Librarianship Prep... (long - so what else is new?)

["Earl J. Moniz" <earlj@moniz.org>]

Alice, and our favorite Latin friend, Et Al.,

First, let me say that your message came in just fine here; no extra
characters or symbols...

Second, as a former classroom teacher, I agree with Diane... teachers should
be provided many, many opportunities to visit, work in, and understand
libraries as they pertain to resources for the classroom teacher and their
students.  We did spent lots of time in the library researching projects and
issues pertaining to the education of the teacher - and not one single
project for what the library holds for the teaching and enlightenment of
young students... so, I second the notion about having library assets
training and use in teacher education programs.  Every teaching university
or college should have a small mock school library that holds books of
elementary, middle, and high school levels and presents library programs at
each level for teacher candidates... man, what a great idea, Diane!

Personally, I would have liked to have been trained more in finances and
budgeting.  The first year I taught in a library (in a small. poor, rural
setting), the principal let me have the expendables budget for the entire
school for the library program - I didn't find out until near the end of the
school year that he had done that ... and of course, I was lost as to why
the teachers  expected the library program to fund their classroom
requirements for paper, crayons, and the like...

I would also have liked a few classes on daily routines and book repair
sorts of things...  No one ever mentioned the sequence for opening the
library; initiating the computer systems; looking in on the computer lab
(perhaps initiating it as well); giving the library a quick visual
inspection for cups, crumbs, and coffeecakes; running the programs all day
with or without the assistance of teachers; being on standby as the
troubleshooter and maintenance person for almost everything electrical, and
certainly anything computer!; the after school programs hosted in the
library (with or without permission); the borrowing of equipment after you
leave (with or without permission); the shutdown of computer systems (if
required), by whom and sometimes with or without your permission... the
school I was in last year had a problem with the library server crashing for
no apparent reason... and items I catalogued one afternoon were gone the
next morning...  The problem wasn't the computer system at all - the janitor
was shutting down the computers after I left and turning them on again
before I arrived each morning (trying to help by conserving energy) - it
took a week or two to figure it out... until one day the system was shutdown
as I was working on it late one afternoon!  Finally, I'd like to see classes
on book repair and maintenance be provided... simple things that might
permit an item to last a dozen or so more circulations before falling apart
completely... or how to put a variety of jacket covers on new books to
preserve their look... the first school I was in had me pondering those
two-part mylar jackets for a week or so...  It finally dawned on me to
replaced an old cover to reverse engineer the installation of the thing!
I think perhaps there might be a internship component to library schools
much like the internship in the teaching programs... a candidate visits with
a practicing librarian at the level of interest and spends a semester or so
with that person.  Teaching programs host that sort of program for many,
many teaching students... it shouldn't be too much for a smaller program of
librarianship students to have a similar program.

I would like to see fewer classes presented by professors who have no
interest in the subjects they are tasked to teach (in fact, I'd like these
sorts of things eliminated completely from every program!) ... on several
occasions, we had professors teaching us computerized programs or some
computer-related software program that they use only during the teaching
process and not in their daily routines... so they forget how to make it run
properly - or simply never learned in the first place - and have no earthly
idea what to use it for (other than what they read in the brochures)...
There seems to be a student/teacher separation even at the post-graduate
collegiate level... students learn what students need to know and once they
graduate, well, then they'll learn 'on the job' what librarians need to know
to be librarians...  Come to think of it, this sort of thinking might be
exactly why library programs don't have internship components - the
professors don't want students learning how much they learn in the library
program simply isn't used on a daily basis! hmmmm. . .

Although some of you may remember that I graduated in 1998, I've only
actually worked as a librarian for three years (two here in NC and one in
CT)... so, please don't accuse me of cheating the requirements to get in on
this fun...  8-)

Looking forward to the hit...

Aloha y'all ... Earl J.
Librarian of Fortune
Web-based at www.MONIZ.org
Reality-based at Fayetteville, NC
*****

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