So by now, I think we all know that having a pretty good grasp on technology is going to be essential for landing a good library job. I think this class does a great job of teaching us areas of technology that we might not have encountered before. We can put on our resume that we are experienced bloggers, we've created a wiki, we've created podcasts, etc.
I’m always trying to learn new stuff, though. Not really to “get a leg up on the competition”; I just feel like I need to know as much as possible. Lately I’ve been wishing that I had more experience with programming languages. I’ve got a pretty good grasp on HTML and CSS, and I have some limited experience with JavaScript, but beyond that I haven’t a clue. I was reminded of this when I was trying to create a form for our wiki, but realized that I would need a PHP script to make the form actually work. Thankfully I got help from Bill Helling, my prof from Info Architecture for the Web, and also from Eric in our class, who had the same problem. Eric actually created his own PHP script!
Maybe I’m just jealous of my friends with computer science degrees who are already making more than I ever will, but it just seems like this is something I should know how to do. What better way to eliminate the divide between “the IT computer geeks who don’t understand us” and “those technologically illiterate librarians who won’t listen to us” than by….being both?
1 comment:
Being both... That sounds like a good idea to me. Why not get a job in library systems and let them pay to send you off for a week's course in whatever programming language they need you to know? Then you can come back and immediately start to use it on the job.
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