How many academic librarians does the world need? More than it’s likely to have in a few years, as the baby-boom generation ages out of the work force, the prevailing theory has been. But the economic crisis may be changing that, and the job prospects and skills of tomorrow’s librarians were hot topics at the 14th biannual conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, which ended here on Sunday. Preliminary figures showed 3,036 registrants for this year’s conference—a better number than the organizers expected, given the economy, and very close to the attendance figures for the 2007 conference, held in Baltimore.
“We’ve been hearing for a long time about the impending crisis in the library work force,” said José-Marie Griffiths, dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ms. Griffiths, who spoke on a panel on trends affecting libraries, helps lead a long-term study, “The Future of Librarians in the Workforce,” being conducted under the aegis of the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
So far, that study appears to support the theory that future demand will exceed supply. There are about 30,000 academic librarians with American Library Association-certified degrees working now, Ms. Griffiths said. Over the next 10 years, 46 percent of those are expected to leave the work force. That attrition, on top of an expected increase of 3 percent in new positions, would more than absorb the qualified candidates coming out of library schools.
A prolonged economic downturn tends to disprove theories and disrupt plans, however. Librarians may delay retirement or postpone career changes. During past recessions, “library jobs continued to steadily increase,” Ms. Griffiths said, but there is no guarantee that pattern will hold this time around.
Slim Job Prospects
For now, uncertainty rules. Word at the conference was that many academic libraries have moved slowly to fill vacancies, reluctant to make new hires until they know for sure what budgetary constraints and cuts they face.
“There are just a lot less jobs than there were even three months ago,” Paul Solomon, an associate professor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, said in a conversation after he took part in a panel on recruiting and retaining the library work force of tomorrow.
Another member of that panel, Barbara B. Moran, a professor at Chapel Hill’s library school, also noted openings were scarcer. “The entry level is hurting,” she said in response to a question from a recent library-school graduate. “It is a tough job market this spring.”
Ms. Moran also mentioned “deprofessionalization” at academic libraries: a shift away from hiring workers with degrees in library and information science.
That development came up again at a staged debate on whether the master’s in library science has any relevance for the future of the academic library. The moderator, James G. Neal, vice president for information services and university librarian at Columbia University, referred to the growing role of “raised-by-wolves feral professionals.”
“We’re seeing a softening of the announced requirements for academic-library positions,” Mr. Neal said, calling that “a change of some significance.”
It grows out of increased demand for library workers with skills in many different arenas, not all of them digital. If you need to hire a Tibetan-studies librarian, as Mr. Neal did last year, a candidate with a Ph.D. in that subject area may be a better fit than one with an M.L.S. or M.L.I.S. degree.
The debaters—Liz Bishoff, director of digital preservation services at the library cooperative BCR, arguing for the continued relevance of the degree, and Arnold Hirshon, executive director of Nelinet, another library cooperative, arguing against—almost seemed to agree that the degree per se is not the problem. The question is whether it equips students to connect people and systems and information, as Mr. Hirshon put it. Library schools “too often teach the transient skills that rapidly become irrelevant.”
New Competencies
Meanwhile, conference-goers had plenty of opportunities to brush up on their skills and pick up new ones. The conference was hands-on and content-rich, heavy on poster sessions and multimedia presentations that focused on new applications and online resources that help get the work of the library done. Social networking was a big draw. Rooms filled for sessions focused on how libraries can use such tools to get the word out about their services and to connect with faculty members and students.
Joseph Murphy of the Yale University Science Libraries steered librarians away from blogs and toward Twitter, which allows users to share short updates and links instantly. “In this mobile world, I don’t have time to read blogs anymore,” he said. “I’m going to say it publicly: A blog is old-fashioned.”
Twitter can eat up a lot of staff time, he said, but is one of “the new competencies” librarians need to build in order to stay connected with users. Eventually, he said, he hopes to see reference materials delivered via such services.
At a session on “Beyond the Buzz: Planning Library Facebook Initiatives Grounded in User Needs,” two librarians from George Washington University talked about a survey they did last year on students’ use of Facebook and how the university’s library could tap into that space without scaring students off. “Librarians have recognized that that’s where our users are,” said David Bietila, one of the presenters.
Participants in the survey said they would feel comfortable using Facebook to contact a librarian for help with research or an assignment—as long as the contact came from the student. They “seemed very concerned that the librarian would do something weird—poke them or jump into the discussion on their wall,” said Elizabeth Edwards, also of George Washington, who helped run the survey.
“Definitely don’t send applications or ‘poke’ students unless they’ve indicated they’re interested in those things,” Ms. Edwards advised. “And don’t be upset if a student doesn’t friend you.” If Facebook doesn’t do the trick, try Twitter or something else, she said.
One audience member pointed out that Facebook can be a way for students to make less academically productive use of the library. At his institution, he said, someone used Facebook to share a list of best secret places to have sex on campus—and posted the access code to the library’s closed stacks. Being an academic librarian in the 21st century has its risks.
