What I'm going to do with that

One nice thing about getting an MLS is that, unlike everything else I've gone to school for, when I tell people what I'm studying people don't ask "What are you going to DO with that?" Granted, I previously studied English (kind of useful), classical Greek and Latin (not a lot of Greeks and Romans I can talk to), and religious studies (perhaps useful, but if you're studying religion people think it's because you want to be ordained and, well, I'm female and Catholic, so, hmm). So in comparison, my MLS is obviously a professional degree, and most people think being a librarian is a legitimate job, although there are always those who think Google is going to make librarians obsolete.

I don't know if I should be ashamed to mention that I first applied to library school more than a decade ago, straight out of college. I got in, but I wasn't sure what kind of grad school I wanted to do, so I got a job in the Real World and decided after about two weeks that I would rather be in grad school. So I went to grad school, blasted through my masters and my coursework and exams for my PhD, then realized I didn't want to write a dissertation. After dithering around for a few years, having a baby, etc., I decided to get my MLS. That makes me sound flaky, doesn't it? And for a while there I was kicking myself that I didn't go straight to library school out of college and save myself ten years of dithering.

But now, aside from the fact that the path I took that led me across the country and brought two really wonderful people, my husband and my daughter, into my life, I realize that this path actually prepared me well to do the very specific thing I want to do. For one thing: subject specialists in academic libraries are usually supposed to have at least a masters degree in addition to the MLS. Check! For another, maybe I'm just a slow learner or maybe it took me more than one graduate department to find my groove, but I really learned a lot about my discipline, and how to do scholarship within it, while I was working toward my PhD.

I had the opportunity to observe Suzanne Estelle-Holmer and Amy Limpitlaw, reference librarians at the Yale Divinity School Library, for my reference class (IST 605) this semester. It's not a busy reference desk, as so many public and academic reference desks are, but they do field a lot of tricky questions from scholars and other patrons outside the Yale community, as well as helping students write research papers in patristics and biblical studies. I was able to help out with a couple of questions, and while I certainly saw skills in action that all reference librarians employ (the reference interview, for one), I answered those questions based on my previous knowledge of theology and church history. I always loved the beginning stages of research, learning introductory information on topics and tracking down sources, more than the actual writing of papers, so now I can help other people with the searching, learning more about a variety of topics in the process and building up my knowledge to help future patrons even more.

So now I have a better idea what I'm going to do with all those degrees. My dream job is essentially to do what the librarians at the div school do, although in reality I'm more likely to be a librarian in a more traditional academic environment. But in either case I'm sure the knowledge I've acquired in my earlier college experiences, as well as what I've learned about other topics I'm interested in, will help me do the job I'm training for now.