My pal, and library school graduate, Lauren told me to check out this thread on AskMe that I would have missed had it not been for her keen eyes.
Topics touched upon in the thread include: feasibility of moving from public to academic libraries(and vice versa), the social worker aspect of public librarianship (along with playing cop, babysitter, etc.), job hunting, techno-phobic librarians, and other assorted pitfalls of the profession.
And, as always, Jessamyn offers some of the best advice.
In the vein of the Lolcats (of which I can never seem to get enough), the Lolbrarians have been making the rounds as of late on librarian blogs. Much of the humor is lost on me as I'm a newbie in the world of LIS, but I can never pass up on some librarian cheesecake. Rawr.
When making my choices on what graduate schools to apply to, I relied on U.S. News & World Report and their rankings for LIS programs. After reading this article from Time Magazine, I started wondering whether I should really be basing my choices on a list of top ten schools where 25% of a school's overall score comes from surveys that ask administrators to evaluate peer institutions.
Some colleges are getting tired of this system because they often get locked into the same relative space on the list because of their decades-old reputations. The rankings also emphasis per-pupil spending, which makes up 10% of the score and doesn't help to lower tuition. Bowdoin College dropped from fourth to eighth after it balanced it budget, rather than keep up with the spending increases of its peers. Additionally, the LIS program rankings didn't include any school that didn't have a Ph.D program, cutting out a number of eligible colleges.
A few colleges have opted out of the rankings, including Reed College. As a result, in one year they dropped from the second tier of schools to the fourth, but their application numbers haven't dwindled.
I guess I should be looking at some programs outside of the list anyway, as I should really have a Plan B in case I don't get into one of these top ten schools. Who knows, maybe I'll find myself in an excellent program that I didn't give much of a first glance.
(Whoo alliteration!)
A couple of weeks ago, I was in the midst of cleaning up this blog after the transfer to Wordpress. I had imported the old posts, installed a new theme, and had even tweaked the theme to make it look as it does now. Everything appeared to be fine, or at least it did in Firefox. I decided to open my long-neglected Internet Explorer 6 and view the blog.
Well, lo and behold, a Javascript error pops up. Great. Now, I know even less about Javascript than I do about CSS. Tired from hours of working on the blog, I thought to myself, "Screw it. If someone is backward enough to use IE then they'll have to deal with the error."
I shut off my computer and didn't give it a second thought.
Today, as I was looking through some Wordpress themes for a friend who is switching over from Movable Type, I came upon an upgrade for my current theme, one that would fix the Javascript error and stop the error messages in Internet Explorer. I sighed, knowing that I'll probably be installing the new theme later today and spending a few more hours changing it to my liking. Then, a new thought came into my mind.
Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser out there today. My parents would still be using it if it weren't for me installing Firefox on their computer. Even though IE is pretty terrible, and I personally dislike it, doesn't mean I should discriminate against people who use it. OK, "discriminate" might be too harsh of a adjective, but you get the point. If people are trying to access my blog, then I shouldn't allow anything to get in the way of it, even if it's just a little pop-up message. Access to information shouldn't be blocked, and even little nuisances like browser incompatibility can begin to add up like so many strips of red tape. Ever given up on viewing a site just because some fancy plug-in wouldn't load, or half the links led to 404 pages?
Of course, this doesn't mean I'm going to jump off the Firefox ship anytime soon, and I certainly wouldn't want to be anything like this guy.
The following is an exchange of dialog between me and a friend's parent while driving down I-5 from Portland to Eugene.
Me: "So, I believe that providing more access to information for the public will help us create a better society… like information on doing your taxes or fixing up your home."
Friend's parent: "Yeah, that sounds great, but you know what?"
Me: "What?"
Friend's parent: "People are dumb and lazy."
Me: "Oh, well, you've got a point."