I have been meaning to write this post for some time, but with this new (to me) southern summer upon me like a swampy fog of sluggishnes I have been less inclined to turn on a computer that audibly gives off heat. In light of the recent hype surrounding the library job market and all the navel gazing that goes with it, what do you think of the current library employment outlook for new librarians. Now that we are all settled into our first professional positions, how do your experiences measure up to what you were either told or expecting to find? I’ll go first:
The job market appears to me to be steady and somewhat stable, though not quite the glorious applicant’s market I felt our library school [PDF] and national association tried to get me to believe in. I feel that the most important piece of information I would tell a current SLIS student sending out applications our someone considering library school is that you must be prepared to move. I think that people will continue to be hired, but the gamble will be location.
3 Comments for Our job market
David | June 27, 2005 at 1:55 pm
Author comment by Barry | June 28, 2005 at 10:53 am
Rocky Mountain Regional Bureau reporting: I feel that a myth exists in the public that all one needs to do to attain a library job is to go to library school, and then after graduation stroll down the lane and pluck your choice job. This is a myth for two reasons, the first being that in times of sluggish economy, all grad schools are difficult to get into, SLIS and other library schools are turning qualified applicants away. The second myth deals with the declining public resources that used to fund many library jobs. I do not doubt reports that many library professionals are or will soon retire, what is often not reported in such stories is that many of those positions are not being replaced with full-time librarians, but rather paraprofessionals and limited term workers.
If you want to know where the jobs are, look to where the population in general is moving. In Northeastern Colorado the economy is pretty stale, but a lot of people are moving here, creating jobs. The same could be said about Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Wisconsin, on the other hand, has a population that is not growing as rapidly and it has two library schools, making those jobs available to new librarians far more competitive.
Each individual needs to follow the path that works best for them, but the few people I have advised on this matter have heard me say ‘if this career is that important to you, then you owe it to yourself to conduct a nationwide job search and take an opportunity that will fulfill your immediate and long term goals.’ While this is far more complicated that it sounds-leaving family and friends is extremely tough-I took the plunge, and one year later I am very happy that I did.
David | June 28, 2005 at 11:31 am
Taking the plunge is something that PhD’s are routinely trained to do. They are constantly told, “Go where the jobs are.” There are so many LIS students who say, “I really want to stay in my home town.” And this notion used to be a viable choice – how librarians at UW are SLIS grads? There are a lot of U of C librarians who are graduates of this library school before it closed down. As Barry said, that’s not viable now.
I think Barry’s point is well taken about retirements. Often, LIS programs try to attract students (aka, money) by using retirement predictions. Yet, librarians often can’t retire in a broken economy where stocks are failing, and their responsibilities are “eaten” or dissolved altogether.
As a side note, to return to Steve’s post, I think we should have been doing practice interviews [phone and in person] and practice topical presentations in some class or some required workshop. How many times have I heard, “I bombed that phone interview – it was my first one.” Or, “I didn’t know how to respond to such-and-such.”
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Steve -
I’d agree with the statement that we entered a “not quite glorious applicant’s market.” And I’d concur with the sentiment that new librarians have to be willing to relocate, even if that means relocating for just two years until you get the ubiquitous requirements under your belt.
I know so many folks that got one interview, and if they hadn’t been hired by that one institution they’d be jobless. That’s a significant issue. It places a great deal of emphasis on the first interview – none of this, “I’ll use the first one as practice.”
What library school fails to do is communicate the gravity and seriousness of the situation. That, while there are jobs out there, you have to play a little bit of cut-throat and really work on your resume [CV] in order to make a splash of it. And even then there’s no guarantee. I’m tired of the growing mentality that library school is an easy path to an easy job that anyone can do. LIS programs often don’t couch their programs in these terms: Not just anyone can do this.
Library school also fails to say, “you gotta be flexible.” I never thought I’d move to a big city, but that’s the deal. Other people never wanted to live in very small towns, but they did it anyway. These are very real and serious life changes for people to make in order to be a librarian.