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March 21, 2005
Quoted in a Houston Chronicle article
At the CIL2005 Tuesday night Dine-around, we were joined by Houston Chronicle journalist Julie Mason, who was asking for our opinion of Laura Bush as a librarian, and I was quoted in the resulting article.
To give some context to my quote, my view is that if the Bush administration insists on trying to reap political capital from the fact that Laura Bush was, at one time, a school librarian, then yes, Laura Bush should have had some very stern words for her husband about the effect the USA PATRIOT Act has on libraries. While a few librarians at the table agreed on some level, several librarians at the table basically said that they didn't really think about Laura Bush, or consider her an issue in representing librarianship, because her stint as a librarian was so short and so long ago, making her connection to the profession today tenuous at best.
It was great to see that Ms. Mason picked up the bit where "some librarians said they feel the first lady perpetuates an incomplete and outdated stereotype of their profession, which is increasingly high-tech and specialized."
While I was on Laura Bush's White House site, I saw a section devoted to the "Recruitment and Education of Librarians for the 21st Century," detailing a White House initiative in cooperation with the IMLS to provide funding to libraries and MLS programs promote recruitment and education of future librarians, one purpose being to:
Priority 1: Master's Level Programs
Educate the next generation of librarians. In particular, increase the number of students enrolled in nationally accredited graduate library programs preparing for careers in libraries.
While it's wonderful to see the White House taking such an interest in our profession and helping libraries (and I realize that this program has been around at least a year, but I didn't know about it), I fear that this federally-funded push to "increase the number of students...in graduate library programs" will contribute to the current overpopulation of unemployed librarians (new and old alike) in the field. While the profession will need a large influx of new librarians soon enough, I would love to see funding that helps current librarians be higher priority now (instead of the *last* priority), especially for librarians who have been in the field and require professional development and/or job placement assistance.
The bottom line is that I see an administration who has delivered a mixed message on librarianship, from calling librarians "hysterical" to creating funding to help the profession grow, and I would be more satisfied if their message was more consistent, and less geared towards its own political benefit.
March 21, 2005 12:57 AM