Enter Ed Nanno, first year LIS student: The first question I was asked while using one of the iSchool's computer labs was, "Why would anyone want to be a librarian?".  I thought that this was an odd question considering the amount of time I had spent discussing this new career path with family, friends, and confidants.  So I retorted, "why wouldn't someone choose this as a career?" The answer came back as, "it's so boring, just you and all those books!"  So, this made me think about what was in fact, attractive, about being a librarian. 

Going back through my past education, I choose philosophy as my undergraduate major.  I believe that this was due to my "love of wisdom" (the meaning of the Greek words 'philos' and 'sophia').  As I continued to mull over the reasons, I decided that I needed to admit that I was a bibliophile as well as a lover of architecture.  The combination of all those books housed in such beautiful buildings was appealing to me both professionally and aesthetically.  This seemed to assuage my feelings of anxiety regarding my newly chosen profession.

Enter Dave Lankes, destroyer of worlds (actually of worldviews, but I rather like the Oppenheimer connection):  The first impression is of a man wearing jeans and crocs, cracking jokes.  As his lecture ensued, we gathered that he would break all "standardized" conventions regarding teaching, lecturing and directing (being the Director of the program, that is).   As he engaged the lecture hall, he jokes, used props (a left behind hair extension), and remembered specifics about the students in the room.  Then he lowered the boom.  In a discussion about the cultural differences in the philosophy of the library, he recounted a visit to Italy for the opening of a library.  Libraries in Italy are built as monuments of culture whereas in the United States, they are buildings which provide open access to professionals. 

So, I must say that I love this class.  It is helping the librarians of the future to focus, not on the next iteration of  the 'private language' MARCS system (classification system within libraries which is not compatible with other programming languages), but rather within their roles of shaping and creating the future that we are obligated to build.