the survey says…

Right now the Library Research Ser­vice is con­duct­ing a sur­vey on the worth of an MLIS. (I got in mine 1996.)

For the final com­ment I had to sum up my thoughts about my exper­ince in the lit­tle box at the bot­tom of the sur­vey. I said:

As a pro­fes­sion­al degree an MLIS is ter­ri­bly per­ish­able. The only things poten­tial (library) employ­ers are ask­ing me about are what data­bas­es can I search and what soft­ware do I know. They don’t see that there is any last­ing ben­e­fit to the edu­ca­tion I got and how I have used it — out­side of libraries — for the last 10 years. Non-library employ­ers are the same — dif­fer­ent soft­ware — but the same questions.

That and the per­ceived lia­bil­i­ty of hav­ing a mas­ters degree and no “paid job expe­ri­ence” for the last 10 years pret­ty much makes me unem­ploy­able. Damn what am I going to do with all this free time?

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Lara Harriger