Eric, John, and company,

 

First off, Dana is a WOMAN, thank you very much and SHE is quite confident in her beliefs and opinions about the value of archival education because they are based on experience.  I graduated 2 years ago and I haven't even begun to pay off my enormous loans.  Library school was often a battle for survival- at one point I found myself working 2 student library jobs and taking 4 classes at a time and sleeping but little.  I am sure that many of us going through the program didn't find it that terribly interesting until the higher level classes, like appraisal and collective memory, but like any other academic program, we slogged through the less thrilling parts to get to the payoff.     

 

"Who learns about Schellenberg or macroappraisal in an ALA-approved MLS/MLIS/MSLS/MSLIS program?"  I did.  And so do the hundreds of graduates of similar programs at Simmons and Michigan and Pitt and UCLA and other schools, who did their homework before they attended school by finding the best programs in which to study archives, and who will continue to do their homework afterwards, by being thoughtful archivists who are involved in the profession.  Don't presume that Richard Cox is alone in his opinions- he is certainly not, or these programs and the many devoted educators attached to them would not exist.  Furthermore, students would not fork over large amounts of money for education if it was widely accepted that doing so was not worth the money, time, or effort involved.      

 

As to why formal education is a waste, you provide poor examples and flawed reasoning.  Please do me the favor of finding out exactly how many people would like to be represented by an attorney who did not attend law school- or how many non-traditional lawyers are out there practicing today.  Unfortunately history and memory are our clients, so it's a little more murky for us.  Unfortunate indeed- no one really advocates for the right of history to be well-served.     

 

I worked my tail off to get through library school and a dual degree in history and you know what? It's 2 years later and I have a great job in an academic archives- which is exactly what I set out to do.  I acknowledge that there are different types of archivists- perhaps rare books people need a slightly different set of skills and have been ignored by MLIS programs- maybe archives programs should consider offering classes in curatorship and other specializations to give these people what they want out of their education.  But in the meantime killing degree programs is no answer and frankly is a ridiculously backwards idea.  I even know some rare books folks who went through MLIS programs and have no regrets about it- they round out their education by going to rare book school in the summer.  They also relate to their librarian coworkers with little trouble and have a broad understanding of their goals.

 

Cox is right- there is no use arguing anymore, as I don't see much logic to your protestations, and I don't see know of any one of the decriers publishing or advocating for the profession.  Those who continue to deny the value of formal education to this profession will most likely be left behind in the dust.  I think my library school peers and I will be happy to take up where you left off.             

 

Finished- and moving on,

Dana