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Heads up people! Serious library users aren't interested in your personalities! When I started my MA in Art History at York University in Toronto I was a single mother with four kids between the ages of ten and fifteen, I was writing about art on a regular basis for three different magazines, travelling to the East Coast on magazine business once a year, to the West Coast to do thesis research every summer, and battling with the court system to finalize a divorce. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to commute to the university campus, another hour and a quarter to get home to my kids at the end of a day. Every minute of my time as a graduate student cost me money. If, at that time, I had had to deal with someone behind a reference desk in a Fine Arts library who didn't know what the Art Index was (the example my husband gave in his article for Art Documentation) I would have filed a complaint. And if she'd had one of those perky did-you-want-fries-with-that personalities I would have wanted to hit her. But of course it's a moot point because I have completed three university degrees and am closing in on a PhD without ever having made contact with a librarian. I want to say that we, as a family, have been amazed at the furor that has arisen from the article in Art Documentation and the ensuing discussion' on the ARLIS list - especially the assumption, based on a single ill-considered remark by a stranger, that my husband has "personality problems" that prevent him from working well with other people. For the record Gary has team-work experience librarians could only dream of. In his twenties, he was a hard rock miner in Northern Ontario, working with high explosives - team-work at a life and death level. As a social worker, when he was in his thirties, he specialized in teaching independent living skills to young, mentally handicapped men. Do you have any idea how sensitive that kind of work can be? Among the e-mails we received privately was a particularly patronizing series of messages - all from the same person - suggesting he "learn the softer skills that would help him work with other people." What could be "softer" than guiding a young man with Downs Syndrome through a social occasion like inviting his parents for their first visit to his new home? He left social work because it is physically taxing (24 hour shifts) and because it is emotionally heartbreaking. Step-parenting requires some tricky skills too and I want to say that those four kids mentioned above are now young adults, working all over the world, who all took time on Fathers Day to say how much they still appreciate what he has brought to our family. In fact I do think his personality makes him unsuited to library work of any kind - who wants a gregarious middle-aged man with a lively intellect and visible hockey-scars in a place as dull as a library! The point my husband was trying to make in his graduating paper ( and the article that was distilled from it) is that there should be a place for subject knowledge in an academic library, a perception of service that includes expertise, and a way in which a library school degree could build consciously on the expertise an in-coming student brings to the program. Schools may vary, but his experience was specific. At UBC the atmosphere was anti-intellectual, the level of work expected was frustratingly banal, and none of the regular graduate school standards seemed to be in place. I was a PhD student in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (I've since switched to History) while Gary was at UBC and it was clear to both of us at the time that UBC-SLAIS could be eaten alive by CMNS at SFU. They simply do too many of the same things, and more, at a much higher level. If you are going to generate conference sessions based on the Art Documentation article or the discussion' that followed perhaps you could start with one on professionalism. Kit Lort-Ditchburn, BFA, BA, MA, ABD, Victoria, BC __________________________________________________________________ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] Administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]