“You Can’t Learn it in School”: Field Experiences and Their Contributions to Education and Professional Identity

Field experiences (FEs) are uniquely positioned at the intersection of education and workplace, making them key sites for the development of professional identity, which results from socialization processes that occur in both education and work environments. To explore how field experiences complement, diverge from, and intersect with classroom experiences, this research analyzed interviews with and reports of Canadian LIS students who did co-op placements in academic libraries. The findings confirm that FEs are important for linking classroom learning to practice, and that they help illuminate the realities of librarianship and clarify the implications of classroom learning for practice