Question of the week: What sorts of classes do you take to become a librarian? (with thanks to Dan)

Here at Syracuse, we take core classes and electives in the MSLIS program (Master of Science, Library and Information Studies).  The core fall classes are Intro. to the Library and Information Profession, Information and Information Environments, Information Resources:Users and Services, Information Resources:Organization and Access.  Additionally, Management Principles for Information Professionals is required but offered both terms (I am taking this in the fall term).  I am also part of the Black and Latino Leadership program, this is an uncredited elective class.

In the spring, I will take 2 classes dealing with Telecommunications and Information Policy and Information Resources: Acquisitions.  My two electives will be,  Creating.Managing.Preserving Digital Assets, Database Administration Concepts and Database Management. 

We also have electives which up to 6 credits can be taken in any School at Syracuse. I have chosen to transfer my 6 credits from the MBA progran ( Strategic Management and Managerial Economics).

My final 5 credits will be an internship (hopefully back at Yale) and a 2 credit independent study.

All of these classes have been discussed with my advisor, Prof Lankes, who also happens to be the Director of the Libary and Information Studies Program.

So, I have been getting a lot of questions about the mission here at the iSchool.  One buzzword that is heard consistently in many of my interactions is innovation.  I would have to say that Dave Lankes (our instructor who wanted us to create this blog) is an innovator.  He spent the first four classes in full deconstruction mode, but then he continued the educational process by beginning to construct what a vision of a librarian might be. 

In our latest class, he brought in a guest speaker, Joseph Janes, from the iSchool at the University of Washington.  UW is a main competitor for students studying Information Science so I thought the discussion would be thought provoking.  It was.  We heard a lot about "play" in the discussion which immediately brought me back to Derrida's notion of "jouissance".  Ideas should be played with, tossed around and used to stimulate discusssion.  This is at the very heart of innovation.  Then Prof. Janes told the class that he and Lankes had been separated at birth!  That explained a lot as to why they were saying very similar things.  Then we find out that they both graduated from Syracuse.  Even better, because now I am sure that Syracuse University is the right place to be.  It is truly an innovation hub.

One final note, as Camus said in The Fall, "We are all in the soup together"

Question of the week: tell me, why are librarians so technologically oriented these days? what do blogs have to do with that? why do you need to build websites? I have so many questions...

At the Syracuse iSchool (School of Information Studies), there are three majors: library and information science, information management and telecommunications and network management. Librarians are concerned with the access, retrieval and storage of information. So I am taking classes in digital libraries, database management, open access systems, etc so that I can understand the architecture that we all use. The notion of a librarian standing behind a desk checking out books for you is kind of an idealized notion that really does not correspond to a modern librarian's job.