I was recently catching up with my cousin-in-law's blog "The Bing Dynasty". He's a librarian-in-training in Ottawa. He expresses frustration over the one thing that comes out of people's mouths when you tell them you're in library school. Can you guess what it is? In his words...
BECOMING A LIBRARIAN INVOLVES FAR MORE THAN "LEARNING THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM". If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me something akin to "so you just have to learn the Dewey Decimal System?", I wouldn't bother getting this degree. I would instead retire and live off my earnings. Let's drop the ignorance folks. Do you think that it would be worth a Masters degree if it was just "learning the Dewey Decimal System?" And furthermore, would I have bothered travelling 3000 miles at great expense to myself and my lovely wife, financially and otherwise, to learn the Dewey Decimal System? Any chimp, should they desire, can familiarize themself with Dewey's system of classification. I wanna be a LIBRARIAN, dammit, and a librarian I SHALL BE.
I read this and was instantly transported back to that same sense of boiling annoyance. I did an MLIS at UBC. If I had a nickel for every time some git slapped their knee and asked me if I was learning the Dewey Decimal system, I would throw those nickels in a sock, swing it three times over my head, and HAI-YA! they would learn it is not so easy to slap your knee once your patella has been shattered.
"That's Weapons, Blackjacks DDC 399!!" I would yell. Because I am a stickler for cataloguing accuracy.
I feel bad. I'm pretty sure that I once asked you that exact question, Peter. Though, I was joking (sort of). :|
Well, it just all adds up after a while. How's the knee?
:P
On a related note, the other day, one of the lawyers made some little comment about the Dewey Decimal System (which we don't even use at our library), and when I didn't really respond, he said, quote, "Ha ha, I'm probably dating myself with that!" As if the DDC were some archaic system that's no longer in use. Good times.
I am glad that at least one other person truly understands the agony of having to listen that Dewey Decimal crap day constantly. You're a good man, Charlie Brown. LIBRARIANS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!!!
Well, as an engineer, I can say "boo-hoo" to that. Be happy that librarian science is a relative newcomer to the land of lampooning of various careers. I don't recall any 'sanitary librarian' jokes, nor 'ceramic librarian' ones for that matter either.
So, how many librarians does it take to learn the Dewy Decimal System?
All of them.