Buying an MLS, Part II

How Broke Would You Be with Library Certification?

People argue every year about the MLS, that it doesn't teach what it should, or that it costs too much, or that it's unfair to people who don't have time to get it or are too lazy to get it or are too stupid to get it or are too drunk to get it, or that it doesn't stand for Major League Soccer.

So as a reference, I took a brief look at what it takes to become a certified Library Media Specialist in the state of New York.

First, there is all this shit:

Requirements for Permanent Certificate, School Media Specialist (Library)
Following are all possible pathways available to receive the certificate specified above. The specific requirements to satisfy each pathway are also listed. 
 
 Pathway: Certificate Progression
Requirements:
 Hold a Valid Provisional Certificate - School Media Specialist (Library)
 Additional Education - Masters Degree
 Paid, full-time Classroom Teaching experience - 2 Yrs
 Workshop - Child Abuse Identification
 Workshop - School Violence Intervention and Prevention
 Fingerprint Clearance
 Citizenship Status - INS Permanent Residence or U.S. Citizenship

Well, I don't remember exactly what it took to get my MLS, but I don't remember any 2 yrs of paid library experience or Library Violence Intervention workshops or even getting fingerprinted. I just showed up at the back door of the library and two weeks later, I picked up a check.

And after all that, there's this:

If you are employed in a New York State public school…
You must complete 175 hours of professional development every five years. This maintains the validity of the Professional certificate and allows you to continue to teach. The first professional development period begins on July 1 following the effective date of the certificate.

175 hours? That's longer than it took for James Franco to drink his own pee and saw off his arm. So that extra 48 hours might have me also sawing off my own foot.

And then there's testing, the New York State Teacher Certification Examinations. The one for Media Specialist will certify that you (0001-0005 and others omitted)

0006 Understand types and characteristics of print, nonprint, and electronic resources.
0007 Understand types and characteristics of literature for children and young adults.
0008 Understand issues and procedures related to collection development.
0011 Understand how to locate and access resources and how to teach these skills to students.

Now I'll stop here. Because 0011 would kill me. Because, yes, although I understand how to locate and access resources, I have not a fucking clue on how to teach these skills to library patrons who don't have more than 15 seconds of free time and who don't listen to what I say and who are probably hallucinating that I'm some talking moose there to steal his gold.

I can't imagine all the shit a public librarian would need to know for certification:

0001 Understand types and characteristics of library patrons, including loonies, crazies, smellies, normals, babies, seniors and tweens.
0014 Understand types and characteristics of portable reading devices such as Kindles, iPads, iPhones and Androids and Chinese knockoffs of all of the above.

So when you complain about the expense or relevance of the MLS, think about what it might be like to work in a career with continual professional requirements.

Why buy an MLS?

I'll save you the trouble of reading the rest of this post: if you want to be a librarian, get the MLS. If you don't get the degree, then don't bitch when you don't get the job.

And if you're an administrator, hire people with an MLS to fill those few librarian jobs. Having the degree won't guarantee you get the best candidates, but if you don't support the degree, you can almost guarantee that many of your future librarian candidates will have no library training at all.

Now, to the post:

I haven't done any professional reading since I got a professional library gig. And by professional reading, I mean reading several articles, distilling the main points form the bullshit, then combining that with my thoughts and experiences to create solutions or methods for, umm, stuff. See, it's been so long, I don't even remember why I would do it.

The point is that I'm working. I solve my local library problems with local remedies. I clean the potato chips out of the keyboards. I kick the copier in the right spot. I do the stuff my library gives me. I don't have the luxury of time to question or survey and then to propose theories that may or may not work. Because I'm at work now. So I use my accumulated knowledge and experience and do what needs to be done.

Library school was the time for all that reading. There were lots of rhetoricals:

• What if you had $25,000 to spend anyway you wanted, but it had to increase library use by albinos?
• What if all Js disappeared from all the library books?
• What if the library were replaced with a 5,000 pound ham?

And we read library books and library essays and had deep library thoughts.

The only reading I do now is for me to blog some dick and fart jokes.

Library school made me think about the profession, about the history of libraries and about the possible futures. If I didn't go to library school and just started as a shelver or a page or clerk, then I might know that job, but what else would I know?

Let's say I worked my way up from a clerk to a lead worker to a manager. That's great, but I still would be limited to what I learned at my library about those jobs. And if I moved from one library to another, I might know a few more ways to do things that could help to expand my knowledge of the career. If I had an apprenticeship at one or two libraries, I would still only know what their librarians knew enough about to teach me.

And I think my knowledge of library work would be less if I hadn't gone to library school. Having those discussions about how to create a library in a zero-g environment, or how to print books with only coconuts for paper and ink: these questions expand your understanding of the library as method and as a form, as an abstract and as a concrete thing. Library school exercises your imagination about what libraries are or could be. I don't think any work experience creates an equal environment.

I also think there would be no profession without the professional degree. I think it would become like any other job. There would be people who love it just as there are those who love folding sweaters at JCP. But love does not mean that person has the required skills to make the business succeed. And if JCP closes, then that person would go and fold sweaters at Target.

But there is no business equal to a public or academic library (to a special library, maybe, there seem to be endless models) for you to transfer to when your library bites it. What about the privately run public library? Yeah, what about it? Fuck them. They should get cancer.

What about Certification, you ask? What about it? What if librarianship went the way of Computer or Automobile Mechanics? Do you know what those certifications cost? No? Neither do I. But you should have some idea because you work in a library and you buy or don't buy those books. A+ Certification books and ASE Certification materials? I wonder if you added all those things up whether they would be cheaper than a Master's degree. So, is continual certification training and testing cheaper then the MLS, dunno, but it might be. There's got to be a calculator around here...

I also think that getting the degree is like everything else you do or don't do: you can't know. If you practice your viola, will you make it to Carnegie Hall? If you use heroin will you become a junkie? You can't know these things. Some of the best violists were junkies. Okay, I think I made that up.

So I'm not the expert on this. I can't be. Because it's your life. I can just tell you that I think the degree has value. But what do I know? I'm just a working librarian.

What I Wish I'd Learned in Library School.

What is a library?

This might seem obvious, but it's not. You also might think that it's something one might want to already know before applying to library school, but again, not obvious. It's like thinking you know what a business is before you enter Business school. There are probably ten thousand different kinds of businesses and ten thousand different ways to manage them. The same with libraries.

Libraries are essentially businesses. They are also government. They are public or private, funded by grants, foundations, donations, millage taxes, sales taxes and fees. I still don't have a fucking clue of all the ways that libraries can be funded.

They buy books or lease them. They process in-house or contract it out, or both. They own the land where the buildings reside or they lease or there could be some long-term donation involved. Again, many combinations.

They hire full-time and part-time people and ask the community for volunteers, promote from within or hire from outside, provide formal classes and on-the-job training.

Even after all these years of being a librarian, I still only have a tiny narrow idea of how a library functions. You might think I'm being flippant, but I'm not. There are so many aspects to the job that you can't possibly know what you'll need to know until you need to know it.

You can't prepare for every library job. Sure, you think you want to know about graphic design now, but in your next job it might not matter. Or maybe you think you should have learned more about computers. And then take a workshop and you realize you already know enough to do your job now.

The point is that all this woulda, coulda, shoulda, thinking is fine for commenting on your blog. But don't dwell on it. What happened in library school stays in library school. You're a librarian now, why the fuck are you still bitching about school?

What did I learn in library school? Whatever fit into my schedule that got me the credits to get my degree. I have no complaints.

I don't understand these people who look back at library school as if it failed them somehow. You learn as much as you can, as quickly as you can, so you don't waste too much money as costs increase over the years. And then you get that degree and look for work. Or if you're lucky, get the degree while you're already working.

You use the degree to get hired. Then you observe what's going on and how your new position relates to those around you. You apply new knowledge to old. You fuck up. But not enough to get fired. And you learn. And you succeed. And you backstab and kiss ass to get promoted. There's no fucking mystery to it.