LIS Recruiting Does It Make the Grade?

Libraries are the sources of most recruits to the profession and to the graduate programs that offer the necessary master's degree, the credential that transforms a library worker into a librarian. Most students study part time and work full time in libraries. The majority of these new recruits were convinced by that work and their contact with librarians to join the profession. If most new librarians come out of libraries, and are recruited by librarians, then one wonders what role the library schools play in the recruiting process and how it impacts the future of librarianship. While some programs, like those at Rutgers, Simmons, University of Washington, and Dominican, are more aggressive than others, most tend to be passive. Students generally find their own way, usually choosing the program or school nearest where they live and work.

A sampling of student reaction to the recruiting process, plus conversations with deans and directors at some of the LIS programs, delivered few surprises yet showed that it is librarians who most influence the recruiting process. They do it, for the most part, by convincing support staffers to study for the master's degree. This produces a diverse body of new recruits, but most are older, and most are inspired by the library as it exists today. Yet librarians in all types of libraries are repositioning, even re-creating, their libraries in response to their visions of the future.

Still, the new librarians they recruit bring current library practice to the programs. This may be good, since they enrich classes with the realities of the work. On the other hand, it may be bad, if they resist the theoretical and visionary creativity that would allow the programs to help shape that library of the future. These issues undergird questions of basic importance to the future of the profession: who recruits new librarians and what those new librarians bring to the field.

The physical therapist with arthritic thumbs and the frustrated financial advisor fed up with the "bottom-line" world want to be librarians. The field attracts retired cops, former lawyers, bored disc jockeys, failed actors, and old soldiers and sailors both male and female. We heard from a squad of ex-journalists, a platoon of one-time financial workers, battalions of dot-com refugees, and brigades of former teachers. Several hundred currently enrolled graduate students pursuing the MLIS responded to our e-query asking how they decided on library careers and chose a school.

Future librarians have had careers in commercial real-estate and in public sector human resources jobs. One library trustee, a retired business executive, says library school will help him be a better trustee.

Several new librarians abandoned their unpublished novels, and a few escaped from academic administration. There are people with the Ph.D. in a dozen disciplines. There are disillusioned web developers, disheartened retail managers, and burnt-out advertising salespeople. As one ex-professor put it, "I was delighted that my nomadic polymathy could be turned into a professional strength."

More than 70 percent of those responding work in a library now or have done so. That experience, very positive for most, is crucial to their career choice. Some complain about the elitism of the "degreed" librarians and the pecking order in libraries. Many feel that the line between professional and support staff is overblown.

Deans and directors of the graduate programs estimate that more than half, and in some programs as many as 70 to 80 percent, of their students are recruited from full-time jobs in libraries. These support staff careers often span decades before students enter library school. Several have more than 20 years, and a few have worked in libraries for 30.

Many of these support staffers already have substantial responsibility, including duties in reference work, technical services, and the children's department that were once deemed strictly "professional."

Nearly all respondents claim they "love" library work, and a great many say they are surprised by the diversity of duties they find when they first work in libraries. They often seek the degree to help them rise in the ranks. As one put it, "I want more responsibility, more say in what goes on at work, and at a higher level. I want more decision-making power. More money would be nice, too."

A great many cite the degreed librarians with whom they work as a major influence in their choice. Occasionally, that is motivated by experiences that are not particularly flattering to librarians: "My branch head convinced me that anyone with any sort of drive, ambition, and ability could run roughshod over the docile librarian employment pool and thus stand to do very well."

"I found it disheartening that the performance of my unit was dependent upon investing in companies that were profitable because of factors like massive layoffs or dubious accounting practices," said a former VP and portfolio analyst in the financial industry. His disenchantment with the commercial world is widely shared by other future librarians. The libraries of America, at both the professional and support staff levels, are largely run by refugees from the private sector.

"I had worked for a series of Internet start-ups and could see the writing on the wall shortly before my third layoff," a student at University of Washington's I School confesses. "I wanted to stay in the information field but didn't want to continue with e-commerce. I had witnessed firsthand what well-meaning MBAs were doing with the medium and wanted no part of it. I started looking around for a degree that would teach me how to present electronic information effectively and found a likely candidate in library and information science."

Batteries of tests, like Myers-Briggs, along with hundreds of guidance and career counselors, suggest library careers, displaying a deeper knowledge of our field among those who counsel job seekers than we expect.

It is no surprise that students recruited from the working ranks of libraries choose the career because they love their jobs. They find the work varied and rewarding and the working conditions flexible. Their love of the work is, overwhelmingly, the reason most of these new librarians want professional degrees.

The second most common reason they want to join the field is that old bromide, "I love books and reading." Books are obviously still a major attraction to our field, although far less so than love of the work. Almost as popular is the desire to help people find information they need, whether in print or online. This decisive motivation for many of these students ranks just behind the books.

"I'm a book guy," asserts a student from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (UNC–Chapel Hill). "This is a good field for those of us who are more attracted to the materials themselves, in the sense of 'texts' (broadly construed), than to the current scholarly apparatus—the theory, the cant, that has developed in the hardcore academy. What we do essentially remains grounded in fact," he explains.

Common but slightly less popular reasons students give for choosing a library career are values they share with librarianship and the desire to have a career that serves the needs of both individuals and society. The current student body in our field is highly idealistic about libraries. Most join us with a clear view of the profession's values and how they differ from the values of other careers, particularly private sector careers in business and the dot-com world.

A small number translate that affinity for the values of librarianship into a political or ideological statement. Some state it as a desire to be working in the public sector, others use the phrase "service to others," and a few even mention politics.

"I'm very proud of the politics of my profession. I believe very, very strongly in free expression and free access to information and in individual dignity and privacy. These are important issues to librarians, issues we advocate personally and collectively," a student from UNC–Chapel Hill writes.

Most of the current students apparently found library school on their own. Some schools recruit new students much more aggressively than others, as illustrated by the open houses and other efforts of schools like Rutgers University mentioned in "Tackling Recruitment " (LJ 2/1/03, p. 40–43). However, on balance, the schools, for the most part, passively await new students, relying on brochures and especially on their web sites. The truth is that students seek and find the schools, apply for admission, are put through the usual admissions screening, and the enrollment in the programs grows apace. Our unscientific survey buttressed the conventional wisdom about how students select graduate programs in library and information studies. More than 90 percent say the location of the school is the primary consideration. Cost and financial aid come up next, followed by the reputation of the program.

Two sources provide prospective students with the "reputation" of LIS programs, and the dominant one is, again, the librarians with whom they work. A significant number of students do what they call "research" to find out about programs. This usually leads them to the second most popular source of information about schools—the rankings in U.S. News and World Report. These rankings are mentioned often, although 90 percent of these students say they did no "research whatever to choose an LIS program."

"They find us," says Jane Robbins, dean of the Florida State University (FSU) School of Information Studies (SIS), quickly adding, "The better the web site, the more likely it is to attract them." SIS has a full-time web designer, watched over by a web professional who teaches the subject. The site changes every six months. Enrollment in the program, without other active recruiting, increases by 120 to 140 students a year.

The school's sprawling distance education program has attracted many of these students, some of whom will never appear on campus. SIS does exhibit at library conferences in the region and participates in some library career shows. Robbins says that as enrollment has increased, so has the percentage of minority students in the program. When SIS had 250 students, only 11 percent were minorities; at 475, the minority make up 19 percent.

Washington's I School's dean, Mike Eisenberg, whose expansive ambition for his program leaves nothing to chance, is an aggressive recruiter. Eisenberg actively recruits in the states in the Northwest, plus Alaska. The I School goes to state conferences, advertises on several public radio stations, and, of course, recruits over the web. The program attracts enough students to create a growing enrollment, now at about 400. "Our best recruiters are librarians," Eisenberg admits, echoing his students. To his credit, however, Eisenberg is the only dean cited as a reason students enrolled in his school.

Ads in Boston papers draw students to the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College, Boston, according to Michele Cloonan, the new dean, who graces our cover with some of the school's students. Information sessions on the Simmons program attract 60 to 100 prospective students to the campus three times a year. The program's director of admissions, Judy Beals, is proud that the recruitment program has built an enrollment of 590. "Career changers are our bread and butter," she proudly claims. Simmons alumni are ubiquitous in New England libraries, and they recommend the program to their employees.

The GSLIS program at Mt. Holyoke College in the western part of Massachusetts has attracted more students from Connecticut, Vermont, and western New England, proving again that location is crucial.

With a total enrollment of 650, the GSLIS at Dominican University, River Forest, IL, keeps growing. About 250 of those students are part of a distance program at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul. Dominican's dean, Prudence Dalrymple, is proud that her enrollment is up by 20 percent over last year. It is tough for a tuition-based, private program to compete. The marketing plan, as the recruiting effort is called, allocates money to recruit at both national and regional conferences, with a presence at the conferences of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and REFORMA to seek African American and Latino students. The school exhibits at the growing number of conferences for library technicians and support staff, to advertise its scholarships and financial packages. Open houses and radio ads plus partnerships with library systems round out the effort. The GSLIS alumni also do recruiting.

All of the schools respond to inquiries, and many have developed attractive brochures and apparently effective printed presentations. These printed recruiting tools are no longer the essential ingredient of a recruiting program that they once were. "Every college has abandoned literature racks," said Jane Perlmutter, acting director of the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison. The web site is the tool of choice for recruiting and for making any who are interested aware of the admission requirements, curriculum, faculty, and general information about the program and its parent institution.

Most schools target any recruiting they do beyond the web site. UW-Madison's SLIS recruits throughout that state and Minnesota. Admitting 75 to 80 students each fall, the program exhibits at state library conferences and at career fairs. "More and more recruits come through the web site," says Barbara Arnold, who heads both admissions and placement for the SLIS at Wisconsin.

Chris Tomer, chair of the Department of Library Science at the SIS at the University of Pittsburgh, says financial aid and an excellent program of partnering with employers to set up meaningful jobs have helped enlistment. Pitt now enrolls 50 percent of those who apply, and about a third of the students get scholarships or financial aid.

Distance education has expanded the reach of the SLIS at Louisiana State University (LSU). According to Dean Beth Paskoff, some 40 percent of the students mix their curriculum between courses on campus and distance offerings. About a quarter do the whole program in the distance education mode. Only about a third of the students are full time on the LSU campus; LSU students can register electronically. Double master's programs with history, the sciences, and Spanish have been attractive.

At New York's Pratt Institute, according to SILS dean Marie Radford, monthly open houses, New York Times advertising, and partnerships with New York's three library systems work well. Applications doubled in 2003. Pratt's minority enrollment, the largest per capita in the United States, results from the hiring practices of the libraries where the students work. Radford runs a monthly open house, and dual degree programs with other Pratt specializations hook some enrollees. New facilities in Manhattan have worked, too.

Brooke Sheldon, director of the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS), has a well-honed recruiting program targeted at students from Alaska to neighboring New Mexico. The SIRLS program exhibits at library conferences across the West and partners as well with local libraries. An added strength for SIRLS in the recruiting of minorities is its new Knowledge River, directed by Pat Tarin. Knowledge River maintains a rich database of tribal libraries, colleges, and councils, plus a very full array of Hispanic organizations. The very selective recruiting program for Native American and Hispanic students provides for tuition, a comprehensive set of support services and collegial networking, mentoring, and specialized course work. These attract students and insure that they have the systems and resources to help them as they complete the program. It puts Arizona's SIRLS on par with Washington's I School in aggressive strategies.

The many who choose the field because they have been told that there are plenty of jobs in libraries are getting restless. Deans, students, and employers tell LJ that the shortage of librarians is slowly turning into a shortage of jobs. Placement listings at the schools and LJ's Placements and Salaries Survey ("Salaries Rebound, Women Break Out ," LJ 10/15/02, p. 30–36) indicate that positions were about even last year, but at later conferences they were in decline. Reports of budget cuts, layoffs, and hiring freezes come in daily, in increasing severity. If this continues, one of the draws we've come to take for granted will be gone. On the other hand, jobs are short across fields, and this may make librarianship more appealing than many.

The current student population is worried about prospects. Most students feel that jobs are out there but that it takes more time to find one. A number of students who have already sought jobs report that it is tough. Others speculate that it will get worse.

Relations among the educational establishment, graduate schools, and practicing professionals have always been tense. Issues range from the apparent overemphasis on technology in library curricula to the continued deemphasis of the term library in the names of schools, departments, and programs. Students are aware of this tension, and while most don't take sides, they are not convinced about the repositioning of the schools as "information" programs.

The tension between practitioner and educator comes up in many ways in responses to our survey. At one end of a broad spectrum is the student who says, "I loathe library school. Fortunately, however, all of the librarians I work with tell me that's normal and that I just have to suck it up and get the degree…. I think an apprenticeship program might be more effective than 36 credit hours of PowerPoint presentations."

Another student remarks, "In general, library schools should focus more on practical skills than theory. The classes that have been most useful to me have been courses taught by practitioners, not faculty. Faculty tend to lose touch, if they were ever in touch, with the outside world."

It is the libraries that recruit best for the profession. In many cases it is the libraries that pay the tuition, and, for the more enlightened programs, it is the libraries that provide the laboratory for study of how the field works.

The students long for more practice in the curriculum, yet the programs veer into more theory. The students ask for teachers from the practice, yet the programs increasingly hire faculty with no ties to practice and often with little practical experience.

The programs do only a modicum of recruiting, and that only supplements the steady supply of new librarians from libraries. While the body of people recruited from libraries is generally diverse and guarantees new librarians with great faith in the profession, it tends to make for an older constituency of students, deeply rooted in libraries as they exist. The library of the future may have difficulty being born in that culture.

If the field needs new blood, if it needs younger librarians who have more of their careers ahead of them, if it needs thinking that is brand new, out of the box, to create the library of the future, it needs a younger generation of recruits to go with the strong librarians brought in from libraries today. To find that new generation, LIS schools will have to seek candidates from somewhere beyond libraries. The best place will be among the general undergraduate population.

Instead of letting library education programs be sustained by the current people who "come to us," the schools owe it to the field they serve to recruit more aggressively students who will ensure a vibrant future. That is competitive work, and it costs money. Librarians must join them and support them in that effort. That way we'll get the new generation to go with the strong contingent who already know how great it is to work in a library.