Comment on Almost 38 & This Is Where I'm At Now

• mandolrain@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Research skills that you acquire during your master’s (incl. but not limited to, talking to other experts)

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  • Viceversa@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You can talk with other experts without having master’s

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    • Slatlun@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You seem to be pointing out that formal education isn’t needed to learn something. That’s obviously true. The person you’re responding to seems to be saying that being a librarian is a job that requires a nontrivial amount of learning. That learning is on the level of something like a masters degree. This is also true

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      • Viceversa@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And we both are intrigued by what exactly in librarian work warrants a masters degree.

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• Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Sure, you can ask 10 experts, and get 11 opinions.

  Researching books, authors, subjects, and determining which ones are appropriate and which ones aren’t is complex stuff.

  You would, for example, research the authors prior publishing history of books and journal articles, read peer reviews of their articles, check their references, research the history of the authors of their references ECT to build an idea of what sort of author you’re dealing with. Do they know their stuff, or are they just a book mill?

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  • VAK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Just to check - do you know that they do this, or do you think that’s the way it’s best done? - Because that is a lot of work and you’d need a lot of librarians

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    • smh@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s how it ought to be done in academic libraries. It does take a lot of librarians. You have a librarian for each subject area, which can be pretty granular depending on the size/budget of the library. My academic library has a business librarian who focuses on acquiring and weeding the business section. She has an undergrad degree in something businessy and an MSLis.

      Now, my academic library has been subject to funding cuts and so we don’t do everything we ought to do, especially in areas that aren’t major majors at our school, which is frustrating AF. We rely more on professors suggesting acquisitions.

      Public libraries have a broader remit, so often can go with purchasing what’s requested by their patrons and what’s on lists of good new books. They still have to know their subject matter to weed properly, especially in the nonfiction areas. Fiction tends to be weeded based on condition and circulation stats, especially in public libraries. (weeding is getting rid of books that no longer suit the collection. Easy examples: children’s book that was dropped in the mud. children’s book that still lists Pluto as a planet).

      Oh! As a librarian, you can also get pre-release versions of books to evaluate for your library. It’s a nice perk to read things months before it comes out. (you have to request them from the publisher, but publishers like sending these to librarians because librarians buy lots of books and talk to other people that buy lots of books)

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      • VAK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Wow, I feel that’s something we should bring back. Professors many a times get too specialized. A librarian taking care of a broad category would bring balance. Though I suppose having more than 100~200 such libraries in an economy the size of US or EU feels excessive too.

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• smh@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  part of librarianship is knowing how to evaluate various books to determine if they’re worth acquiring for the collection. So, you’d look at book reviews by experts, ask the professor that teaches that subject if there’s anything they’d suggest. You research the author, find out if they’re involved in any scandals w.r.t. their research, if they have undisclosed conflicts of interest, what have you.

  Yes, that sounds trivial, but there’s a lot of things that go into it. Librarianship is mostly knowing how to find, store, and make available information.

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