Hi! You were really nice about answering my last question about applying to get my MLIS. After reading (and reading and re-reading) your response, I was wondering - what are certain "niches" you see in professional information work, and what schools cater to them? For example, I'm applying to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign because it's in all the top ten lists - but I've only just heard from someone who works there that they wouldn't consider it the best school to go to if you want to get into rare books and archives. Is there a way to find out these sorts of things other than frantically interrogating any vaguely associated acquaintances?
Yeah, that's a great question!
Let's start with those "top ten" lists. They're bogus. They're HORSECRAP. They're total bushwa. Put absolute zero faith in them. (Not absolutely zero: absolute zero. Minus all the Kelvin, baby!) And I do not say this because they've snubbed the place I teach in; we actually rank tolerably well (undeservedly well in one area, frankly) in our areas of strength.
Most employers are not going to be impressed by what school you went to. (This is partly due to the unshakable hatred so many info pros have for the schools they attended. No school could ever impress them!) They want to know what YOU, you yourself, can do to solve their problems, and they can't reallly tell based on where you went to school. So put this particular worry aside.
Let's go on by saying this: salaries in the information professions being what they are (i.e. sucktastic), it is VASTLY more important to AVOID STUDENT DEBT than to go to a supposedly "top" school. If you have a school in-state, or your state has a tuition-reciprocity agreement with an out-of-state school, that school should frankly be high up on your list unless they do absolutely nothing in your desired specialty. DEBT IS REALLY BAD. DEBT CAN CHAIN YOU TO CRAPTASTIC JOBS YOU WOULD OTHERWISE LEAVE. AVOID DEBT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. I can't say this loudly enough!
Now, to your actual question. How do you find out whether a school is good at something you care about? There's a few ways:
Call the school and ask. (There'll be a graduate coordinator or admissions coordinator or somebody you can talk to, guaranteed.) "What areas of librarianship would you say are this program's strengths?" is a fine question. (If they say "we're good at everything!" um, that's a bad answer and they kind of suck.)
Or call the school and ask if they can connect you with a current student studying what you want to study. Perhaps even an alum working in that area. Or whoever advises students in that area. This is a common ask and shouldn't be difficult for the school to accommodate.
Look at the school's faculty page. Who teaches in the area(s) you're interested in? Check 'em out on Google Scholar -- have they published anything interesting? Or are they active in the appropriate professional organizations or conferences? If you find The Person, it's in-bounds to email them directly, explain your interest, and ask what they'd recommend if you matriculate in their program. (We're busy people, so there's a good chance you won't get an answer, or only a very brief one -- but a prompt and/or kind answer should lift a school on your list. You want to know you'll be treated decently as a student, you know?)
Also, be generous in how you construe "your area." Okay, maybe a school doesn't have a bunch of courses in rare books -- most won't, frankly, it's a niche interest and a poorly-marketable one, which I will definitely have more to say about momentarily -- but they've got a crackerjack digitization instructor. That school should stay on your list! Digitization is a Big Thing in rare books, special collections, and archives!
Check course listings, not just for what courses are on the books, but for which courses are actually being taught. These are not necessarily the same thing, institutional red tape being what it is.
No matter what professional areas you're interested in, you will learn most in library school if you play AWAY from your existing strengths. This is counterintuitive to a lot of people! But it can really work to make you an all-round standout. If you know your tech savvy isn't great, you can see what a school will do about that. If you know you need more management skill-up, again, look for coursework and/or extracurriculars that will help.
Okay. Rare books, special collections, archives. This is perhaps the commonest area people entering a master's program want to specialize in. Bluntly, this means there is WAY TOO MUCH COMPETITION for any job you'd actually want. Employers have taken absolutely ruthless advantage of this! Search Google Scholar for "archives precarity" or the "UCLA Six."
I actually got in trouble once for telling our school's archives students quite bluntly that the archives job market sucks so bad that if there's anything else in the information professions they can imagine doing, they should do that instead. You aren't my student yet, though, so I can still tell you, DO SOMETHING ELSE IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. At the very LEAST have a backup career plan, okay?
I warn because I love.
