professional identity

The MLS Is Not the Problem: A Response

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Ben Rawlins, Associate Dean for Outreach, Engagement and Collections at the University of Kentucky Libraries.

Bryn Geffert’s recent Inside Higher Ed essay argues that the MLS degree is an obstacle to hiring, a barrier to diversity, and an increasingly optional credential in academic libraries. His survey data from R1 and R2 institutions is real, and the hiring challenges he documents are real. His diagnosis, however, misses the mark, and his argument carries implications that deserve more scrutiny than the piece provides.

I write as an Associate Dean at an R1 research institution where librarians hold faculty status, where I have been involved in hiring, mentoring, and evaluating MLS-holding colleagues for years. My concern is not with the idea that library education needs to improve. It most certainly does. My concern is with the slide from that legitimate observation to the conclusion that the credential itself is the problem.

The MLS Is a Formation Credential

Geffert treats the degree primarily as a skills-delivery mechanism, then faults it for not delivering every skill administrators want. The MLS is not principally a skills credential. It is a professional formation credential. The ALA’s Core Competencies of Librarianship place the foundations of the profession first among all competency areas, requiring graduates to “employ the ethics, values, and foundational principles of the library profession” and to “promote democratic principles and intellectual freedom” (ALA, 2022). The ALA’s Core Values, updated in 2024, explicitly ground the entire accreditation framework for library and information science programs in commitments to access, equity, intellectual freedom, privacy, and the public good (ALA, 2024). Practitioners and scholars have long argued that the MLS provides the foundational knowledge and values necessary for socialization into the field and that degree completion unifies librarians with a common professional identity (Holley, 2016). Research on librarian professional identity supports this framing, finding that professional formation is understood as a process over time, defined in part by benchmark events and the internalization of professional norms and values, rather than a one-time credential transaction (Pierson et al., 2019). A subject PhD does not initiate that process. On-the-job experience may eventually transmit some of it. But that is a longer and less reliable path, and it places the burden of professional socialization entirely on individual institutions rather than on the shared educational infrastructure the profession has built.

One Size Does Not Fit All Institutions

Geffert’s argument treats R1 and R2 institutions as if they share a uniform personnel structure, but the reality is considerably more complex. Academic librarians are classified differently across institution types, some hold faculty status with full ranks, tenure, and governance rights equivalent to teaching faculty; others hold academic or professional staff status; still others occupy hybrid classifications unique to their institutions. This variation is not incidental. It is structural, and it has direct implications for how the MLS functions as a credential.

At institutions where librarians hold faculty status, the MLS is not simply a hiring preference. It is the terminal professional degree that anchors the faculty appointment itself. The ACRL Standards for Faculty Status for Academic Librarians state explicitly that “the MLS/MLIS degree is considered the terminal degree for this appointment.” The ACRL Standard for Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure is equally direct: “any librarian appointed to a college or university library faculty shall have the appropriate terminal professional degree.” Notably, even the ACRL Standards for Academic Librarians Without Faculty Status, written specifically for institutions where librarians do not hold faculty rank, still identifies the MLS from an ALA-accredited institution as the terminal degree for the profession. In other words, the professional standards framework treats the MLS as foundational across classification types, not just in faculty contexts.

The ramifications of devaluing or treating the MLS as optional are therefore not uniform across the profession, they are most acute precisely at the research-intensive institutions Geffert surveyed. At institutions where librarians hold faculty status, moving away from the MLS as the terminal degree credential does not simply expand a hiring pool. It raises fundamental questions about the basis for faculty appointment, the legitimacy of promotion and tenure review, parity with other faculty in governance and compensation, and the standing of librarians as full academic partners. These are not administrative details. They are the foundation of the professional standing that faculty librarians have built over decades. An argument for credential flexibility that does not account for these downstream consequences is not a complete argument, it is an administrator’s convenience framed as a professional reform.

Two Different Arguments

The claim that library schools are not producing graduates with sufficient skills in data science, GIS, digital scholarship, and other areas may well be true. This supports the conclusion that library schools need reform, not that the credential should be treated as optional. These are different arguments, and Geffert slides between them without acknowledging the distinction. The appropriate response to a medical school producing graduates with clinical gaps is to reform the curriculum, not to suggest that hospitals hire biology PhDs instead of MDs. Treating the MLS as optional undermines the case for investing in library education at exactly the moment that investment is most needed, and sends a signal to the market that the programs producing that credential are dispensable, even as we ask them to do better.

Economics and Politics

Geffert frames difficulty hiring candidates with skills in data science, GIS, and digital scholarship as evidence that the MLS pipeline is failing. There is a more direct explanation he does not consider: the compensation structures of academic libraries make these positions economically uncompetitive for the candidates he is hoping to attract, and the political environment in many states makes certain institutions genuinely difficult places to recruit to regardless of credential requirements.

On compensation, the numbers are telling. The median annual wage for academic librarians was $64,320 in May 2024, with early-career positions frequently starting between $50,000 and $65,000 (BLS, 2024). By contrast, the median annual wage for data scientists, one of the specific skill areas Geffert identifies as a gap, was $112,590 in May 2024, with projected job growth of 34 percent through 2034 (BLS, 2024). A candidate with a PhD in data science or geography who is weighing a position in an academic library against industry or government alternatives is not being deterred by credential requirements. They are being deterred by a salary structure that academic libraries largely cannot compete with. Opening the credential to subject PhD holders does not change that math at all.

The broader political environment compounds these economic pressures. Across a significant number of states, legislatures have targeted DEI offices, restricted curricula, and weakened faculty governance structures, creating conditions in which recruiting becomes genuinely difficult, independent of credential requirements (AAUP 2024a; AAUP 2024b). Professionals with the specialized skills Geffert identifies have substantial labor market mobility. A data scientist or digital scholar with options is unlikely to accept a below-market salary at an institution operating under political constraints that threaten academic freedom, regardless of whether the position requires an MLS or a subject PhD. The credential is not the barrier. The conditions of the work are.

This matters because Geffert’s argument implicitly assumes that relaxing the credential requirement creates a larger and more capable pool of willing applicants. If the economic and political conditions of academic library positions are what is actually limiting the pool, widening the credential gate does not address the underlying problem. It simply shifts who is excluded by those conditions from MLS graduates to subject PhD holders.

The Diversity Argument Collapses Under Scrutiny

Geffert argues that because the MLS pipeline is 87 percent white, opening hiring to subject PhD holders would help diversify the profession. The fields he identifies as sources of the skills libraries need are themselves deeply homogeneous. The NSF’s Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023 report documents that underrepresented minorities (Hispanic, Black, and American Indian or Alaska Native) collectively account for 37 percent of the U.S. college-age population but earned only 16 percent of science & engineering doctoral degrees in 2020, a gap that widens at every step up the degree ladder (NCSES, 2023). Women remain underrepresented at all degree levels in physical and earth sciences, mathematics and computer sciences, and engineering (NCSES, 2023). Black students earned only 5 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2020 despite constituting 14 percent of the college-age population (NCSES, 2023). Geography, the home discipline for GIS, and one of the specific skill areas Geffert names as a gap, “is behind virtually all other fields of study examined across all degree types in terms of racial and ethnic representation,” with doctoral geography programs consistently trailing even other social sciences in diversity (AAG, 2023). Research on doctoral training across science and technology fields finds that Black men and women experience the greatest and most consistent loss of representation across the transition from bachelor’s to doctoral to postdoctoral stages (Hofstra et al., 2023). Swapping MLS pipelines for PhD pipelines in STEM, GIS, and related fields does not solve a diversity problem. It trades one homogeneous pipeline for another while abandoning the professional formation infrastructure the field has built.

The Unasked Question

There is a dimension this piece does not address at all, and it may be the most important one. Librarianship is approximately 82 percent female as of 2023 (BLS, 2024). Calls to bypass or devalue the credential of a female-dominated profession have a well-documented history that should give us pause. Sociological research by Levanon, England, and Allison found that as the proportion of women in an occupation grows, relative wages in that occupation decline — evidence of what researchers call occupational devaluation, the systematic undervaluing of work done by women (Levanon, England, and Allison, 2009). Seale and Mirza have argued directly in the library literature that academic librarianship’s turn toward non-MLS credentials is “inextricable from its search for markers of professionalization outside of librarianship, in the form of non-MLS degrees, more appealing domains of knowledge, and nonfeminized types of labor,” and that removing the MLS requirement “will not address these broader issues” (Seale and Mirza, 2020). Research published in College & Research Libraries has further shown that “the feminization of library work, and in particular the undervaluing of emotional labor required of public-facing roles like reference and instruction, serves as a way to continually devalue feminized work to uphold patriarchal norms” (Bryant, Bussell, and Halpern 2019).

We are watching the same dynamic play out in real time across other female-dominated professions. In 2025, the Department of Education reclassified nursing, social work, teaching, physical therapy, and audiology as non-professional degrees for student loan purposes — fields that are between 70 and 88 percent female (National Nurses United, 2026). As one university dean observed in response, “it is concerning that many of the professions in this category are women-dominated professions. This appears to be part of a larger attempt to undermine and minimize professional roles of women in our society” (University of Pittsburgh, 2025). The pattern of credential devaluation in female-dominated professions is not abstract. It is structural, it is historical, and it is happening now. An argument for treating the MLS as optional that does not engage with this pattern is an incomplete argument.

What the Profession Needs

None of this means the status quo is acceptable. Library schools must do more to develop graduates with the technical and interdisciplinary competencies the field needs. Institutions should invest in professional development that builds skills not fully addressed in graduate programs. The profession should have an honest and sustained conversation about where library education is falling short and demand better from its accredited programs, and work with them to make those changes. What the profession should not do is treat the credential as the source of its problems. The claim that library schools need to do better and the claim that the MLS itself is an obstacle are not the same claim. Conflating them, as Geffert does, redirects the profession away from the more important conversation about how to strengthen library education rather than abandon it.

To be clear, this is not an argument that subject PhD holders cannot succeed as academic librarians or that institutions should never consider candidates without an MLS. There are contexts where such hires make sense, and many non-MLS professionals have made genuine contributions to the field. The argument here is narrower and more specific: that Geffert has not made a sound case for systematically devaluing the MLS as a professional credential. His survey documents real hiring frustrations, but frustration is not analysis. The problems he identifies (skills gaps, diversity deficits, unfilled positions) have causes that his proposed solution does not address, and consequences for institutional classification, professional formation, and the gendered history of credential devaluation that his piece does not engage. A better argument for credential flexibility is possible, thoughGeffert has not made it. The MLS is not a barrier to a better profession. It is one of the foundations on which a better profession can be built, if we are willing to invest in it rather than look for a way around it.

Building My Career

Why is professional identity important to you? For me, it helps to develop career goals, pursue professional development opportunities, and build confidence in the professional expertise I have to offer students, faculty, and library staff. As part of my professional identity, I no longer identify as an early-career librarian. If I had to pinpoint when this happened, it was around the five-year mark working as a librarian, which was earlier this year.

I was a member of our library’s community of practice for new librarians and archivists. A year ago, I stopped attending meetings, not because I don’t love talking about issues relevant for new librarians, but because I don’t feel “new.” (There’s also a suggestion in the terms of reference that ‘new’ librarians are five years and earlier into their careers).

And again, earlier in the year, there was a call for a summer research institute that caught my eye. When I read about the intended audience, it was for LIS students and early-career academic librarians, to move their research forward. Research is something I feel passionate about so I was still interested. But as someone on the cusp of leaving early-career librarianship, I didn’t want to apply and then take a spot from a student or someone who does identify as early-career. In the end, I emailed the facilitators, explained my situation, and was able to take part.

I’m currently on my first research leave, which has given me the space to reflect on my career. I’ve written before on feeling like a work-in-progress, and I think this is an important way of thinking as of course I’ll never truly know everything there is to know about academic librarianship. Like many librarians I know, continual learning is a big part of our careers; we’re curious and interested in learning. But what comes with time and experience is the confidence and expertise to perform our jobs at a higher level.

Rather than focusing on specific skills I want to develop, or situations where I thought I could improve my service, I’m thinking of a bigger picture. To bring up the building metaphor again, I’m thinking in terms of structural integrity, not just individual bricks. I’m thinking of how to sustain myself in a profession that has librarians burning out, so that I can continue to provide library services to my patrons.

As part of this bigger picture, I think about what I still want to accomplish throughout my career. The Hockey Hall of Fame has a category for ‘Builders:’ that is, individuals who have contributed to the game of hockey, beyond playing or officiating. I want to grow in the profession, but I also want to help grow the profession; like Glen Sather or Bud Poile before me, I want to be successful in both playing and building.

With all that’s going on at home and abroad, at times I find it helpful to focus inward, and spend time thinking about not only my own career, but how I can help others in the months and years to come.

This is just one milestone in a much longer journey. I’m able to think of myself moving from Apprentice to Journeyman. As a journeyman, I’m still on a journey to truly master librarianship—if that’s even possible. I’m thankful to all who’ve helped me along the way. And above all, I’m grateful to have found a permanent job as an academic librarian. Step-by-step and brick-by-brick, I’m building my career as an academic librarian.

Lily Troia Asks: Who are We When We Leave “The Library”?

Since 2008, ACRLog’s “First Year Academic Librarian (FYAL) Experience” series has annually featured 1-2 academic librarians in their first year on the job in an academic library. This new series, “Where Are They Now? Former FYALs Reflect,” features posts from past FYAL bloggers as they look back on their trajectories since their first year. This month, we welcome a post from Lily Troia, Solutions Account Manager at Digital Science.

When invited to write this former first-year librarian “where are you now” post some questions immediately popped into my head: What does it mean to be “a librarian;” is it synonymous with practicing “librarianship;” and perhaps, what most would assume — does it require you to work IN a library? Ironically, these were questions we often debated when I was earning my MLIS with a focus on archival practice — what were archivists? Were WE librarians, working in special collections, sometimes with “Librarian” in our title, yet technically members of an entirely different praxis? What about embedded librarians or those working for corporations, law firms, or (gasp) publishers?

I look now at the circuitous path my career has taken and I see much more intersection and overlap than the converse — and find many ‘former’ librarians like me, who seem very much to live and breathe librarianship in all they do professionally. When folks ask me what I do for a living (pre-COVID), I always reply, “Oh, I’m a traveling librarian,” intended to sound seemingly oxymoronic, and always a conversation starter. Regardless, I love my job.

For the past three and a half years I’ve been fortunate to be “at” Digital Science, working remotely and on the road, first as Engagement Manager for Altmetric — or as I liked to describe the position, an instruction and advocacy librarian to our global user base, supporting those interested in richer, more contextual bibliometrics, with an eye on connecting research visibility to broader impact. Now I specifically help research and scholarly institutions in this hemisphere develop frameworks for digital solutions that meet their unique needs — a role very similar to that of the electronic resources and scholarly communication librarians with whom I often work, only speaking from the solution-provider perspective.

I cannot exaggerate how lucky I am to have found a company headquartered in London, providing me with numerous opportunities to explore the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany — plus time frequenting some of the most impressive cities North America offers: Toronto, Boston, Washington D.C., Montreal, etc. and exploring those less-appreciated but worth discovery, like Cincinnati, OH, Rochester, NY, and London, Ontario (“the other London”). The privilege of zipping cross time zones on a weekly basis is not lost on me, nor was it a lifestyle I’d ever previously enjoyed. And all this while working with exciting new technologies, furthering my own scholarly and professional pursuits, and diving deeper into a global community committed to open science and scholarship.

When I was officially a First Year Librarian for ACRLog I worked in an actual academic library at William and Mary, where I helped launch research data management for the campus and digital services for the VIrginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). This was an amazing position for me coming out of Simmons, where I balanced a pastiche of part-time digital asset management and scholarly communication jobs. I got to spend time on open access advocacy, work directly with researchers, and get involved with organization-wide committees and a taskforce focused on aligning technical services across campus, thanks to the keen leadership of a director who ensured the library was engaged in broader discussions at the institution.

Did I mention the corner office with a view of the York River and the occasional dolphin sighting?

It is more coincidence and circumstance that I ended up leaving. I began researching altmetrics when tasked with assessing ways of measuring broader social impact at VIMS, and serendipitously found Altmetric’s job ad when the time was right for me to move. A position that splits remote work and travel is not for everyone but suddenly in today’s shifted, crisis-mode climate, getting accustomed to working from home seems an apt skill to have developed in advance.

I realize I am a vendor — in sales even — maybe the furthest thing from what most would view as a librarian, but I am a part of the same ecosystem, and at the very least library-adjacent. I speak and work with librarians every day, not across but at the same table, working to develop and seek the best solutions for each institution. I still speak at conferences and webinars, publish posters and contribute to literature in the LIS field and beyond. I am collaborating with librarians, IT, research administrators, scholars, faculty affairs, and more — just like before.

It’s hard not to see how I practice library and information science every day, from the skills I learned while earning my MLIS — information management, metadata, copyright and instruction — to my approaches to librarianship, scholarship, responsible metrics: I bring my librarian self into everything I do. Whether helping the Ohio Innovation Exchange craft a job posting for a Library Engagement Strategist or blogging for my own company about cross-organizational efforts around managing faculty data.

Yes, I work for a commercial company, but I feel genuinely proud to work at Digital Science, an organization started by researchers and scientists, employing more than a few librarians, each functioning in a unique role of librarianship — from systems project management, to bibliometrics, data curation, or metadata mapping — skill sets valued by our peers, and seen as unique and critical to our successes. Further, we are a team committed to supporting the scholarly community via direct partnerships, free offerings, and continued technological developments and insights that enhance and improve our shared landscape.

I may not be working out of one library, but we all know today that librarians have roles across a litany of professional fields, and many of us are taking our degrees and turning librarianship into something new that works for us. For that, I am proud to still call myself a librarian.

Let It Go: A Non-Frozen Story

Editor’s Note: We welcome Hailley Fargo to the ACRLog team. Hailley is the Student Engagement & Outreach Librarian at Penn State University, University Park campus. Her research interests include peer-to-peer services in academic libraries, critical librarianship, digital and information literacy, outreach, and undergraduate research.

I’ve always had a hard time letting things go. I remember when I was in high school, I was the Student Council (Stuco) president. I got elected as a junior and ran for re-election as a senior. At the time, it was unheard of for someone to be the Stuco president twice. In those two years, I got a lot done, put a lot of things in place, and documented the heck out of what I did (I was using binders before Leslie Knope). I was proud of what we were able to accomplish and was so excited to see where my predecessor would take the group next.

When I came back from my first year in college, my younger brother (who was still in Stuco) filled me in on what had been happening. My predecessor hadn’t followed any of the documentation and took the organization in a completely different direction. I got physically worked up, annoyed and frustrated that all I had done was for nothing. My mom, who always had the right things to say, told me, “Hailley, you need to let this go. You did your best and you don’t have any control over what happens after you. And that’s okay.”

While I reluctantly agreed at the time, I still have a hard time letting projects go, especially the ones I invest a lot of time in. I’ve spent almost 10 years trying to be better at this skill, and I can’t say with full confidence I’ve got remarkably better. This story is all leading up to the fact that even though I had to give up projects when I left graduate school, I had this weird idea that projects in my professional life might be different. That I might be able to hold onto everything I created, organized, and ran.

Boy, I was in for a surprise. Just like high school student council and graduate school, priorities change. People change. Job descriptions evolve. You might spend months or years working on an idea or writing in niche and then, suddenly, you stop doing that. You change directions and move on. Sometimes you ask other folks to step in, to take it forward, other times the project ceases to exist, and sometimes you don’t get the choice and the project is given away. This task of letting projects go doesn’t stop just because you’re not in school anymore. And unlike the luxury of graduating (and therefore moving on to a new location), in your professional life, you might have to watch your project evolve right in front of your eyes. For someone who has a hard time letting things go, this can be tough (and a time suck).

With two years at Penn State under my belt, I’ve had to give up a few projects. My job position has changed, as well as some of my priorities for the job I’m currently in. I can’t say it has been the easiest process for me, but I’ve had good bosses to help me navigate this new terrain. In conversations with them, they have reminded me that when you give up a project, it should be able to be carried on without you. You want to have created a project that people can get fired up about, and have left the project in such a way that folks feel empowered to make it their own. I just have to stop letting my perfectionism get in the way of their work once I hand over the reins. I’ve also been lucky in the fact that I’ve had plenty on my plate, so giving up a project is tough, but does open the door for me to devote my time on something new.

Recently, I’ve felt myself go back into my old habit of getting all worked up about a project I’ve given up. In some deep reflection (and channeling my mom), I came to a realization about projects like these. At the end of the day, projects are just made up a bunch of ideas strung together. These ideas might be connected by a vision, by a context or history, or by a person with some serious spunk. Ideally you want a project that reflects, builds, connects, and responds to the context but ultimately you want a vision to drive those ideas forward. A vision you can pass on, a person, on the other hand, is a little harder to pass on. As I think about the leader I want to be, I need to make sure I’m creating projects that have a vision and don’t need me to be successful. I have to find ways to set up that framework, and trust my colleagues they can take the project where it needs to go. When I spin projects that way, it opens up the possibility of me using some of my best strengths — organization, documentation, and intentionality. So, in theory, it becomes a win-win for everyone? I sure hope so.

I also think what my mom was getting at was that I was spending too much time and energy worrying about a project I no longer have control over. Time and energy that could be spent in better ways, working on new projects, spending time with new people coming up with new ideas, and in general, not working myself up into a tizzy. There are only so many hours in the day to work on these projects. The more time I waste spinning my wheels, the fewer opportunities I get to do the work currently on my plate. It’s a lesson that I’ll still be learning today, tomorrow, and next year. But I’ll keep trying to just let it go.

Do you have a hard time letting go of projects you start? Do you have any good strategies for dealing with this sort of change? Comment on this blog post and let us know!

Featured image by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

On the Mend: Falling Into and Out of Overwork

I’d meant to write this post earlier in the week. Actually I’d meant to write an entirely different post earlier in the week. But after weeks of avoiding the winter cold going around at the end of last semester, and weeks of colder than usual temperatures where I live, last week my time was up. I’m fortunate that I don’t tend to get sick all that often, and fortunate to have paid sick time, too. Which I needed last week for multiple days of bundling up in blankets with congestion, fever, coughing, and aches.

I’m mostly better this week though still playing catchup from having been out. So I want to write a bit about self care and overwork and libraries. We’ve written about the importance of self care on ACRLog in the past. Quetzalli’s post a couple of years ago highlighted both the need for self care and some of her own strategies. And Ian’s post from a bit earlier reminds us that just as we may be dealing with issues that are invisible from the outside, so too are other folks, and it’s important to practice self care and have a generous heart (a lovely term).

I am not always the best at self care. Historically, I’ve sometimes struggled to use my sick days (when I’ve had them) for anything but the very worst illness. Some of this is my own internal work mindset — I’ve worked in academia for a long time, and the siren song of just one more project/article to read/grant or conference to apply for can be tough for me to resist. I’ve tried to be much more intentional about self care in the past few years. Some of this is a natural side effect of getting older, but also because I do feel that self care is important for everyone, as much as I still sometimes struggle myself. I need to use my sick days when I’m sick, not only because it’s better for me to rest and recuperate (and keep my contagions to myself), but also because I want to be sure that my coworkers feel comfortable using their sick days, too. A sick boss is not the best boss, on multiple levels.

Last week Abby wrote about vocational awe and our professional identity as librarians, discussing Fobazi Ettarh’s terrific recent article in which she defines and explores vocational awe in libraries (a term she developed). Fobazi and Abby both point out that vocational awe can lead to overwork and burnout in libraries, and I agree. Vocational awe contributes to making it hard for me to use my sick days. I’m working on it. I’ve been thinking a bit about bibliographic emergencies — the library is not a hospital, and there are thankfully very few situations or issues that cannot wait while someone takes a sick day. Our work is important, but it’s also important to put our own masks on first before helping others.