Hi all,
[full disclosure: I'm an '06 MLS grad]
1) That's disappointing. In my courses in addition to exercises and essays, we had such assignments as developing our own controlled vocabulary on a topic (with no fewer than 150 terms), learning PERL, building a portfolio of tutorials using Camtasia and Captivate, and a number of 10-page papers that asked us not only to review theory, but how that theory was (for those who worked in libraries) or could be (for those who did not) critically applied. I would say that what you describe is certainly not what I would consider a graduate degree workload. Then again, a number of programs are very sensitive to the fact that their students are usually working adults and parents. My own question related to this is: do MLS programs dilute the academic requirements so that they can still rake in the tuition dollars while not discomfiting working adults? [I have to dig out the citation, but I remember seeing that MLS programs tend to be money-makers for universities since there are few fellowships/full scholarships for the MLS level.]
2) My answer would be no - stretching of the mind and skill-set and learning new things is supposed to be slightly uncomfortable. (Learning isn't always a pleasant aha moment, or if it is, it is often preceded by much forehead-wrinkling). On the other hand, the MLS is quite unlike other graduate degrees in that (perhaps because it is a professional degree?) there is much less actual research involved. I worked on my MLS after ditching my Political Science PhD plans; those two years in POLS and taking electives at the connected law school taught me about ridiculous reading loads per class, in-depth research, research design and methods, basing research design in sound theory before applying it to the "real world", and scholarly rebuttal. My MFA taught me how to critique literature and how to make use of different writing techniques. My EdD work has made me familiar with various pedagogical/androgogical approaches to learning, learning technologies, and even more research methods.
My MLS degree taught me about information architecture and how to be a much better searcher and research supporter. (Indeed, I'd've been a better POLS student had I done the MLS first, though I might have cried at the difference in workload between the two master's degrees.) At the MLS level, no research methods courses were required (and only one was offered as an elective when I was MLSing), which has always struck me as odd, and results in (as we see on some other listservs) terrible surveys with no thought to validity or reliability, or to generalizability of results. While I understand not every library science student will be heading to academia, I should think that information professionals would have skills related to information gathering and analysis, but that tends not to be the case at the MLS level, which is utterly baffling (though we're better at the PhD level, thank goodness).
3) It's been long enough for me at this point that I'll pass on this one, as I'm not familiar with how the curriculum has changed. I can say that in my own back-when, the classes involving information architecture, programming, cataloging, and metadata were the most rigorous in terms of workload and critical thinking. They also tended to have the most up-to-date and recently-revised syllabi, whereas much of the core class requirements used very old syllabi (particularly noticeable when faculty forgot to change the term/year at the top for classes in collection development and management). I also had the good fortune of an enthusiastic professor for a Library Instruction course where we built tutorials and matched learning outcomes to the instructional design.
I have long wondered what we mean by "graduate education" in LIS. Ours is not a research-intensive degree. But it is also not a practicum-intensive degree (though there are schools who either make optional or required at least 1 internship). What exactly do we want LIS education at the Master's level to accomplish? I have to admit that coming from the academic research degree into the MLS, it felt like cake. I'll be very interested to see where this discussion goes!
~Colleen S. Harris-Keith
