Lousy Job Market, Great Career
Library prospects may appear bleak right now, but don't give up
By Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 10/15/2009
Just half a year before June 2008 graduates flipped the tassels on their caps from one side to the other, the recession officially began. They walked out into a job market where, as one fall 2008 University of South Florida grad put it in a letter to LJ, "What does it take to get a public library job? I know the economy is bad and that budgets are tight. I am so afraid if I don't get a job soon, some of the valuable knowledge I learned in school will slip away" (Feedback, p. 10).
In the same Feedback section, however, Jennifer Forgit, another 2008 grad, wrote in praise of Steven Hoover's "Surviving Your First Job Search" (bit.ly/o0Y2l). She reported that she started her search early, and it "took 20 applications over two years" for her to get the public library job—and geographic location—she wanted, but she advised new grads not to despair. "The jobs are still out there; you just have to look a little harder to find them."
For 2008 Indiana University, Bloomington, IS grad Kristin Centanni, on the cover of the October 15 LJ, the job search was rigorous but successful. She interviewed at about ten firms with about ten people at each. With a dual degree in IS and Public Affairs, she, too, started her search early and landed a lucrative job at a technology management consultancy in Chicago. She thinks that those who started looking later had a harder road (see "Change Agent," p. 25).
The personal stories vary, but the numbers tell a more consistent tale. According to Stephanie Maatta's 2009 Placements & Salaries Survey ("Jobs and Pay Take a Hit," p. 21–29), starting salaries dipped slightly overall, dropping 1.8% (to $41,579) after 18 years of growth. While the number of grads reporting any employment was relatively level at 87.2%, part-time employment rose to 18.3% (from 16.3%) after remaining steady for two years. In public libraries, full-time jobs were even scarcer, 12.5% fewer than in 2007. Those looking for academic library posts fared better; full-time jobs increased by 13.4%, though academic institutions have begun to feel the budget heat.
The job losses reported by the survey reflect conditions we've been hearing about, and you've been experiencing, all too often at libraries nationwide. Even wealthy libraries are being asked to make staff cuts. It's a lousy economy. A study prepared for the town of Oak Brook, IL (bit.ly/oakbrookreport), lays out how to cut staff to save $400,000 in salaries. Among several proposals: outsource tech services (as many libraries already do), cut circulation staff (the library has self-checkout) and fold what's left of tech services into it, and consolidate adult and youth service desks into one reference desk (there are fewer children than average given the population served.) [For an update, see NewsDesk, p. 14].
So where's the good news in this field—aside from individual success stories of those who got the positions they wanted? The economy will change for the better at some point—we've weathered recessions before. And while some jobs are being phased out, others are emerging. For several years now, we've been hearing about the service and technological transformations in places like the Darien Library, CT—and many other public and academic institutions—that benefit from the creativity new librarians bring to both the brick-and-mortar and the online world.
Just in time to lift the dispirited, a forthcoming book by a nonlibrarian captures the breathtaking transformations in the field in recent years and those responsible for them. Journalist Marilyn Johnson, a former Life and Esquire staffer and an obit expert (The Dead Beat, HarperCollins), makes a case for becoming a librarian in her kaleidoscopic This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (HarperCollins, Feb. 2010). She ferrets out the blogs and bloggers; dives into cataloging, systems, Second Life, and digital collections and delivery; attends the opening of the new Darien Library; and hangs out with the Connecticut Four, who challenged the Patriot Act, and the Desk Set, a group of young, funny, smart New York librarians who raise money for literacy, among other things.
Who knew librarianship and librarians were so cool, other than us insiders? If you're one of the grads still looking for a job, working part-time or in a nonprofessional position, read this book when it comes out (there's an excerpt at www.librarylovefest.com). Don't give up. You've got a great career ahead of you.
