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October 04, 2004
Crisis?
According to Library Journal, ALA President-Elect Michael Gorman has announced his focus for his presidency: "'the crisis' in library education". John N. Berry editorializes on the immediate response among LIS educators and his take on the crisis.
This is should really interesting:
- As I've mentioned in the past, library workers have been complaining about and defending library education for decades. While I was working on my thesis, I saw articles and letters about whether or not new MLS holders were adequately trained and/or had the right mindsets upon entering the profession. While there are certainly new aspects to consider in this 'crisis,' it harkens back to a continual cycle of doubt and questioning about how to prepare people for the profession.
- We have a very neat paradox going on--applications and enrollments to LIS programs have supposedly grown steadily during the latter part of the dot-com boom and continuing through the dot-com bust. And the boom DID influence the LIS job market -- you didn't have to focus exclusively on an IS/Info Architecture track in order to get a dot-com job. Especially in Silicon Valley, a lot of new librarians (and more than a few veteran ones) became tech writers, taxonomists, database managers, etc. for start-up tech companies and that left lots of openings as libraries hired people into those vacated positions (or promoted from within and hired people with less experience for lower-level or entry-level positions).
Well, the bust stopped that. Since recessions tend prompt people to go back to school, enrollments continued to rise. And then there's the whole "Baby Boomers are about to retire and who will take their places?" scenario. But the bust wasn't just a recession -- it was a deep correction to a radically-altered sector of the economy. Which isn't to say that such a boom won't happen again in the same sector ... just that it may not happen within our employment lifetimes again.
What's the 50-words or less version of the above?
The bar for employment of library workers is significantly higher than it was 5 years ago and it will never again be as easy for current MLS/MLIS holders to find the work they want at competitive wages as it was.
Just my $0.02, obviously (and no, I'm not looking at figures right now to back up everything I've just written).
Now, the library job market seems to be easing up: hiring freezes are being thawed slowly at a number of institutions (including the one I work for) ... but a fair number of jobs have gone into the ether: the tasks absorbed by existing personnel on an indefinite or permanent basis, or broken up into part-time jobs (or a combination of both). Budgets are still constrained, workloads have grown -- both of these have cut into the amount of resources (both labour and capital) that institutions will want to expend to train someone. The expectations have changed on both sides of the hiring table.
This could be an intriguing debate, regardless of which side you sympathize with the most ...
Posted by misseli at October 4, 2004 12:25 PM