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Comment on Library Science Helped Me Understand Databases

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From what I understand (I'm just starting to look into this myself as a potential career option), database design and other technical skills like scripting and web design are becoming an increasingly important part of library science. There's a new-ish degree, "Masters in Library and Information Science", that combines both library and information knowledge like this.

There's plenty of open source library management tools such as Evergreen[1] or Invenio[2] for more standard data (like book metadata) but it's still helpful regardless to understand how databases work, what fields might be useful, how normalization works, etc. to better organize and understand the data in a library.

[1]https://evergreen-ils.org/ [2]http://inveniosoftware.org/

When I got my MLIS in 2007, it was not a very technically rigorous program, and the technical classes were only meant to introduce non-technical people to systems they might eventually have to talk about in a meeting, but not work with directly.

The people I graduated with mostly went into libraries (naturally), or else went into Product Management, UX, or Information Architecture. If you want to have a contributing technical role in your future position, I urge you to ask very specific questions about curriculum of the program you consider applying to!

That's good to know, thank you. Really this is more of a what-if thought experiment than anything serious right now.

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