America needs librarians.
Low salaries and the fact that experienced librarians are retiring is creating job vacancies that many public libraries are having difficulty filling, both nationally and locally.
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“Librarianship is impacted by a retirement of baby boomers similar to teaching and nursing,” said American Library Association Press Officer Larra Clark.
A study by the ALA estimated that between 1990 and 2010, 83,866 librarians of the approximately 190,000 librarians in the U.S. will have turned 65. Providence Public Library Assistant Director for Central Library Services Shirley Long, who has been a librarian for 27 years, had similar findings in Rhode Island.
“The profession really boomed in the late sixties and seventies,” she said, “and now a lot of those people are getting ready to retire.”
Kathy Ellen Bullard, also an assistant director at Providence Public Library said times have changed.
“This is traditionally a female-dominated job,” she said. “Fifty years ago females didn’t have as many options, and now they do, as they should, but the salaries have traditionally not been as attractive as we would like them to be.”
The Westerly Public Library is advertising its third opening in the past two years, and Director Kathryn Taylor said the pool of applicants seems to get smaller each time. A recent opening for a Young Adult librarian drew only four applicants.
And advertising for the openings is difficult too, with such a low salary. Since the starting salary for the Westerly job is $26,164, the Connecticut Library Association will not even run advertisements for it. Taylor said she has even received phone calls wondering if the figure is a typo.
The ALA found that only 1.9 percent of librarians earned over $50,000 a year, as compared to 12 percent of teachers. Salaries for librarians ranked 12th out of 13 professions in average starting salaries for master’s level graduates, behind computer engineering, nursing, marketing, aerospace, computer science, banking, advertising, human resources, accounting, education and agriculture and ahead only of journalism.
The degree needed to be a librarian is an MLIS (Master’s in Library Information Studies). To encourage younger workers to become professional librarians the Providence Public Library has revived a program with the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Librarian Information Studies, where a para-professional (an employee with a bachelors’ degree) is given flex-time to attain his or her degree.
Dan Austin, associate director of the Providence Public Library said the program is like an internship, where the student is working at the library several days a week, and going to classes on the day he or she does not work.
“I would say it’s a successful program,” said Austin. “Recently we’ve really revived it, thinking we want to push it and develop something. We’ve experienced some difficulty in bringing in new librarians, which is really part of the motivation for rejuvenating this program.”
Alan Gunther, an intern librarian at the Smith Hill branch of the Providence Public Library said he became part of the program because he knew there was a shortage of skilled labor in the field. Formerly a graphic designer turned library clerk, Gunther realizes he could make better money at another profession.
“The reason why more people don’t do this is the salary,” he said. “And I’m in a situation where the money isn’t crucial.”
“People who do this are doing it because they love it,” he said, “but the money needs to go up somehow because the amount of time that’s required to put into it.”
W. Michael Havener, director of the URI Graduate School of Librarian Information Studies, said the program, which is one of approximately 50 of its type in the country, currently has an enrollment of 240 students. So where are all these potential librarians going after graduating?
“People are realizing their options in the field,” said Havener, pointing to the fact that a lot of students with an MLIS degree go onto the private sector and work for computer companies.
“Our enrollment is currently up somewhat,” he said, “and if we had more resources we could offer more classes and we could graduate more professionals, because the demand for professionals in the field is greater than the number of people graduating.”
“Besides the traditional work of connecting people with information, there is still a very high demand where they go into positions in the corporate world,” he said. “There is a lot of demand for people who can manage information, particularly electronic information.”
At the ALA 1999 Annual Conference Placement Center, the number of jobs available was 997, which is the most since 1982, while the number of job seekers was 489, which was the smallest pool since 1965. In a national effort to combat the librarian drought, the ALA has announced the launching of a new Web site for librarian recruitment purposes. The site, located at www.AtYourLibrary.org, will be up and running next Friday, June 15.
ALA President-Elect John Berry said the site is the latest effort in the Campaign for America’s Libraries, a five-year public education campaign designed to inform the public about the value of libraries and librarians in the 21st Century.
“We haven’t reached a staffing crisis yet,” he said, “but it’s important that we address recruitment with this campaign. We want people to recognize that today’s librarians are trained professionals who are thriving in our electronic age and serving their communities.”
