One of the ways in which libraries and musea are again alike is, I suspect,
an ongoing debate on the role of non-professionals in the field.
 
What brought this to mind specifically is an article in this morning's
Washington Post about the appointment of Steven T. Katz as the new director
of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here in DC.  The Post describes him
as "a college professor inexperienced in museum management" and goes on to
say that "the selection of an academic, rather than a museum administrator
or public figure, will likely renew the questions that surround the future"
of what, by all accounts, is a rather troubled institution.
 
In the library world, whenever a non-librarian is appointed to a position
of authority, there is great debate as to the merits, the rights and
wrongs, of such a decision.  (How many Librarians of Congress have been
librarians as such?)
 
Does the same hold true in the museum world?  Can someone, no matter how
brilliant he might be on an scholarly level, manage a museum if he has
never even worked in one?  (This is a theoretical question, of course, and
by no means intended to imply anything about Dr Katz specifically.)
 
One of the things drummed into one in library school is that library
science isn't just cataloguing or conservation or reference, it is a whole
field, with its own philosophy and its own professional rules, conducts,
and attitudes.  Do prospective museum professionals get the same sort of
 ... I'd almost say, indoctrination?
 
Mario Rups
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