The Academic Library Job Market is Broken

Here are some blind items from my interactions with academic libraries over the past few months. They don't paint a pretty picture of the hiring processes therein.

• The university that schedules a phone interview, then, out of the blue, a second phone interview three weeks later with an entirely different search committee and no explanation.
• That same university, when asked during the second phone interview, has no timeline to bring anyone in for an on-campus interview, a clear sign that they have no idea who or what they're looking for in the position.
• The multiple instances in which the person you report to isn't part of the search committee.
• On-campus interviews where the people you'd manage aren't part of the hiring process.
• Places where you're told "the position is what you make it" even though there's a long, almost unicorn-like job description and a title that strongly suggests which area of academic librarianship the position falls into. Again, a clear sign that they have no idea what they're looking for in the position.
• Places where more than a third of the students are non-white, but all the librarians are Nice White Ladies. 
• Place that check your references and then ghost. 0_o 
• Places that ask for a salary range and when supplied with one, with tons of wiggle room, might I add, feel the need to note that they're a non-profit. Passive aggressive much? 
• Places that have lost a significant percentage of their staff, but those that remain are clinging to their silos rather than trying to reorganize, reward versatility, and become more agile and open. 
• The counter: Places that awkwardly combine two or more positions into one to compensate for budget cuts. See that unicorn-like job description, above. 
• Places where it's clear you'll be punished for wanting to publish, to share knowledge, whether that's peer reviewed, presented, or blogged.
• "So, I see you publish," I was told, with a tone and body language that made it clear I shouldn't aspire to such things. 
• "I've read your blog and twitter," remarked one hiring official, who did not and would not expand on that when I asked them what they thought of my online presence. 
• "Why can't you stick to beer?" is something that I was told by someone in human resources at one institution. If I weren't a cis het white male, I'd send that into the LIS Microaggressions zine. 

Errata:

All directors, with no exceptions, think that if I, as an ex-director, interview for a librarian position, then I'm out to steal their job. Meanwhile, other library staff at these organizations can't fathom why I'd give up a directorship, not understanding how fraught middle management in academic libraries can be, often feeling trapped between library staff and academic administration, which can sometimes be at cross-purposes. Why is it not okay to be a librarian, a part of a team? We don't all have to aspire to management, even those of us in management. 

Class role of managers pic.twitter.com/teyi5FEULF

— Jessica (@schomj) November 11, 2015

A sign you're in a good place: when someone eats a fruit cup with both breakfast and lunch and not once touches the honeydew. Honeydew is a garbage melon.  

The performance of whiteness is an important barrier to diversity in library and information science. I was aware of this before job hunting, but nowhere is this more true than when you're on the market. "Small talk" is crucial to determining whether or not one "fits" in an organization. I mentioned farmers markets, Cub Scouts, homebrewing, and many other topics, some consciously, some not, to show employers that I'm "like" them. No doubt it helps that I look like them, too. If you're looking for a job in libraries, I encourage you to read Angela Galvan's "Soliciting Performance, Hiding Bias: Whiteness and Librarianship," and April Hathcock's "White Librarianship in Blackface: Diversity Initiatives in LIS," both published in In the Library With the Lead Pipe. 

Do you have horror stories you'd like to share? If you're able to, I'm here for that.

The Beerbrarian Moves On

I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my

— F. W. Popov (@jacobsberg) May 17, 2015

Over the course of eight years, I held three positions at my former place of work (MFPOW). For more than half that time, I served as Director of Library Services. I started as a paraprofessional, with "Specialist" in the title, got an MLIS on the job, and worked my way up. I'm grateful to them for the opportunities and growth, and I hope they're as proud of what we were able to accomplish as I am. No doubt they took a risk in making me a director. Working with other library and university staff, faculty, and academic administration, we were able to

• modernize the library, including adding discovery services and a link resolver.
• promote the use of open educational resources (OERs) to the point where every introductory science course uses them, saving our students a lot of money.
• hire, train, promote, and maintain a diverse library staff 
• break down silos by cross-training all library staff on both public and technical services, with robust documentation.
• create a culture of experimentation, where staff aren't afraid to fail and learn from it.

But all those things cost a lot. They cost political capital. They cost emotional labor. And after those eight years, I got the sense that there wasn't much more I could do except maintain. I got the sense I wasn't wanted anymore, but I tried to stick it out. I was lonely as a middle manager, operating between university administration and library staff, and balancing those two often-competing roles was tough. I wasn't happy. I let it get to me. To their credit, the powers that be realized this. The timing wasn't perfect, but hey, it rarely is. I should have started my job hunt earlier, and I shouldn't have taken MFPOW for granted-- if you're thinking about going on the job market in "six months," start now! Though we occasionally disagreed on strategy and tactics, the mission of my former place of work remains a worthy one, and I wish them the best of luck. It's telling that the staff who remain, including the current university librarian, are people I hired and trained. It's a nice legacy to have. Onward. 

I came to librarianship as a failed academic, having dropped out of a political science PhD program. This new job gives me a chance to put that other Masters to good use (I applied for pretty much every Political Science Librarian position on the east coast, but never got past phone or Skype interviews--more on this later), and is right in my wheelhouse in terms of what my dissertation was to be: an examination of the role, or lack thereof, the globalization of the English language plays in state language policies, if you're wondering. I'll also get to work with area studies materials and other resources from my poli sci days.

In addition, I hope to bolster my skill-set. Some front-end web development, often involving integrated library systems (ILS) and learning/content management systems (the LMS is the scene of one of my better failure stories); more project management; more committee work; and maybe more instructional design. Also, a chance to turn a weakness, marketing and outreach, into a strength; and an opportunity to explore what critical librarianship looks like in a special library, as this position is in the academic wing of a federal library.

That being said, it's not an academic library, at least not in the traditional sense. I want to find out what I like more: librarianship or higher education. I want to make sure I'm not in the former as a way to stick around the latter.

I wasn't the job I left. I am not the job I just accepted. We are not our jobs. Not the ones we left. Not the ones we want to take. You are not your job.

Let's see where the day takes us.

I could go the rest of my life and never make a slide as good as this one. #claps2016 #critlib #sneakpeak #spoilers pic.twitter.com/Y7DmWlvAoj

— Kevin Seeber (@kevinseeber) November 20, 2015

I Get Letters: On the Library Job Market of the Future

At present, the most popular post I've ever written is about the woeful data both presented and collected on Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS). Every week hundreds of people read it. I received a rather interesting email from one such reader, who has graciously allowed me to post parts of it here, along with a response.

Oh wow... pic.twitter.com/EVt28dHV6k
— Get Behind Me Baetan (@jacobsberg) September 13, 2014

What gets cut off after that screencap is "... support her as an independent adult."


This reader had previously examined an article in a national magazine about the "worst" Masters degrees to obtain, in which the MLIS was the least desirable. I won't link to it here.*

Here is, in part, my reply.

For some time now, the American Library Association and MLIS programs have touted a wave of retirements from baby boomer librarians. This has yet to happen, and many librarians who retire are not replaced with newer librarians. Often, the responsibilities of the retiree get spread out amongst other library staff, or the retiree is replaced by part-time or volunteer staff.

However, your daughter will not obtain an MLIS until around the year 2024. None of us knows what the job market for MLIS holders will look like then. Even now, there are many positions outside of traditional library settings that an MLIS would be useful in. Medical records, corporate archives, information architecture, to name a few.

Your daughter is 13 years old. When I was 13 I wanted to be a marine biologist. I suspect her career plans will change as she continues her intellectual awakening and studies. Anything that you can do to encourage her intellectual development, including pursuing a career in information sciences, is a good thing in my book.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) may be of some help here. Behold the Occupational Handbook Outlook for both librarians

and archivists, curators, and museum staff.

Indeed, the BLS itself parrots the ALA and MLIS program line, writing "Later in the decade, prospects should be better, as older library workers retire and population growth generates openings." (Source)

Based on Library Journal's 2013 data, over 6,100 people graduated from ALA-accredited MLIS programs in 2012 (source is table 3), so the addition of 14,300 jobs in libraries, archives, and museums by 2022 will be dwarfed by just a few years of additional graduations from Library and Information Science Programs. But again, predicting the job market in 2025, or 2022 is tricky. In the meantime get creative; vote for government officials who will support the information professions, try to change the hearts and minds of those who don't or won't; if you have money to spare, give it to EveryLibrary, our profession's political action committee; and always be advocating.


* According to this magazine's ranking one year later, an MLIS is now "only" the third-worst Masters degree to obtain, so progress?

We're Hiring!

Our reference librarian is leaving, and it feels kind of like losing a limb. What I'd like to do is make a smooth transition from something like this



To this



though hopefully with a happier ending.

Indeed, the title of Reference Librarian doesn't fully capture what this position might entail. At present, I function as something like Head of State for the library, representing it outside the building, to our community, to consortiums, and the like, whereas the reference librarian is the Head of Government, managing much of what happens in the physical library with regards to reference and access services, including our library instruction and information literacy efforts, and our admittedly meager interlibrary loan program. I've taught our outgoing reference librarian how to copy catalog, and I'm happy to do the same for any and all new hires.

If you have a sense of humor, curiosity, a desire to learn and experiment, and a commitment to higher education and justice for all (see what I did there?), well, then this job might be for you.

Actual webpage via HigherEdJobs.

In addition, we're also hiring part-time staff, either at the librarian level, or the intern one, aimed at graduate students in Masters of Library and Information Science programs. Both are paid. Details on this position, these positions, here.

A few notes on hiring:

• I don't know the salary range for the position of Reference Librarian, and I understand if this sets off all kinds of red flags for you. Our Human Resources department keeps me in the dark on such things, which is both a blessing and a curse. It will be enough to live on in DC, which isn't cheap. It probably won't be enough to allow you to buy a house without other sources of income.
• My place of work is a predominantly minority institution (PMI), as classified by the Department of Education, and we are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We take both of these very seriously. Representation is important. 
• If a job is posted and you apply for it six hours later, that sets of all kinds of red flags for hiring managers. It tells us that you may have a canned cover letter ready to go and not given much thought to who we are, what we do, and how you, the applicant, might fit in. Like buying a gun, give it twenty-four hours. Think it over.

Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing, and good luck.

Diversity Takes Work: On "Rigor" in MLIS Programs

Librarianship, as a profession, is not a very diverse place. As of 2010, there were 118,666 credentialed librarians, those with Masters degrees from American Library Association-accredited programs.

Of those:

6,160 were African-American,
3,260 were Asian-Pacific Islander,
185 were Native American,
1,008 identified as two or more races, and
3,661 as Latin@.*

The above data is from the ALA's Office of Diversity (pdf), and if you like pie charts, Chris Bourg at Stanford has you covered.

There is no reason to think that four years later, things look any better.

The pipeline isn't broken, it was never built. It was intentionally not built.

Ta-Nehisi Coates shows all the "work" that went into, and still goes into, oppression. It takes work to undo that.

And instead of doing that work, we get this (diversity and rigor are at odds). And this (derailed by Common Core, but good comments on both). Instead, what we should get is this (paywalled).

Let's leave "rigor" undefined for now. After all, it's a means to an end, and that end is employment. And rigor, however defined, is neither sufficient nor necessary for that, because of the political and economic contexts in which libraries and library staff are situated. Rigor, however defined, might lead to librarians and information professionals who are better able to navigate this environment, but it won't get anyone a job by itself.

Aside from the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that comes with the false dichotomy between rigor and diversity, we're also treated to Masters of Library and Information Science programs as places for remediation, even though there's evidence that remediation doesn't work.

The default strategy at U.T. for dealing with failing students was to funnel them into remedial programs — precalculus instead of calculus; chemistry for English majors instead of chemistry for science majors. “This, to me, was just the worst thing you could possibly imagine doing,” Laude said. “It was saying, ‘Hey, you don’t even belong.’ And when you looked at the data to see what happened to the kids who were put into precalculus or into nonmajors chemistry, they never stayed in the college. And no wonder. They were outsiders from the beginning.” 

That New York Times article quoted above, "Who Gets to Graduate," shows what does work. Let's do it, library schools.

Students in TIP [Texas Interdisciplinary Plan] were placed in their own, smaller section of Chemistry 301, taught by [then-Chemistry professor David] Laude. But rather than dumb down the curriculum for them, Laude insisted that they master exactly the same challenging material as the students in his larger section.

... [Laude] supplemented his lectures with a variety of strategies: He offered TIP students two hours each week of extra instruction; he assigned them advisers who kept in close contact with them and intervened if the students ran into trouble or fell behind; he found upperclassmen to work with the TIP students one on one, as peer mentors. And he did everything he could, both in his lectures and outside the classroom, to convey to the TIP students a new sense of identity: They weren't subpar students who needed help; they were part of a community of high-achieving scholars.

Library and Information Science programs can continue to admit as they see fit, but what the University of Texas at Austin is doing is also a form of rigor. There's no reason why LIS programs can't do something like this, except that it takes work, and LIS programs seem unwilling to put that work in. It's much easier to play rigor and diversity off each other.

At present, it's not as if library science programs are rejecting people en masse; a wide net has already been cast.  Schools and programs could easily cast a wider net, or continue to do so, but instead of admitting so many cis white females from History and English undergraduate programs, maybe look a bit harder. Hiring managers could and should do the same.

The Loon writes that rigor in admissions would "slam the door to librarianship in the faces of some of those who wish to open it." But look at the above data. That door is already shut. It was never open. Because of the lack of diversity in LIS professions, it probably better to discuss rigor within programs, as Becky Katz writes, which the Loon divides into technological ("librarians should know how to code!") and humanistic ("Foucault! Interrogate! Problematize!"), rather than in admissions. And UT-Austin's program gets at that kind of rigor.

Do MLIS programs want to put that kind of work in? Are there monetary or other structural factors that prevent them from doing so? We'll see.

* And yes, librarians and library staff overwhelmingly identify as female, over 80 percent of the profession. Speaking of race and gender, the twitter streams for "rigor" and either "MLIS" or "LIS" are hardly representative, but they are also not a parade of white men, (/waves to self), calling for rigor, as the Loon paints it.

Elsewhere on this site:

Dear Aspiring Librarians (On MLIS Program Placement and Salaries)
The "Digital Natives" Myth and Library Science Education
Choose Wisely
The Adjunctification of Academic Librarianship
On Diversity in Library and Information Science Education
Guilty as Charged, Yet Another MLIS Post 
Making Masters of Library and Information Science Programs More Rigorous 
Not Another MLIS Post 
Explore the MLIS tag.

Credentialing and Devaluation: More on 'Who's a Librarian?'

If the Masters of Library and Information Science is in large part a credentialing regime that separates librarians from non-librarians, paraprofessionals, it is a regime based on time and money rather than on proficiency.

If you think the MLIS is primarily a credential for librarianship, and you think, as I do, that MLIS programs are "easy to get into, easy to get out of," then we should reexamine that role of the degree.

The barriers are cost and time, not expertise. I've yet to meet anyone who dropped out of an MLIS program because it was so challenging. If you know of anyone, please let me know (this post from Hack Library School, and its comments, comes close). My place of employment has more or less open enrollment, but it does not have open graduation. The same should be true of MLIS programs.

Rather, I know people who couldn't afford it, and/or couldn't make the time for it. Often, people in this category are paraprofessionals with many years of library experience, trying to level up, gaining access to more jobs in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Many of these paraprofessionals are also people of color.

@mchris4duke The MLS is also very important for under-represented groups entering the field who would otherwise be eternal paraprofessionals
— Bergis Jules (@BergisJules) March 26, 2014

The big tent version of librarianship I espouse does not devalue librarianship so much as it puts the MLIS in its proper context. After all, rare is the hiring manager who lauds MLIS holders with no library experience. The myriad interviews with Hiring Librarians bear this out. Feel free to ignore each of those data points, calling them anecdotal. At some point, a group of trees becomes a forest.

Instead, librarianship is devalued because of institutional sexism; it is viewed as "women's work" based on the history of the profession and current demographics.

It is devalued because of the roles of librarians in popular culture. Your Dewey Decimal System jokes? I've heard them all, please stop!



It is devalued because of the relative ease of MLIS programs.

It is devalued because at least one major political party in the United States, along with many corporate partners of both major parties, is afraid of knowledge, information, and the power of citizens.

It is devalued because of neoliberal policies and budgets that reflect antipathy towards public goods and the public good.

It is devalued because of book-centricity, presently embodied by the "little free libraries" trend, which are collections of books in public areas that are free to use. If I were to put a first aid kit on my corner, first come and first served, nobody would call it a "little free hospital" or even a "little free clinic," would they?

If your analogy is to compare librarianship to medicine, I wish you'd reconsider. Librarianship is not medical school. There is no legal need for a credentialing body. There is no library equivalent of malpractice insurance and there's (mercifully) comparatively little life and death in libraries. The people who leave library school aren't becoming whatever you think are the library version of dentists, podiatrists, nurses, and osteopathic doctors. Instead, they're remaining paraprofessionals.

Further, people's interactions with the health care system, speaking from a United States' perspective, often aren't with doctors. Much more face time for patients comes from nurses and technicians. For the far majority of people, a doctor, or a dentist, comes into a room for a brief period of time, compared to a much longer one with a non-doctor.

These non-doctors are as important to the health care system in the United States as the doctors. In some places more so. And so it is for paraprofessionals working in library and information science.

Again, the MLIS

is a "union card" for many jobs. 

socializes you into the discipline.   

offers you some theory that informs our practices.    

provides a cohort, which might prove useful in many ways.    

helps you get the word "librarian" into your job title.   

signals that you are very interested in librarianship, so interested that you might go into debt for it.  

gives you GLAM career options and helps you narrow them.

Elsewhere on this site, not linked above:
Making Masters of Library and Information Science Programs More Rigorous
Who's a Librarian?

Who's a Librarian?

A librarian is someone who works in a library, provided a library is a collection of information that is organized in some systematic fashion. The collection can be physical. The collection can be digital. Do you teach people how to use that collection, or help them use it? Congratulations! You're a librarian.

"You get a librarian! And you get a librarian!" via Gifsoup.

"Bu bu but," you stammer, "I don't have 'the degree!'" That's okay. Librarianship is a mindset. You work in a library? You help people, either directly or indirectly? You're a librarian. 

You hold a PhD, but no Masters of Library and Information Science, and work in a library? You're a librarian.

Plenty of people with "the degree" consider themselves "alt-ac," too, including the author of this post, who got through comps, defended a prospectus, and took a long, hard look at the job market for political scientists, deciding to go right back into librarianship.

You have the degree? A Masters of Library and Information Science?

And you want to work with information? Even if you are unemployed or under-employed in another field? 

You worked with information, but are in another field now? 

Congrats! Even if you are now a consultant, or work for a vendor. You're also all librarians. (Even if I use that designation reluctantly because you tell me how to run a library even though you haven't worked in one in years.)

You teach librarians, either in MLIS or PhD programs or elsewhere? You are a librarian. 

You have the word "librarian" in your job title? You are a librarian.

Even if you are a journalist friend/political connection of/to the Governor of California who appointed you to be the state librarian because he wanted to reward that relationship. So congrats to Greg Lucas, former reporter and political blogger, the next State Librarian of California.

Per the Los Angeles Times, Lucas will be taking LIS classes at San Jose State University, in part because California requires that the person holding this position “shall be a technically trained librarian.”

Let's welcome Lucas into the fold, fellow librarians, as we've done for Dan Cohen at the Digital Public Library of America, as we've done for Daniel Boorstin at the Library of Congress.* He's going to need a lot of help.


Do you have an MLIS, but don't use it? You might not be a librarian. Why? Because while the MLIS is nice, it's neither sufficient nor necessary to be a librarian. But it does help.

It socializes you into the discipline.  

It offers you some theory that informs our practices.  

It provides a cohort, which might prove useful in many ways.  

It helps you get the word "librarian" into your job title. 

It signals that you are very interested in librarianship, so interested that you might go into debt for it. 

And hey, we employers and hiring managers often ask for it as a requirement as opposed to a preferred qualification.

Discuss.


* Why yes, all these people who don't hold MLISs and are in important positions in librarianship are white males. Isn't that "interesting?" Thanks for noticing.

UPDATE: A follow-up post, Credentialing and Devaluation: More on 'Who's a Librarian?'

Meanwhile, in the Archives: On the Society of American Archivists

If only life were fair. 

- Jackie Dooley, then-President of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), August 16th, 2013

Let's back up, and add some context.

"In many industries... internships are a normal part of gaining experience that prepares candidates for paying work in the field... In this job market, unpaid internship experience can be what makes the difference between getting interviews and job offers or remaining unemployed.” I couldn’t agree more. Indeed, not everyone can afford to work for free while in school. If only life were fair.

The discussion that followed lead to this comment:

"We have an association for archivists not archives (at least in name)." 

- Name withheld

Contrast that with the American Library Association, which is not a librarian association.

At the time of Dooley's speech, there was a significant amount of push-back, and discussion, on twitter. One could start here, as all tweets from the conference are archived (see what I did there?). The discussion beings about halfway down that page with this tweet.

Life is not fair, but it's more fair for some than for others. I do not think it's fair for a person in a position of power, a position that can affect change, to use "fairness" to "punch down" at graduate students, at new archivists, and at volunteers who may be doing something that is technically illegal (the Department of Labor on internships in for-profit contexts, pdf) in an effort to find paid work.

Via Hiring Librarians. 

In practice, what the above means is that if you purport to value diversity, you will not use, nor advocate for (see this pdf), unpaid interns. From the SAA Statement on Diversity:

SAA understands diversity to encompass:

• Socio-cultural factors. These factors relate to individual and community identity, and include the attributes mentioned in SAA’s Equal Opportunity/Nondiscrimination Policy.
• Professional and geographic factors. Concern about these factors reflects the Society’s desire for broad participation from archivists working in various locations, repository types and sizes, and professional specializations.

Unpaid internships also hurt mobility, that second bullet point.

I understand that funding is tight, and that budgets are cut, but please, pay people for work. Better not a lot, which I am guilty of, than nothing.

The acknowledgement of unfairness is a nice touch, a sort of kinder, gentler, enlightened lifeboating, but it's lifeboating all the same.

Lifeboater manifestos, on the other hand, are people from “on high” who stomp downward, and chastise us plebs for daring to use our outside voices while we’re drowning. (Via the great Rebecca Schuman) 

It also reminds me of the Old Academe Stanley meme.

As Sam Winn has expertly pointed out, there is a certain amount of professional privilege that comes with being established in a field. The SAA President should have some power here, even if it's symbolic. Rather than stating the obvious about how unfair life is, please do something about it. I am cautiously optimistic that this, including the comments, is a step forward, as is this.* At the most recent SAA Council meeting, employment issues were a topic of discussion.

However, some members of the SAA still don't seem, or want, to understand how much the ground has shifted on issues of employment, mistaking credible, structural critiques for "Millennial whining" or a chance to offer career advice that wasn't asked for. To wit, these discussions. If you don't want to wade through a listserv discussion board, allow Lance over at New Archivist to glibly sum it up.

Person #1: Here is what I think of this nuanced issue
Person #2: Not only are you wrong, but you must have something wrong with you, character-wise, to even hold that view
***silence***
Person #2: What don’t more people have discussions on this list?

Again, Winn is worth reading here as well, and the article also provides actionable initiatives.

So long as we are talking about using power for good, as well as statements on diversity. the SAA should have a conference code of conduct, just as the American Library Association now has. Recent actions


* Kudos to those places of employment that are examining their practices concerning internships.

** Thanks to an archivist who will remain nameless for bringing some of these issues to my attention, and for their comments on an earlier version of this post. All errors are mine.

Libraries as Structures, Libraries as Agents, Late Capitalism Edition

But what *is* their place within a larger socio-political and economic structure designed for inequality and oppression?
— nina de jesus (@satifice) December 27, 2013

The "their" in question above is libraries, which are a creation of the above socio-political economic system, often termed neoliberalism, "an ideology that rests on the assumption that individualized, arms-length market exchange can serve as a metaphor for all forms of human interaction," (source). How complicit are libraries in this system? Plenty, argues Nina De Jesus, convincingly. To wit:

when libraries were shifting from private institutions to institutions designed for the ‘public good,’ the notion of who, exactly, was considered part of the ‘public’ was radically different than today. Indeed, when you look into the rhetoric of why public libraries became a thing, it was a middle-to-upper class initiative enrich and ‘better’ the working class, so that they’d have something to do with their free time other than realize just how crappy this new economic system was for them. (Source)

The offset excerpt above illustrates a Gramscian take on how this is the case; libraries co-opt lower classes, staving off class consciousness. In Gramscian thought a socio-political economic system exerts influence unconsciously. The fact that it goes unnoticed, assumed, and taken for granted by most is proof of its effectiveness. The first step to challenging a hegemonic superstructure such as this is realizing that it exists.

LIS = a fine balancing act. Support the poor w/o making the erstwhile middle class feel the library's no longer all about them+their tastes.
— Myron G (@Bibliocracy) December 29, 2013

Further, De Jesus writes that, "And I've seen very few people take a critical and sincere approach to analysing how the library, as institution, is actually oppressive and designed to create and perpetuate inequity."

That is, the public library as we know it was designed in no small part to prevent revolution and class revolt. Can we measure the "success" of the library by the lack of open class warfare? Or, do libraries exist to give people a lottery ticket, a way out; and is that the best we can hope for given that we are all products of the socio-political and economic system, and even strengthen it by our participation?

Those of us w/ t/t jobs benefit from #adjunct exploitation, just like those of us w/ Macbooks benefit from sweatshops. We're implicated.
— Roger Whitson (@rogerwhitson) January 1, 2014

However, the critiques of libraries as neoliberalist institutions implicate everything, thus said critiques run the the risk of losing any explanatory power and effectiveness. They cannot be directionless, as Fredrik deBoer points out. Are libraries any more, or less, implicated that other structures, agents, and organizations, and if so, why? And and where do we librarians, archivists, and other information professionals go from here? The library, as always, is a good place to start. Chris Bourg, an Associate University Librarian at Stanford, has compiled a list of resources, with more on the way. Her twitter timeline is also a good place to start.

Love this press. 

Really, love this press. 

Per Barbara Fister, libraries, and librarianship, are both radical and conservative; simultaneously perpetuating and undermining neoliberalism. We librarians should be conscious of this, and try to do more of the latter and less of the former when and where possible.

Mostly baffled that a profession that constructs knowledge + has so little critical to say about the construction of knowledge. - Emily Drabinski, on twitter (https://twitter.com/edrabinski/status/422090892733054976 and https://twitter.com/edrabinski/status/422090947280003072)

Some ways that libraries can combat neoliberalism, and offer an alternative, come to mind.

First, library and information science programs can offer courses that make future LIS professionals aware of neoliberal issues they'll encounter in the workplace. As the state has abdicated and markets have failed to provide shelter, child care, and job application centers, these tasks, and others, have fallen to public libraries. LIS curricula should spend some time discussing these challenges for LIS staff. Courses on academic librarianship should discuss the political economies of higher education and publishing, and how they influences libraries and library management.

Second, the relevant bodies, comprised of LIS professionals, can rework assessment regimes, changing the conversation from return on investment and measurements of efficiency to those of values. Both Bourg and Fister are excellent resources here.

Third, when librarians are in the classroom, they can foster awareness of these issues. The same is true of the library website. More about that here.

And yet neoliberalism cannot be a deus ex machina or scapegoat for libraries, museums, and archives. Neoliberalism is not a "thing," it is not static. It is a process, an evolving and moving target that is a product of a particular place and time. Locating neoliberalism in the Enlightenment throws a very important baby out with the bathwater, though no doubt the seeds of the former are found in the latter.

Beyond the links above, the following are good reads on the effects of neoliberalism and neoliberalist practices on and in education:

On Precarity  

Vulnerability, Contingency, Advocacy 

The Neoliberal Library: Resistance is Not Futile - Bourg's talk at Duke University. (Update, 1/16/14) 

Teachers in Lee, MA Return Merit Pay - This is what resistance looks like in practice. 

Related, elsewhere on this site:
Libraries and Postmodernity: A Review of Radical Cataloging
Toward of Unifying Field Theory of Librarianship
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Academic Librarianship
The Adjunctification of Academic Librarianship
More Thoughts on New Librarianship
Data and the Surveillance State

How #librarianfestivus explains the states of librarianship in 2013

While I was burning vacation days, use it or lose it!, Andy Woodworth went and did it again.
His post was much more of an airing of grievances than a feat of strength, and then The Chronicle of Higher Education inexplicably sent out a tweet, since deleted, with the hashtag "librarianfestivus."

Thanks to The Stacks Cat for retweeting that before it was deleted,
enabling me to screen capture it.

The outpouring that followed nicely sums up the year in libraries, both for better and for worse.

infomercials for products repackaged and marketed as 'webinars.' my spam folder loves these. #librarianfestivus
— Dale Askey (@daskey) December 21, 2013

Only librarians could whine & bitch about a holiday that's about librarian whining & bitching. #librarianfestivus
— Matthew Ciszek (@mciszek) December 20, 2013

Confession: I can never remember what the G stands for anyway.

The acronym "GLAM" #librarianfestivus
— Myron G (@Bibliocracy) December 20, 2013

On vendor relations:

referring to even the most library-hostile vendors as 'partners,' when 'horrid codependent relationship' wld fit better #librarianfestivus
— Dale Askey (@daskey) December 21, 2013

I ranted about this earlier in the year and while I suspect the "Big Deal" is going to take some hits in the next year, I also think we librarians are going to be stuck with it.

On why unpaid internships suck (tl:dr, they perpetuate inequality, are exploitative):

Don't complain about the lack of diversity in LIS if you support unpaid internships in LIS. #librarianfestivus
— Rebecca Giftman (@DerangeDescribe) December 20, 2013

And if you were wondering, "Is anyone really for diversity AND for unpaid labor?": http://t.co/9uNiQlJxKs + http://t.co/ef8mNCddk3 pg 4-5
— Rebecca Giftman (@DerangeDescribe) December 20, 2013

My Place of Work has a position titled "Library Intern." It's paid, as it should be.

MLIS bashing

iSchools. #librarianfestivus
— Myron G (@Bibliocracy) December 20, 2013

LIS programs that accept more students than there are jobs #librarianfestivus
— D. Orange (@AnAnarchivist) December 20, 2013

And of course "the graph" made an appearance.

Via Liz Lieutenant 

To make matters worse, the most popular metrics one might use to chose a school are flawed. But in 2014, maybe, just maybe, we will be in a position to do something about this.

On faculty passing the buck to libraries, giving up copyright...

No, the library will not pay $3,000 to make your article OA. #librarianfestivus
— Joshua Beatty (@beattyjf) December 20, 2013

"I don't use the library" says the prof while reading Nature on his laptop. #librarianfestivus
— Jen Ferguson (@__jasf) December 20, 2013

On the price of textbooks:

No I'm not going to buy your textbook for the library. You took the class. Buy the book. #librarianfestivus
— Kimberly Feher (@KSF1975) December 20, 2013

In 2014 I hope academic librarians work closely with faculty on open-access textbook options, and that more faculty write and unlock said texts. The wheels are already in motion here, thanks to the State Universities of New York, the University of California system, the University of Minnesota, and Rice University, among others.

There's an article for that...

No more hand-wringing over every asshole who writes an anti-libraries/librarian article. #librarianfestivus
— Michelle (@winelibrarian) December 20, 2013

And of course the Think Tank was mentioned as well. Quote Andy:

Honestly, if you can’t control your resident lunatics, please at least keep them within the confines of your posting area. When people in the position of hiring within the library start talking about membership in the group as being a liability on the resume, you might want to work on your image within the library world.

Here's what I said to Hiring Librarians about ALA Think Tank, to be published by that site shortly (UPDATE on 1/3, here it is):

Membership in the ALA Think Tank Facebook group won't hurt a candidate in my eyes, but participation is another story. Ninety-five percent of what goes on in that group is fine by me, so if you use the group to "make it happen" and get ideas/feedback/discuss the issues of the day, that's great. But the remaining five percent gives me a great deal of pause. If your participation in ALA Think Tank includes making fun of South Asians, being sexist and using the group to create gendered spaces, subtweeting and bickering with your peers as if librarianship is junior high school, and generally acting like a "drunken embarrassment," then yes, participation in the group is going to hurt a candidate's chances with me.

via Twitter

I'm heartened that in 2013 I saw much more discussion (and please do read the links therein) of diversity, gender, race, class, and I aim to further this dialogue in 2014. However, this needs to progress beyond discussion.  While I grew up in one majority minority city and now work and live in another (thus as a hiring manager I have a slate of candidates available that other hiring librarians do not), if there's anything I can do to move this topic from one of position to one of maneuvers, I will do it.

Happy New Year!

Cheers, Jake

Dear Aspiring Librarians (On MLIS Program Placement and Salaries)

Let's revisit the US News and World Report rankings for Masters of Library and Information Science programs.

The rankings:

Source is a screencap from here. 

How they got this information:

The library and information studies specialty ratings are based solely on the nominations of program deans, program directors, and a senior faculty member at each program. They were asked to choose up to 10 programs noted for excellence in each specialty area. Those with the most votes are listed. (Source)

In sum, these rankings are useless. If the above paragraph doesn't convince you of that, here's more.

Luckily, Library Journal has some useful data on MLIS programs. In particular, they list placement rates and salaries by type of library/organization as well as a breakdown by geography.

For discussion:

• MLIS programs are a very gendered experience. Only two SUNYs (State Universities of New York), Albany and Buffalo, and the University of Michigan have programs in which the male to female ratio is under 1:2.5.

• The ratio of employed male to female 2012 graduates is worse, across the board, than 1:2.5, in many cases it's more like 1:4 or 1:5. 

• Long Island University graduated 163 people. Two report employment. Yikes. 

• San Jose State University and the University of North Texas graduate a lot of librarians. Maybe too many. Neither school, no school, really, is under any obligation to limit the number of enrolled students, but the sheer numbers of graduates these schools send into the workforce concerns me. And as it turns out, I'm not alone.

Q: "Are there any library schools whose alumni you would be reluctant to hire?"
A: "San Jose State." (Hiring Librarians)

Though men are employed at a lower rate than women upon MLIS completion, their salaries tend to be higher, which both reflects and propagates a gender pay gap.

These salaries are probably not enough to help you pay off your student loans. You may have loans from undergraduate programs and then take additional loans for an MLIS program. Please forgive me for what I'm about to say, which comes from a privileged position, which I acknowledge:

Think long and hard about whether or not you want this degree. Do you really really really want it? Because you could be paying off loans for a long long time upon completion of an MLIS program. Ramen doesn't taste that good.

There are very few people in librarianship for the money. That being said, money is nice. So if you're on the fence about what to specialize in, perhaps this table, in conjunction with professors, coursework, peers, and librarians, can help you make up your mind.

• Automation/System, Government Document, and Knowledge Management (corporate buzzword alert!) librarian jobs have higher low end salaries than other kinds of library jobs. This is also reflected in the median salaries by position.  

• Usability/UX, and Emerging and Information Technologies also seem like good bets, though there may be elements of what The Library Loon terms "new hire messianism," in which it is the responsibility of newly hired librarians, often in new positions, to advance "change" and have these skillsets ex officio, without being given the tools to institutionally succeed (it is more complex than this, please read the link above).

• Interlibrary Loan, Circulation, and Children's/Young Adult librarians continue to not pay as well. I suspect that there is more than a little "women's work" going on here, especially in the latter two positions, whereas some of the higher-salaried jobs reflect the gender pay gap we saw in Table 4, and/or code as being more "masculine." Further study is warranted. Also, because we continue to not properly fund and allocate resources towards children and young adults, which is unfortunate and maddening. 

None of this is to say that you should pick an MLIS track that will make you more money. Rather, please pick a focus that you like and that makes you happy.

Takeaways:

• Be prepared to move. 
• Placement by gender again... wow.

Do not choose MLIS programs based on the US News and World Report rankings. Though the MLIS program you graduate from may matter to some people, see Hiring Librarians, above, it may not matter to many others. As a librarian who hires people, I am not terribly interested in where you went and why you went there. It is more important, from where I sit, that you

• learned things
• know theories of information and librarianship because these theories inform practice
• took courses that can help you in the positions that you apply for
• show initiative
• are curious

This means that you should have a plan going into an MLIS program, because while the program may not matter to me, those first three bullet points above sure do, and choosing a school in which you can accomplish those things, via the transitive property, can help both of us. Also, not to beat a dead loon, but you should read this, too.

Good luck.

Source for all tables: Maatta, S. (2013) Placements & Salaries 2013: Explore All The Data, Library Journal, 17 October 2013, http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/10/placements-and-salaries/2013-survey/explore-all-the-data-2013/

Elsewhere on this site and related: Dear Aspiring Librarians (On MLIS Program Rankings)

The "Digital Natives" Myth and Library Science Education

Repeat after me: There is no such thing as a "digital native."

Good.

Now that we all agree this group of people doesn't exist, let's define the term. Here I turned to ur-digital native text, Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native

Oh, the irony of the placement of that "citation needed."

Now let's stop using that term. It's ageist, classist, and it's flat out untrue, both as an abstract concept and as a term that purports to describe some aspect of reality.

One's proximity to technology does not make one a native. Nobody is born with the above skills, nor is anyone placed in a crib or bassinet next to a tablet, smartphone, or a copy of Python for Dummies.

I got this image from Amazon, but buy the book
from an independent bookseller, please. 

The term is sometimes used as a cudgel against librarians born before said "natives." It is a tool of marginalization and silencing, as if the year of one's birth confers some sort of technological expertise that others should defer or cater to.

Jenny Emanuel, Digital Services & Reference Librarian at the University of Illinois, Urbana, recently published an article that should put the use of this term to rest. She surveyed students at fifty American Library Association-accredited Masters of Library and Information Science programs, as well as newly minted librarians, by degree. Three hundred and fifteen survey responses and twenty in-depth interviews later (20) it is clear that at least among this sample, there is no such thing as a digital native.

Instead, there are a group of people that are, by dint of birth year, on average, slightly more comfortable using recent technological advances to communicate than people older than them, but the younger group of librarians and librarians-to-be is not comfortable using this technology to create, as evidenced by figure 2 on page 24, in which participants express a desire to learn to program.

That is to say, Millennials are using technology, and no doubt their communications create knowledge, but they are consumers of the technology, not creators of it.

Some of the interviewees raise issues of age, class, and geography.

not all considered themselves a digital native, very tech savvy, or able to pinpoint exactly what their tech skills are. Most, however, did believe that there were differences in technology use and attitudes between librarians who were younger versus older librarians. (26)

and

when pressed, not all considered themselves digital natives.... Rachel grew up in a poorer home that always got technology second-hand, and she always thought they were behind others. Although her family first had an Apple Computer in the 1980s, she did not recall using it, and just thought of it as a sort of “new appliance” in her house. Her family did not emphasize technology use and saw it as something not worth investing in until they had to, which gave her a different perspective of using technology only as necessary and as “one of those things that sometimes I just don’t want to deal with.” Samantha grew up in a rural area that only had dial-up Internet, which embarrassed her and did not work as well as she thought it should, so she did not use it, leading to a belief that she did not grow up on the Internet in the same way as her peers. Because of this, she did not consider herself a digital native. (27)

and

A few interview participants mentioned the tech skills of people even younger than they are, or current college students they work with. Betty did not see younger coworkers understanding what is needed to develop or understand the back end of technology and believed younger workers do not use technology to communicate as effectively as they could. Edward, who works at a for-profit career college that has many poorer and nontraditional students, stated, it is “not just the 50 year olds, but the 18 year olds who don’t know how to attach documents to an email.” (29)

Thus, a group of people, librarians and librarians-to-be, that one would think would express comfort with technology instead present a much more nuanced picture. The myth of the digital native has implications for library and information science programs as well.

Page 23

Perhaps there is room for Code Year, or Coders for Libraries to fill what is a clearly expressed knowledge vacuum in MLIS programs.

It's an interesting article and I encourage librarians of all stripes to read it. I also encourage librarians of all stripes to stop using the term "digital native," or its friend "born digital."

Emanuel, J. (2013) Digital native librarians, technology skills, and their relationship with technology. Technology and Libraries, 32(3) http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/3811/pdf

Thoughts on New Librarianship, Week One

Many moons ago, when I was in a political science PhD program, a group of us critiqued each other's prospecti. A colleague proposed a study of presidential nominations for positions to be approved ("advise and consent") by the Senate, which would confirm. I argued that presidential nominations already took into account the likelihood of a successful confirmation, so the real story was in the why and the how of whom the president chose in the first place, not in the actual nomination. Granted, a president could nominate someone with no chance of confirmation and then propose a second solution, not unlike a child asking for a pony and "settling" for a video game system, but I find that unlikely given the political capital one would put at risk. The initial choice is what matters, and here it was going unexamined.

R. David Lankes' Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) on "new librarianship" suffers from a similar problem. First, I am asked to assume Conversation Theory, a worldview that supposes that knowledge comes from conversations and dialogues, be they internal or external. This, too, goes unexamined. Why chose this worldview, what are its strengths, its weaknesses? What is being revealed, and what is being obscured by using this worldview? Who benefits from it?

The outcome of every conflict is determined by the extent to which the audience becomes involved in it. That is, the outcome of all conflict is determined by the scope of its contagion. 

- E.E. Schattschneider

Lankes want to have this conversation. In doing so, he's attempting to determine the scope of the debate, via their audience (of which I am a part).*

Conversation theory is simultaneously the dominant paradigm & untested? #newlib https://t.co/ax0SVaKjSq & https://t.co/JlvOok0btw
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) July 12, 2013

In this MOOC, I am already forced to agree with things that I don't, or things that I may not, but haven't had the time to properly examine. Take, for example, Lankes' mission statement for librarians, which doubles as the answer to a multiple choice question in a testing module.

"The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities."
- R. David Lankes

In a testing module, participants are asked what the mission of librarians is. The answer you are supposed to give, whether you agree with it or not, is above. I find this problematic.

Second, in this course, Lankes takes for granted that there's some intersubjective, agreed-upon "improvement" for a given society, and in doing so, reifies the community itself, ignoring the very real battles that take place therein.

Discussions over the values and philosophy of librarianship won't take place via just this course. Rather, a larger discussion of a philosophy of librarianship will take place in a world in which not every, and indeed not most, librarians are in it, or participating in the #newlib twitter back channel. We have societies, communities, to answer to, and to discuss with. There are many roads to Damascus. Librarianship is multifinal, from a path, from a philosophy, there are many potential outcomes, some of which I may like, others I may not. Alternatively, assuming a worldview may limit these options and may impose path dependence rather than healthy experimentation, and may create a situation in which some strategies and tactics are more equal than others.** Having talked to Lankes, I know that alternative theories and worldviews will be discussed later.

Conversation and dialogue are not the only sources of knowledge. I say this as someone with only a tenuous connection to positivism and objectivity. Yes, there is an objective reality full of true facts out there, but for the most part I think that reality is mediated by ideational, ideological, historical, and social constructs. This explains why we fear the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea's nuclear stockpile, but not that of Great Britain. "Ideas, most of the way down," if you prefer.

For me, the real success of week one of the course is the excitement with which I see people approaching librarianship, and discussing their worldviews. That is, to me, a worthy goal in and of itself. Let's see where this excitement takes us.

* If the off-set quotes and subsequent line looks familiar, it's because of this.
** In which I rework what I wrote in the above link, beginning at "Discussion."

Choose wisely

"...his contempt for his own university faculty is astonishing; when he was asked about the quality of SJSU’s [San Jose State University] online courses, for example, he just quipped that 'It could not be worse than what we do face to face.'" (Source)

That is a quote from the person in charge of the university that produces more Masters of Library and Information Science than any other program in the country.

Enjoying the Slickdeals coupon site is listing an MS Degree from Ga Tech for %80 off. twitter.com/kyledbowen/sta…
— Kyle Bowen (@kyledbowen) May 17, 2013

That is a social coupon site offering a deal (‽) on a Masters degree. I strongly urge readers to look at the fine print of this relationship between Udacity and The Georgia Institute of Technology, which includes specifics on how many "face hours" course "assistants" must provide students, among other details. To their credit, the Georgia Tech faculty are suspicious of this arrangement.

http://www.skipprichard.com/

That is the personal website of the person who is in charge of the organization that is in charge of libraries cataloging, and other, metadata. Platitudes exist in the disconnect between thought and action. Without the latter, these koans are the web-based equivalent of a page-a-day calendar of inspirational quotes.

"OCLC's position in the profession has been greatly compromised in effectiveness by its continual blurring of the line between being a for-profit vendor and being a non-profit library cooperative." (Source) Many librarians, myself included, are curious to see how Mr. Prichard balances these interests. His website does not offer many clues.

Choose wisely.

*To be fair, Mr. Prichard travels with Old Bay, which is awesome. There may be hope for us yet.