An Interview With Blake Carver

LISNews man and Web Librarian Blake Carver graciously agreed to be interviewed by me for Suite101. Be sure to come back April 22 for part two...

GD: Please tell us a bit about yourself - your interests, education, work experience, etc.

BC: I have a BA in Psychology from SUNY College at Buffalo, and an MLS from SUNY Buffalo. I spent 2 years as Library Director at a tiny college in Buffalo, NY where I grew up, and about a year and a half at a struggling dot.com after that, also in Buffalo. Lately I’m the Web Librarian at Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio.

Outside of the computers that seem to fill up every moment of my life, I ride my bike, when the weather is warm enough, and I have a kayak I paddle around in when I can. My girlfriend is back in Buffalo, and when we can, we spend the weekend together.

GD: Most Suite readers will probably know you from LISNews.com, but you are also Assistant Professor and Web Librarian at Ohio State University. Please tell us a bit about what you do there.

BC: It’s more or less a web master job. I do a lot of programming, maintenance, design, and anything else they throw at me on any given day. Like all good academic librarians, I spend time in meetings, and writing reports. I’m tenure track and a member of the faculty, so I have research and publishing as part of my job as well. It’s only been 6 months, but so far so good.

GD: As a Web librarian, do you think that library school prepared you enough technologically?

BC: No, but I was there in the very early days of the web, and they (SUNY Buffalo) were moving in that direction, so they may have added classes in that area. They are now called the “informatics school” or something like that, so I assume they have added classes by now. I think library schools should have moved on this in 1994, but they didn’t see it coming.

GD: What's your view on how well library school prepares graduates for Web librarianship and other technical aspects of our profession?

BC: That’s a tough question, way back when I was in school it wasn’t that important, I would hope they have added classes to help in this area. Not to pick on library schools, I don’t think you can learn the important stuff in technology in any school, there are too many details. Any college education can not prepare you for most of what is important in this field. A good student does a lot on their own and learns the minute details that are important that way, by trial and error, or learning on the job.

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