How do you become a librarian?

For those of you all who are regular readers, this is the second part of my three part series on librarianship. The first post was “What is a librarian?”

First, allow me to make a confession. When I first looked at the field of library science, I assumed all of the people who worked in a library were librarians. As I later found out, this is not the case at all. There are two areas of employment in a library: library support staff, and librarians. The librarians act more in a managerial role.

For example, where I work, at the Amon Carter Museum Library there is only one “librarian,” and that is the director. There are two full-time support staff, the archivist/research assistant, and the cataloger. Additionally, there are volunteers and interns in the library – of which I am one.

As such, the training to become a librarian is challenging. The accepted educational standard is a master’s degree in library science from an American Library Association accredited school. Unlike many other master’s degrees, there are only about 60 schools around the country that are accredited by the ALA. To me, this was surprising - only 60 schools offer this program. This helps shrink the job candidate pool, allows schools to be more selective in admission, and increases the quality of the accredited degree-granting institutions. If you are so interested, you can watch this brief video about ALA accreditation:



































At my school, Syracuse University, the program is a Master’s in Science in Library and Information Sciences. This degree is a combination of classes teaching traditional library skills (cataloging, reference skills, archivism, etc.), management classes, and information technology classes. When I was selecting schools to apply to, I wanted to attend a degree that will prepare me for the library of the future, and Syracuse (according to my research) does a phenomenal job of that.

The course of study for the MSLIS program is about 2 years, going full time each semester. If you are curious as to what the curriculum looks like, here is the official document from Syracuse:
MSLIS handout.pdf

You can go on to earn your PhD in library science, but that is even more difficult, as the 60 or so master’s accredited programs do not all offer a PhD. If you want to teach, or be a dean of an academic library, you would want to earn your PhD.

Whatever path you take, employment in the field is very good. The work environment and hours are excellent, and in general you have very good co-workers. The pay is also very good, especially when you move up into assistant director/director positions.

As a matter of fact, librarianship is one of US News and World Report’s best careers for 2009.
The New York Times also stated that the need for librarians will triple in the next decade.

Well, I certainly hope that answers all of your questions about how one becomes a librarian. If not, feel free to leave your questions in the comments section!

Jason Dean

PS - Here’s another video summing this up, from the director of the Syracuse program, Scott Nicholson: