and cheerful for the entire SLIS ceremony. It clouded up over lunch, but waited to rain until all of us last-half Letters and Science graduates were safely ensconced in the Kohl Center. By the time we got out, the rain was over. Seeing as how I had been braced for a thoroughly dismal day, I’m grateful.

The Kohl Center ceremony started with a fanfare from six music students on those great long heraldic trumpets, played in tune and in perfect time. Very, very cool. Weepy moment for me, because wow, fanfare! (I’ve played fanfares on recorder before, but I have to admit that brass fanfares are far more authoritative.)

Our little troupe of new librarians sitting in a row at the Kohl Center sported just about the only red-and-white MA hoods there. Journalism was out in force, as were Social Work and Music, but the professional MSes are yellow-and-red, and poor Music is stuck with pink-and-red. This is, of course, because we librarians get just about the only professional, terminal MAs that the UW offers. For almost everybody else, the MA is just a steppingstone on the way to a Ph.D.

(Or not, of course. But people leaving with a “consolation master’s” don’t generally feel they’ve accomplished anything much, and don’t go to graduation. I don’t need to tell you what I think of a system that inculcates that kind of thinking, do I? Right, didn’t think so.)

The scarcity of red and white did give rise to another thought, though. We academic librarians pretty much have to have a second master’s in another discipline to progress in our field. (So, yes, this means that some of the sweat, blood, and tears I gave the Department from Hell is now redeemed, and yes, that’s meaningful to me.) Part of what a department is saying when it says “We don’t grant a terminal master’s” is “Go away, you librarians. We aren’t interested in you; you have nothing to offer us.”

Wow, what utter arrogant wank that is.

I hear through the grapevine (okay, okay, at the Beta Phi Mu dinner) that the local Latin American and Iberian Studies bibliographer position is opening up shortly. (Liaison librarian. Area-studies librarian. Whatever they’re calling it these days.) I won’t be applying, even if Perdóndaris doesn’t come through with an offer (and I still hope they do, I still hope they do!). Aside from not much liking collection development, I just can’t imagine starting out my career working with some of the same folks who broke me into a million shards of uselessness.

Don’t let that stop you from applying, though, if you’ve got the stuff. My trauma is my trauma, and hasn’t got anything to do with you. I do wonder, though, whether they’d be able to respect one of their own rejects as a skilled and talented professional in her own right. Sorta doubt it, frankly.

But that’s all right. You know what? That’s all right. They’ll find someone, and me—I’ll find a place to respect me.

I duly graduated from the University of Wisconsin’s School of Library and Information Studies this morning at approximately 10 am—and just to make sure no minds had changed about letting me out, I attended the Letters and Science graduation ceremony this afternoon, too.

Longtime CavLec readers know that I hate having pictures taken and never post pictures of myself on CavLec. I am not planning to break the streak now. However, I offer you Still Life with Diploma Cover (42K JPEG), which contains (clockwise from carnation): the white carnation handed to us at the SLIS ceremony in lieu of an actual diploma, the gorgeous flower arrangement sent to me by the good-hearted SLIS student from Chicago I’ve been hosting on Wednesday nights, my C. Berger award certificate, my Beta Phi Mu certificate, my Valmai Fenster award certificate (from last year), an index card with a chunk of Augustine’s Sermon 169 on it, the diploma cover handed to us at the Letters and Science ceremony in lieu of an actual diploma, and (suspended from the diploma cover) my tassel.

David got some good pictures of the Bibliomedusa in her magisterial attire this morning, which was bright and sunny and beautiful despite the weatherfolks’ gloomy prognostications. I’ll post ’em, but they’re going into a password-protected directory with a very short shelf-life. If you want the directory location and login, email me.

Magisterial attire, for those of you who don’t know, involves a black gown with calf-length squared-off sleeve ends that practically beg you to sit on them, thus binding yourself into your chair because your hands can’t reach the chair-arms to help lever you up. (I did this twice at the SLIS ceremony and once in the afternoon. Bibliomedusae are obviously not known for grace.) These sleeves make great pockets, however; mine held my St. Augustine index card, the class-gift check, bobby pins, and a couple of pennies at various times through the day.

You also get a hood that in our case was spiffy white velvet with a red satin stripe on a black ground. (Pity the poor master’s graduates of the Music School, who got stuck with pink velvet and the aforementioned red stripe—yuck.) It looks silly going on—one feels rather like Santa Claus—but once in place it’s quite, well, magisterial, as long as it doesn’t cut off your air supply in front. And we Beta Phi Muers got to wear our purple and white honors cords.

Don’t make the mistake, by the way, of trying to wear the hood as a hood. Emperor Palpatine doesn’t have a master’s degree. And your hat is the traditional mortarboard, cap slightly too small (so bring bobby pins; I made a special trip to the store to pick some up last night, and I’m glad I did!), back corner just the right distance from your head for everyone who passes behind you to run into it.

I spent the day alternating between lunatical grins and slight weepiness. I didn’t actually break down in tears, though I was quite close when I got up to give my little spiel for David and Professor Flanigan. But Professor Flanigan would kick my sorry magisterial butt if I lost the ability to pronounce my Latin, so I didn’t. (I did cut the Augustine in half, in deference to my classmates’ patience for dead languages. You CavLec readers get the whole thing.)

David took me to Caspian Café for lunch after the SLIS reception, and promenaded me around the Terrace until it was time to line up for the Letters and Science ceremony. This proceeded with admirable dispatch considering the number of people who had to walk across that stage. (Master’s graduates are lumped in with the bachelor’s folks, though the Ph.Ds get their own ceremony. We master’s grads sit up front, go onstage first, and look cooler.) Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin shook an unbelievable number of hands (including mine, and I am genuinely proud to have shared a stage with her even for thirty seconds), the speeches and the music were great, and I’m glad I went, seeing as how it’s my third college degree but the only mass graduation I’ve ever been to.

A lovely day, and I will never as long as I live forget it. But I haven’t mentioned the coolest part. You know what the coolest part is?

I AM A LIBRARIAN. No matter where I go, what I do, or who pays me to do it, from this day onward, I AM A LIBRARIAN.

And that, my blog-friends all, who have watched this process from the day I had the idea and to whom I am eternally grateful for congratulations, behind-the-scenes support when I needed it, and a warm welcome to the profession—that, my friends, is cool.

(The title of this post is a reference to this earlier one. Bloglines users may not be seeing the <del> tags; trust me, they’re there.)

When I went looking for something to read at graduation, someone (I forget who) asked me for a translation, but it became one of those things that meanders into the back of my head as something I really ought to do one of these days when I have a free minute…

But tomorrow’s graduation, so it’s now or never. Keep in mind that my Latin is incredibly rusty, and was never all that great to begin with. (As many times as I took beginning Latin, you’d think it would have stuck better.) Here’s the bit I mean to read:

Proficite, fratres mei, discutite vos semper sine dolo, sine adulatione, sine palpatione. Non enim aliquis est intus tecum, cui erubescas, et iactes te. Est ibi, sed cui placet humilitas, ipse te probet. Proba et te ipsum tu ipse. Semper tibi displiceat quod es, si vis pervenire ad id quod nondum es. Nam ubi tibi placuisti, ibi remansisti. Si autem dixeris: Sufficit; et peristi. Semper adde, semper ambula, semper profice; noli in via remanere, noli retro redire, noli deviare.

And, roughly, the translation:

Go forward, my brothers; look at yourselves without self-deceit, without pride, without flattery. There’s really nobody in you to make you blush, nobody you have to brag to. But the person inside who’s humble, let him test you. And test yourself, too. Always be a little unhappy with what you are, if you want to be something you’re not, yet, quite. Because if you get too pleased with yourself, there you’ll stay. If you say “hey, that’s enough,” you’re dead. Always keep growing, keep walking, keep moving forward; don’t stop by the side of the road, don’t retrace your steps, don’t turn aside.

(There’s another translation here if you don’t like mine.)

In memoriam Dr. C. Clifford Flanigan, with my best love… because I want to believe he would be proud of me, even though I did go off the road for a while.

(I am running out of Pythonic ways to do this. Probably a sign that the joke has run its course, yes?)

Beta Phi Mu purports to stand for a Greek phrase meaning “Librarians are the guardians of knowledge.” Of course David (dutifully watching me twiddle my purple-and-white honor cords against my purple dress, and I swear I didn’t harmonize with my honor cords on purpose!) couldn’t resist trying to back-translate that one. What he came up with was ????????????? ?????????? ????????. “Or, in your case,” he whispered, pointing to another Greek word he’d written, “????????.”

“I’m a medusa?” I squeal-whispered back. “Rockin’!”

So then he got to doodling:

Which, if TAG didn’t already have a brilliant logo, would itself be a brilliant logo.

I picked up my cap and gown between Ed Cortez’s farewell shindig and the Beta Phi Mu shindig. When I got home from the latter, I put the whole rig on to figure out how to do it (those hoods aren’t easy to manage). I look something like a cross between a frigate and a funeral dais, but so be it; I earned it and I’m bloody well going to wear it.

Seems only right I should finish up library school right where I started it, sacked out on a sofa in the SLIS lab library with the Silver Surfer in my lap and Lake Mendota making ripply blue-on-blue patterns in front of me.

Went to my last class this morning. It’s all over but the shouting. (Lots of that, admittedly. Shindig for graduating students tomorrow, an interview with Carol Berger for a press release—a press release, how bizarre!—Tuesday, a farewell shindig for the departing Ed Cortez and the Beta Phi Mu initiation Thursday, graduation Saturday… lots of shouting.) I am the Fat Lady, folks, and I’m commencing to sing.

I’ve known people who despise graduations in general. I know plenty who despise library school, along with the accomplishment of graduating from it. The chap from Avalon who telephoned me asked if I felt that I learned something from library school, and he seemed decidedly nonplussed, even unnerved, at the enthusiasm of my affirmative.

These people? I’m going to be vulgar and say they can bite me. I’m proud of myself. I wasn’t at all sure I could do this. As much as I knew it was the right thing for me to do, I couldn’t help the occasional nasty skin-crawly sense that I’d screw it up, land back in the despondent brain-drained pit where the Department from Hell left me.

Didn’t. Didn’t screw it up. Didn’t land in any pits. Did learn. Did grow. Did jump on opportunities with both feet. Did do good work. Did give a little back.

And no matter what happens in the job market, no matter where I end up or what I end up doing, as of a week from Saturday, I’ll be a librarian. I’m proud of that, too.