Fall semester courses: IST 605, Information Resources: Users and Services

The other core course I'm taking this semester is Information Resources: Users and Services, or Reference for short, but what we've already learned is that when it comes to the actual job of a reference librarian, "reference" is only one of many duties one might need to perform. We spent the first week of discussion looking at current job listings for reference librarians and compiling a list of skills and responsibilities required for the jobs. These skill areas included collection development, instruction, web development, management, and a whole host of other skills--often in one job! The good news is that even people like me who don't have a lot of library experience have probably developed some of these skills in other contexts, and for those who have a lot of interests, specialization is certainly not going to be a limitation. The more challenging aspect is that there are a lot of skills for reference librarians to master, and (it appears) hardly enough hours in the day for one person to do so many tasks.

I really have no idea if reference is an area I want to work in, but it's certainly a strong possibility I will staff a reference desk at some point in my professional career, so I'm looking forward to this class.

Fall semester courses: IST 616, Information Resources, Organization and Management

I'm enrolled in two core courses for my my first semester of completely online courses. IST 616 is on information organization and access, which is a topic that both intrigues and baffles me. I suspect that when it comes to the choice between patron-oriented library services and technical services, I'm going to fall on the technical services side of the line (but who knows, really), and I have at least an abstract interest in cataloguing, classification, and that sort of thing. But at the same time technical services is, well, technical, and while I am good enough at coding, classifying, and other techy things when I set my mind to it, my inner humanities scholar gags a bit whenever I see too many acronyms in one place. So I am more nervous about this course than the other class I'm taking this semester (reference sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? except it's not), but I'm sure it will all make sense at the end of the semester, and I'll have a better idea if this is the sort of librarianship I want to do.