>> Librarianship is very different than other professions,
in that our terminal degree is a masters degree of library science,
and in order to be specifically and academic librarian like I am,
you have to get your masters degree from an accredited American Library Association program.
So it's a requirement to have that in order to be an academic librarian.
So as far as schooling goes your undergraduate degree determines typically what kind
of librarian you are, in that are you a science librarian,
a humanities librarian, a social sciences librarian.
There are lots and lots of librarians for the humanities, lots of people go into philosophy
or English, or a humanities, and then realize they don't want to teach,
which is frequently what people do after they've gotten those degrees.
And so then [inaudible] go into library science there are very few of us that, art sciences
or business librarians, and so there's a great need for those librarians around,
But you do have to have your masters of library science from an accredited university.
And so if you have that, that's pretty much a guarantee, you can be a school librarian,
or a public librarian, but more and more, without the accreditation,
but more and more of those jobs are as well, requiring the accreditation aspect of it.
So it's very straightforward if you decide you want to be one, it's usually a two year,
sometimes to three year combined with a second master's choice program,
and you simply go and get it.
And then now, the field is wide open, because so many people
who are librarians are baby boomer age, and so they're retiring.
And so there are positions opening up, which is nice, because it's not true in all fields.
The programs are easily accessible to people, I mean they even accepted people provisionally,
which I don't think like law schools or medical schools do.
So getting into a library science program is not difficult, and there are lots and lots of them.
You have to be able to work with both students and faculty, so you need to be able
to explain things up in a way, as well as down, so that you need to be able to simplify things
as well as explain them in detail, at their upmost kind of complicated way,
and so you need to be able to do that.
You need to be able to work on your own, really well, because you will have projects
that are fairly complicated that you need to be able to see through, on your own.
But then, being an academic librarian is committee work, I mean,
you're on a million committees, so you've got to be able to work in groups as well.