Pointless academic titles/degrees

kurtiejjj · Post 04 Jul 2007, 13:36

Lately I heard a few ridiculous academic titles on the news which made my hair stand on end;

Professor in library sciences

I mean, what can you do with that? And what did they learn? How to categorise books? The history of libraries?

I my eyes it's not exactly a proper way of spending public money, or is it?

DaveKillens · Post 04 Jul 2007, 14:15

Joke ... what do you call someone who has a degree in "Professor in library sciences"?

Oh, waiter.........

miqi23 · Post 04 Jul 2007, 15:29

It depends on how you look at it. Professors are meant to be high calibre people in most cases, a part from them living in their own academic world and using students to learn stuff by so called 'supervising' them

Well, based on that title, that guy would know a lot about what they have got to offer in their library I guess. What else they could be looking for is to make that library as vibrant as possible! Its just my guess but to be honest I never liked them in the first place

checkered · Post 04 Jul 2007, 17:47

Kurtiejjj, that isn't even close

to the most ridiculous titles I've heard. (I won't risk offending anyone by naming a few here.) In fact, it's a pretty venerable one, given that academic institutions from antiquity on had famous libraries and considering we live in a "knowledge based society" (I'll leave that debate for later ...) it's actually very relevant to what is imperative for societies and cultures today. Library sciences are interdisciplinary by definition, I think, and can involve humanities, law, epistemology, statistics, database management, information architecture etc. ... I'm interested to see how "libraries" will evolve adjacent to such developments as the emerging semantic web and so on. Universities nowadays have very potent tools of research (better than Googling anyway, I've found) and those exist at least partly thanks to library sciences. But nevertheless, I'm not going to study the field myself ...

m3_lover · Post 04 Jul 2007, 18:15

What about the Dewey Decimal system..?

G-Rock · Post 04 Jul 2007, 20:09

Most farmers around here see a PHD as a pile of crap (Piled Higher and Deeper) and with some of the garbage that they put out sometimes, I can' blame them. It's also a trend in agriculture in Canada that farmers with PHD's are the ones that go broke or need a second job to keep the farm going. Weird eh?

joseff · Post 04 Jul 2007, 21:03

G-Rock wrote:Most farmers around here see a PHD as a pile of crap (Piled Higher and Deeper)

Funny you should mention!
http://www.phdcomics.com/

kurtiejjj · Post 05 Jul 2007, 00:07

checkered wrote:Kurtiejjj, that isn't even close

to the most ridiculous titles I've heard. (I won't risk offending anyone by naming a few here.) In fact, it's a pretty venerable one, given that academic institutions from antiquity on had famous libraries and considering we live in a "knowledge based society" (I'll leave that debate for later ...) it's actually very relevant to what is imperative for societies and cultures today. Library sciences are interdisciplinary by definition, I think, and can involve humanities, law, epistemology, statistics, database management, information architecture etc. ... I'm interested to see how "libraries" will evolve adjacent to such developments as the emerging semantic web and so on. Universities nowadays have very potent tools of research (better than Googling anyway, I've found) and those exist at least partly thanks to library sciences. But nevertheless, I'm not going to study the field myself ...

Of course I didn't want to offend anyone either but it's rather funny isn't it.

Now you mention how libraries will evolve, Amsterdam has a new library it really is quite state of the art; it has about 600 computers, errr... a lot of books, sofas for lazy people and tramps (same thing really, means I''m a tramp as well

) geuss how much it cost: 37 million euros. And I guess most of it went to the building, which looks indeed very expensive!

By the way that dewey decimal system was on TV lately in beauty and the geek (yeah sorry guys (and girls) I watch the saddest show ever, but I absolutely adore the antics of a few geeks and even better some tasty crumpet)

Tom · Post 05 Jul 2007, 00:31

Shhhhh

checkered · Post 05 Jul 2007, 01:22

Of course I didn't want to offend anyone either but it's rather funny isn't it.

Now you mention how libraries will evolve, Amsterdam has a new library it really is quite state of the art; it has about 600 computers, errr... a lot of books, sofas for lazy people and tramps (same thing really, means I''m a tramp as well ) geuss how much it cost: 37 million euros. And I guess most of it went to the building, which looks indeed very expensive!

By the way that dewey decimal system was on TV lately in beauty and the geek (yeah sorry guys (and girls) I watch the saddest show ever, but I absolutely adore the antics of a few geeks and even better some tasty crumpet)

I didn't mean to imply you offended anyone!

I checked out the new OBA building. Impressive, it's huge! (Oh no, that sounded like one D. Trump) And the site looks challenging too. It didn't even take too much digging to find out the architect (Jo Coenen & Co, http://www.jocoenen.com/ , go to "projects", "alphabetical", "Openb. Bibliotheek Amsterdam" ... a huge amount of info there) ... the building will open in two days' time!

And speaking of "evolving libraries", you can visit the OBA already - in Second Life! (Amazing!) It provides e-books, reservation facilities and will be promoting library membership. There's also access to five Amsterdam FM broadcasts. And more to follow ... http://dutchlibraries.web-log.nl/dutchl ... libra.html

... btw., isn't the GP paddock lane the "original setting" for the "Beauty and the Geek"?!

All the models and glamour girls posing around to a setting of pit boxes where very concentrated looking engineers and mechanics wonder around in headsets, clipboards or laptops at hand and sometimes carrying weird components.

MrT · Post 05 Jul 2007, 10:30

I'm currently doing a PhD in Computational Modelling and I have to be honest my view of PhDs has rapidly gone downhill. I now am under the impression that you can get a PhD for 3 years of solitary confinment irrelative of the amount of useful work you do in that time.

Mr T

kurtiejjj · Post 05 Jul 2007, 12:28

checkered wrote:
I didn't mean to imply you offended anyone!

I checked out the new OBA building. Impressive, it's huge! (Oh no, that sounded like one D. Trump) And the site looks challenging too. It didn't even take too much digging to find out the architect (Jo Coenen & Co, http://www.jocoenen.com/ , go to "projects", "alphabetical", "Openb. Bibliotheek Amsterdam" ... a huge amount of info there) ... the building will open in two days' time!

And speaking of "evolving libraries", you can visit the OBA already - in Second Life! (Amazing!) It provides e-books, reservation facilities and will be promoting library membership. There's also access to five Amsterdam FM broadcasts. And more to follow ... http://dutchlibraries.web-log.nl/dutchl ... libra.html

... btw., isn't the GP paddock lane the "original setting" for the "Beauty and the Geek"?! All the models and glamour girls posing around to a setting of pit boxes where very concentrated looking engineers and mechanics wonder around in headsets, clipboards or laptops at hand and sometimes carrying weird components.

I know checkered it wasn't aimed at you in particular just to anyone who has a degree in library sciences

!

What a c*ck I am, I have been going past that library since last september with the train (Amsterdam Central station is right next to it as you can see on the website you pointed at) however I didn't really take notice as it basically looked like an enormous dump which was never going to be finshed. But Amsterdam has proved me wrong; they can finish a building before embarking on a million other ones. I wonder if I can loan books with my student or local library pass. That would be great, provided they have books about car racing of course

!

Your right the pitlane is mostly beauty & the geek. They should do a series on that as well.

manchild · Post 05 Jul 2007, 14:07

This one is for real:

Driver = "logistics coordinator". Just a guy hired to drive company officials.

checkered · Post 10 Jul 2007, 02:01

I don't tend to

veer this much off topic (even in this designated area), but this is something I just had to post. What do you think the most stressful job of out of these five is?

firefighter
police officer
train operator
teacher
librarian

Yep, it's the last one.

I wonder how an F1 driver's stress would compare?

BBC: Librarians 'suffer most stress'

manchild · Post 10 Jul 2007, 02:11

The most stressful job is the one you don't like.