Recently, the Madison Public Library hired two youth librarians who didn't have master's of library science (MLS) degrees. Veteran librarians were puzzled, since this hasn't happened in over 16 years, and since they all have MLS degrees.
On the other hand, since the library is just like any other city department, it follows Madison's human resources department guidelines in hiring procedures. Under the Civil Rights Act, Madison tries to attract candidates of minority and disabled groups who might not have the same access to MLS degrees as others.
The full column provides more detail, but I wonder if this isn't another recent news story that in some ways echoes Garrison's themes of professionalization and sex-typing coupled with low wages and low status ...
2 comments:
The column says "Under the Civil Rights Act, Madison tries to attract candidates of minority and disabled groups who might not have the same access to MLS degrees as others", but were the people hired actually disabled or members of minority groups? If they were, were there really no other disabled or minority applicants who had MLS degrees? The majority of students at SLIS now are white (a few, like me, are even a whiter shade of pale), but there are some who aren't.
In that article, Louise Robbins said, "There were students (in the MLS program) who would have been wonderful but chose not to compete with those they knew in the system." I think this is a really interesting point because even though I'm only a second semester SLIS student, I contantly hear about how difficult (impossible?) it is to get a job at a Madison library (within the UW system or at MPL). Now I'm certainly not trying to downplay this situation but could it be that MLS degree-holders simply avoid applying for jobs in Madison because they think it's impossible? I admit that I'm not even considering finding a job in Madison after I graduate. I'd be interested to see where the applicants with MLS degrees are from.
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