The Matter of the Master’s

Are you kidding?
I’m a LA, and do the exact SAME thing a librarian with an MLS does.
Get an MLS?
I’d never waste my money!

As someone with 25 years of Library experience I too question the value of an MLS. A few years ago our library went through a severe budget crisis and Public Services Associates were created to be “reference staff without degrees”. I felt at a dead end (only two positions were open above mine and neither seemed tempting) so I jumped over to the Reference side of the world. Now, I have a BA, a love of technology and a passion for public service along with some down and dirty Spanish. The PSA job was a perfect fit. I had no money to get an MLS so this seemed a golden opportunity.

Then reality set in. The job title ticked off many librarians, those in the position to hire the PSA did not respect the position, those who created the position made the job description as amorphous as possible. So once all the MLS holding staffers (those who got their degrees before the budget flopped) were hired as PSAs because there were no Librarian positions open (and the few like me who had the chops but not the papers) the quality of hire dropped dramatically. When MLS positions opened up as our economic situation improved, the pendulum shifted so that PSAs were no longer a quality bunch of hires, but a couple good staffers mixed in with people with little public service experience and no library experience.

Therein lies the problem, no MLS is going to want to hire a decent non-degree holding person lest the truth be revealed: that an MLS from 30 years ago and a pulse does not equal a passion for public service, a love of learning and sharing that learning, and desire to DO what librarians are supposed to do instead of just being one in name only. I am according to some voodoo type job study, worth about $6,000 bucks each year less than an MLS holder. Now this MLS person may not have the ability to do a Readers Advisory, a story time, an internet class, a Facebook class and e-book class or sign someone up for a library card (in Spanish) but by goodness she sat on her hind end in a classroom for 2 years, so she’s worth more money.

Those of us left as PSAs can feel the screws being tightened, our duties and responsibilities are being taken away one by one so that the lower pay can be justified. We are held in little esteem and the administration are acting like we are Hagar, and are about to hand us our bread and water and send us out into the desert. It is sad beyond words.

If Libraries would hire those with the technological and public service abilities, regardless of degree, they would have a crop of passionate staff not just career changers or those looking for an easy degree.

Thank you for reading my venting.

I learned a lot about the MLS degree from reading your column. My friend recently completed 2 years of teaching high school English and is now pursuing an MLS degree. The classes and program focus is on computer science, but my friend would like to be a librarian at a small library in Montana and sees this as her only option. She loves working with people and her current job at a library has her working on computers and never with people. She is beginning to doubt whether an MLS degree is where she should be or if she should consider a different type of library degree like a K12 library degree. She is not interested in working at a college library or with middle or elementary school kids, just high school. Obviously having such a narrow set of needs for her profession limits her in some ways, but experience has taught her what she is looking for in a job. I’m wondering what advice you would have for her in terms of choosing a degree and what her job prospects look like. Is an MLS degree a good choice for her or should she be looking at K12 or something else altogether? Any help you could give her would be appreciated.

Shame on you, Will, for attempting to discredit the library degree! Although, specifically, I may agree with you that the MLS “type” of degree is washing ashore (have others misunderstood you?).

The newer library degrees include a communications and technology focus: MLIS and MSLIS. I do NOT have a MLS degree (only for public library librarians, perhaps?); I have a MSLIS, which centers on technology and communications, the hottest, most innovative fields in the world.

I can also agree that from your perspective and your involvement as a trustee of a PUBLIC LIBRARY, that your personal experience would cause you to think the way you do. I do wonder if librarians in a public library setting really need the MLS or the MLIS, or the MSLIS…Hmmmm. Perhaps not. Afterall, public librarians mostly do operational tasks such as checking books out, reading on the job, writing book reviews, unloading the bookdrops, preparing storytime sessions and music song collections for children - all of which do not require a MLS.

Afterall, you must know that brick and mortar universities, non-profits, newspapers, online universities, television networks, and major corporations do not hire librarians as knowledge managers, directors, deans, plus more, to actually work to serve students and clients. You are way off base!

You live in California, so go and visit at least 3 universities and shadow at least 6 librarians to find out what they do all day. Hmmm…I bet you will find that they teach, prepare instructional materials that involve information literacy components, and help students with their dissertations - making sure they learn how to do Boolean searching to find more than adequate resources to support their problem statements.

A tour of Google, Intel, Microsoft, University of Phoenix, and Apple will teach you that the librarians there-knowledge managers, etc. - manage websites, manage content, run RSS feeds, create metadata for internal and external stakeholders, and do a whole host of other un-public library-ish types of MLS work.

So, yes, ultimately you are correct. The MLS does nobody any good (really?). But the MLIS and the MSLIS does everybody else very well (including 6 figures).

Good luck on your quest to educate yourself more on the value of the various types of library degrees and the impact on those who know nothing about searching databases and other online resources that operate differently than a web crawling website.

When I moved to Nebraska in the mid 1990s, I was stunned to discover the prevalence of library directors and staff with Bachelors degrees rather than Masters. I’d never heard of a Bachelors degree in our field and didn’t understand why it even existed.

The reality that was recognized by library leaders in Nebraska is that we have many small towns that are determined to have libraries but do not have the funds to pay a director with a Masters degree. In addition, distances are such that it has been difficult for working library staff to attend universities that offer the MLS.

As a result, the University of Nebraska at Omaha developed a rigorous Bachelors program to ensure that city libraries could have directors with the knowledge they needed. The combination of work experience and courses resulted in Bachelors-level directors who drove our small-town libraries to high standards, assisted by certification and other courses offered by the Nebraska Library Commission.

(ALA-accredited Masters degrees are now available at UNO via the University of Missouri and at Emporia on the Kansas-Nebraska border).

Today, when we have so many students entering graduate library programs with little or no library experience, I believe it is a mistake to have the Masters as the “entry-level” education. Too many students are attending high-level courses without the experience to make them relevant, and are spending a lot of money for the privilege. Think of the MBA. Is it more useful to move straight into an MBA from undergraduate school, or to have some time working in business first?

When I received my MLS in 1982, undergraduate school was perceived as the subject degree with the MLS providing the library skills and knowledge to work in a library in that subject area. (Music undergraduate - of course you would work in a music library.) Now, though, there is so much more to learn in librarianship (technology, marketing, copyright and related legal issues, etc) that a Masters program simply can’t do a good job of teaching everything from beginning cataloging to strategic planning.

And with the Masters degree as the starting point for librarians (and courses reflecting that), once you have the Masters, where do you go when you need more education? Some schools offer a 6th-year certificate, but it’s hard to get organizations/companies to pay for coursework that doesn’t lead to a degree.

A well-constructed Bachelors degree in Library Science can be a good starting point for people who want to work in libraries, particularly public libraries, with the Masters degree providing the deeper perspective needed by library professionals. Law firms have paralegals (2-year degree), legal assistants (4-year degree), and lawyers (graduate degree). If we push the basic cataloging, reference, library tech and similar courses to a 4-year degree, as in the law and business fields, we allow our graduate programs to delve deeper into the increasingly complex organizational, ethical, legal, and management coursework that we need to help our libraries survive - and thrive - in the future.

It’s not that I disagree with the problems that are identified in the article - but I think the ingredient that is missing is context.

You could replace ‘librarian’ and ‘MLS’ with almost any other profession/qualification title - doctors can’t get work and are crippled by insurance costs, law grads end up doing little more than filling out standard immigration forms, wills and probate paperwork which they could have learned about in 6 months, teachers barely making a living wage, double MBAs unemployed 5 years after graduation from top schools…

The point is, just because there is an increase in the volume of mediocrity in a field, it doesn’t mean the field itself is failing, stagnating, or obsolete. Yes, there are many students getting many degrees who, perhaps, leave with little actual knowledge and have little to offer, however, there are also excellent graduates, with intelligence, passion and a somewhat less defeatist attitude. And these graduates will become leaders and innovators, rather than placeholders - which is the danger if paraprofessionals are overused.

…and a ‘lack of perception’ on the part of the patron should hardly be the main criterion for hiring staff or developing services. I don’t ‘perceive’ any difference in service if my lab results are given to me by the technician or the receptionist, but I know that I want the person performing the work behind the scenes to be a qualified professional…

I find this discussion fascinating and not really a new one. We have been talking about the MLS value since it was made a masters degree. For an interesting take on the degree, read Keith Swigger’s work called the MLS Experiment. Fascinating commentary on how the degree failed in its original objective to raise the status and pay of librarians. In Canada, I like to think we do a better job of dealing with education as we have a tight knit community of Library and Information Technology Diploma programs that provide a two year diploma for technicians that is becoming the respected library staff complement to the MLS. The reality is that schools need to catch up to the changing times and deliver programs that are more responsive to the changing demands of the profession - and there IS one.

Perhaps library schools need to do what law schools have started to do, and that is limt the number of applicants they accept into their programs. Why? Because there are too many graduates flooding the market and not enough jobs for them. I attended a great library school with a rigorous face-to-face program, but that school has since gone completely online and accepts everyone who applies into the program.

Having worked in the public library in my home town for 20+ years, I have seen why libraries are important. We deal with people everyday. If we aren’t available, where do they go for their library needs—online, to the vanishing bookstore? What I haven’t seen is any support from the management, and government. Most recently, our budget cuts have resulted in frozen positions and my guess it that with retirements coming from senior librarians, we will see the positions disappear. If we depend on only the Library Directors to voice the value of Librarians, we are sunk. I suggest we look at ourselves, and see if we are worth saving as an occupation. If yes, lets figure out how to make our value known. If no, we do what we are doing—nothing.

I want to thank Will Manley for publishing “The Matter of the Master’s.” As a fairly recent graduate with an MLIS degree, I was one of a very few in my graduating class to fortunately find full time (albeit temporary) library employment after a mere 9 months of unemployment and frustrated job searches. I credit my success not with the degree so much as over 5 years of library experience that I earned part time throughout my high school and college years.

I find myself angry ALA when I read in 2012 what seemed to be the exact same forecast that I had read 7 years prior when I was still an undergrad and considering an MLS — that the current librarians will soon be retiring and there will be a burgeoning market for librarians. This, if not an outright lie, is completely misguided. As Manley has pointed out many of the current library positions are being lost to automation, non-degreed library associates, or all out elimination of positions as libraries try to limp along with less.

What I would like to see is FEWER librarians but a BETTER QUALITY information professionals. Having a pulse and a bachelor’s shouldn’t qualify you for admittance into a program but I have come across countless library students who barely have that and, more importantly, have no real desire to be a librarian or improve the library field. Most are simply are looking for a career change and what they perceive to be an “easy job.” Many have never even worked in a library or an information field!

The value of the MLS will only rise when we place greater value on it, expect more out of it, and stop flooding the market with barely mediocre “professionals.” Perhaps that means fewer schools and fewer students and, yes, fewer (paying) professional members of the ALA but it’s time that we look inward to resolve some of these issues!

Those working in Circulation, along with those in Technical Services should be THE librarians. They know better than anybody else what’s going on in libraries, even more than those with degrees in MLS who never work in this setting. New books, programs, what circulates, information, etc. are common knowledge for those behind the circulation desk. The circulation desk is where patrons stop to talk and ask, and many times they have to refer people to ask librarians because that’s the rule. Also, librarians behind the information/reference desk don’t have the experience of connecting with the public like those in Circulation . If you start as a page and work all the way up, that should be the requirement to be a librarian. The public identifies anybody working in a library as a librarian, like Will Manley says in his superb article. There’s no doubt that schools are making money with these MLS degree idea. I finish my master’s degree and I didn’t learn anything beyond of what I’ve already learned by working from the bottom up. I just came out of the program with a debt that I’m still paying.
Many MLS graduates don’t have the experience required to work in libraries. Those who said that the MLS degree helped them to get new skills are those who have never work in a library setting. That’s the reality.
Being a librarian is more than getting a diploma, a piece of paper hanging in the wall. It should be a working experience. Let the managers and administrators to get the degree.

I received my MLS less than a month ago, but I realized a while back that I was likely never going to work as a traditional librarian. I was certainly never going to be a public librarian, because city and local governments are relying on MLS holders who are willing to work at poverty level and part time, or paraprofessionals who come for even cheaper. A local community college is even offering some non-ALA accredited “library technician” certificate….it does not look good.

However, I agree with another commenter that there is some hope in the academic and corporate sector, where the expertise of the MLS is respected and acknowledged, and I have had several job openings sent my way for non-traditional information positions, so I think it is disingenuous for the author to say that the MLS leads only to traditional library jobs. I am lucky to have a long time non-library full time job to keep me afloat, and my student loans are manageable. I am sending out apps for ever non-traditional library job I can find - of which their quite a few - and to the very, very, very few traditional positions that don’t require many years of experience.

I got an MIS at an I-School (I know librarians like to hate on those programs.) I took almost no library-focused classes, because, frankly, those classes looked boring. My classes were intellecutally rigorous, and I learned a lot about big picture things—decision making in institutions, organizational theory, etc. I got to work on interesting projects and worked with really smart classmates who all had careers (as I did) before we decided to become librarians. I got a job straight out of library school in 2006, which I know is pre-economic collapse. The things I learned I don’t really use in my job—the things I learned about are what managers and directors deal with. The things I needed to know to do my job? Learned on the job. Readers advisory, mediating disputes between members of opposing gangs, helping teens make art and music on the computer—these are things you learn by doing. I valued and continue to value my degree because it helps me put what happens into context. I am not sure about the overall value of an MLS.

I was fortunate enough to find a part-time paraprofessional job while I was in library school. I graduated with my MLIS in 2009, but I’m still basically in the same position, albeit with a few more hours. My library downsized a full-time librarian position into a part-time paraprofessional to create my current job. So, basically they’re getting my expertise without having to pay a professional salary and benefits. (And I’m trying to cram in full-time duties in a part-time schedule.) It’s not ideal, and sometimes I get annoyed thinking about it, but, on the other hand, I know what the job market is like right now. In the past two years, I’ve only seen a handful of full-time librarian positions advertised in my state. I feel pretty lucky to have what I have.

I also question whether the LIS degree needs to be a graduate degree. My courses were wonderful for preparing me to work in a library, but they were hardly academically rigorous. The coursework really was closer to undergraduate level. The only good argument I’ve heard in the past few years for keeping the degree at the graduate level is that it requires everyone to bring some other type of expertise to the table. You have to have a bachelor’s in something else.

I disagree that MLIS degree is only worth a job. I actually have been really excited to learn skills of information seeking and information organizing, etc. that come through an MLIS. I have been using these skills for different tasks and even Christian ministry that I am a part of (which is of eternal worth), which are outside a library job (though I also have that). Others have also sought me out for information beacuse of my degree, and a friend of mine is giving me her husband’s library of material (he passed away), because she knows I’ll cherish it and properly organize and use it based on my degree. I think I could go on with examples, but just thought I’d throw in those points.

Thank you for pointing out the emperor’s new clothes. I have an MLIS and a professional job, but was able to wait until I could work at the university where I got the degree, so, with tuition exemption, it was free. Otherwise, with what I knew from my two librarian parents, it clearly would not be worthwhile. This was my second grad degree, and it really was vocational training, not on an intellectual par with the lit degree at all. I agree with other comments the content might be more appropriate for undergrad, and perhaps reserve the Master’s requirement for managers and administrators, requiring they already did the undergrad nuts and bolts, and adding more course content in public sector and academia politics and finance, urban planning, architecture etc .

The comments so far seem to be mostly related to public libraries. The academic library experience may be different. Those of us who help students and faculty find the information they need in an increasing array of licensed resources understand that knowing how to navigate these resources is not something that comes naturally. The foundational education of the MLS program should provide an understanding of how knowledge is organized and accessed. This is the intellectual skill that we bring to our work. It is not something that is taught in a two-month program, although some may think that “anyone can do that”—just put a warm body on a reference desk or at the computer to answer online queries. Users will not know they are being short-changed by economy-seeking administrators unless they later encounter a professional who opens up vistas of knowledge/resources for them.

I did my MLIS full time in a real classroom and had the coursework done in ten months. To me, this proves that it’s just the right amount of material for an undergrad major. In fact, so many humanities, arts, or social science undergrad majors come out to about a year or a year and a half of coursework that we should be able to have double major, fully-trained librarians finish with a BA in four years having done nothing extraordinary. This addresses the problem described in the column only to the extent that it becomes faster and less expensive for people to enter the profession and their expectations are thereby more appropriatley aligned with what is now available in the job market. As a public library manager of a department with twenty MLS librarians, I know that we needed maybe five or six and the rest of the work had migrated to things that could have been done by someone with a high school diploma and a good two month in-house training program. So, the demand side of the issue is probably not going to change.

I enjoyed reading Mr. Manley’s column on the MLS. I am a retired librarian, and I feel that the MLS is crucial for a career in librarianship and to maintain the quality of service that the public needs. I understand how eliminating the MLS might save money and agree with the public’s perception that “everyone who works in a library is a librarian.” But I think that these attitudes are caused by the underlying reality that as a profession we have not effectively communicated the value of our expertise and academic credentials to the public. We have been very active in promoting books, reading, and libraries as institutions. We have not been as active in promoting ourselves as trained professionals who do more than sit behind a desk and say “shhhh.” As an example the themes of National Library Week only highlighted librarians in two years—1989 and 1990. I think that we need to be more proactive in promoting our professionalism to combat the “let’s go as cheap as we can” mentality in library staffing.

As a young person hoping to get into the library science field, I appreciate the honesty of this article. Too many people today are still reciting the old “all the librarians are retiring in the next ten years!” myth.

I think a good alternative solution to the problem presented in this article would be for more colleges to offer undergraduate degrees in library science. This would give those who wish to work in libraries and the information sciences the specialized knowledge and training that they need while eliminating the costly burden of graduate school. I envision a program akin to, say, an accounting or business degree where the graduates leave with practical knowledge pertaining to a specific career field while still maintaining a strong liberal arts background. This could be a way to lower the cost of education for potential library employees without losing the job-specific knowledge that a graduate degree provides.

I don’t know if the value of the MLS will ever come back. I was lucky enough to graduate before the recession hit and to get a professional position as soon as I finished the degree. I’ve got a full-time library position, which probably sounds like I hit the lottery to people who’ve graduated in the last year or two and are trying to make a living any way they can.

However, even with this, it’s going to be about 20 more years before I pay off the loans I had to take to get the MLS. That’s not a good feeling.

I wonder if library schools could just make the curriculum a little more challenging, and entrance a little more selective, in order to shrink the number of people graduating with these degrees. But that would require the schools to stay financially viable with fewer students, and would require library school professors to work harder for no obvious incentives (other than the good of their students). I’m not trying to be snarky here - I think these are real problems for the profession.

Thanks for this very honest post. Like the comments before, I am often finding my only shot at working in a library will have to be part-time with my spring-fresh MLS degree. I consider myself fortunate to have taken a full-time position in retail management during my graduate work in anticipation of a long job hunt.

The trend for some time now in my state is to eliminate full time jobs and hire part-time librarians at public libraries. So not only are there less librarians around, there are less full-time opportunities for librarians in general. There are two library schools in my state and they keep churning out MLS graduates and I often wonder, where do they go to find work?

Of course I would hate to see the MLS disappear, but the reality is the full-time jobs are just not there for graduates. It seems acquiring a Master’s is a whole lot to go through if you are not guaranteed a full-time job when you graduate. I don’t see this turning around any time soon, and it seems it’s getting worse. When one library does it, others just follow along. Library Boards get together and say….”so and so library has all part-time librarians, why do we need all these full-time librarians on staff?” Then then go ahead and cut accordingly.

This is a huge problem. How do we turn this mindset around?

Thanks for an informative and well written article that raises questions that many would rather sweep under the rug. I worked at a library for 4 years in my undergrad doing just about anything they asked me since I loved the job so much. When I graduated with a dual degree in mass comm and history, though, it was impossible for me to even get an interview for a library job. Everything required an MLIS. After working for 4 more years, I decided to go back and get my MLIS (the economy was in the downturn and it seemed like a viable field that would compliment my work history and personal knowledge). I’ll graduate this August after 2 years of working full time and being a full time student. And while I loved my program and the coursework…there are many times where I wonder if it’s worth the money. If I wanted more of an administrator position I could understand needing an MLIS. But my passion is working with people, helping people, finding information. There are times where I feel that my past experience combined with on the job training and continued professional development would have been plenty for me to do the job well, but alas without that piece of paper, I wasn’t getting an interview.
I think it’s also important to point out that before the economic downturn, the library industry was a safe bet- plenty of people were retiring. While not many new jobs were created, there was a need to fill existing positions. And now we have many people putting off retirement indefinitely because of the economy- and again, young people are left in limbo.