Slavic Ph.D. + MLS

[Karen A Rondestvedt]

I must respectfully disagree with Mark Yoffe on the value or lack thereof
of a Ph.D. in a field other than library science for future librarians.
It's true that people in the library world don't care if you have the
Ph.D. or not, but in my experience search committees in academic libraries
do and so do faculty. (Faculty on this list may disagree!)  When I was job
hunting, I had interviews at some places I probably wouldn't have if I
hadn't had a Ph.D. Furthermore, if part of your job is assisting
dissertation-level students, it really helps to have gone through the
process yourself, even your degree isn't in the student's area of
interest.

Mark says:

> If you are serious about library career DON'T waste your time on getting
> useless and tortureous Ph.D.! (You can always go into a Ph.D. program at
> some university where you get your future library job). And it will be
> free!

I'd say if you want to go for a Ph.D. because you love the subject, rather
than in order to have a better chance for a job (or a better job) and you
can afford the time, go for it. There IS money out there for graduate
study, especially for strong candidates. You can't count on getting a
librarian job at a university that grants Ph.D.'s, to let alone Ph.D.'s in
an area of Slavic studies. And in at least our case, the studies if you do
are decidedly not free, although Pitt does give a tuition benefit. The job
market for Slavic librarians is not very good right now, and it may (or
may not) improve by the time you finish.

Finally, get a student or other part-time library job while you're
studying. Search committees like to see library experience, and this will
also help to counteract any impression they might have that you'd really
rather have some other type of job--as well as giving you a taste of the
sort of work involved in library jobs.

Karen


-*-  Karen Rondestvedt                         207 Hillman Library
-*-  Slavic Bibliographer                      University of Pittsburgh
-*-  University of Pittsburgh Library System   Pittsburgh, PA 15260
-*-  rondest+ at pitt.edu                         tel: (412) 648-7730
-*-  Web: http://www.pitt.edu/~rondest/        fax: (412) 648-7733

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