[Publib] Re: LibraryThing and other "free" stuff

[Sharon Foster]

If it's a profession, then are we not each responsible for our own
continuing education, to maintain our skills and to learn new ones? If
I thought that my pharmacist or my doctor or my dentist were still
practicing medicine as they had learned it 30 years ago, I'd be a
little worried. Yes, we're not independent contractors, but isn't it
still our responsibility to keep current?

On 7/7/07, Kathleen Stipek <kstipek at exchange.acld.lib.fl.us> wrote:
> It is a job.  It is also a profession in the sense that education and
> pharmacy are professions. Unlike most attorneys and physicians who can
> work free-lance we work in an organization, so sometimes we have to do
> things the organization's leaders tell us to to even if they seem odd.
> And why are you spending your money and time on the MLS or whatever it's
> being called this week? It's dues, and we all have to pay them one way
> or another.  If you pay attention--especially to whatever professors who
> once worked in libraries say through gritted teeth--you will learn what
> being a librarian is.  And you will come to think as librarians think
> and to know yourself to be a librarian.  That's worth the price of
> admission.
>
> Kathleen Stipek
> Alachua County Library District
> 401 East University Avenue
> Gainesville, Florida 32601
> (352-334-3931) fax (352-334-3948)
>
> --Non, merci.
>   Cyrano de Bergerac
>
>
>
>
-- 
Sharon M. Foster, B.S., J.D., 0.5 * (MLS)
F/OSS Evangelist
Cheshire Public Library
104 Main Street
Cheshire, CT  06410
http://www.cheshirelibrary.org

Any opinions expressed here are entirely my own.