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In LJ Survey, Academic Librarians Say Their Work Is Satisfying
How they came to their careers is as varied as the people themselves, but despite some clear challenges for college and university librarians in the digital age, academic librarianship is good work, according to Library Journal's recent Job Satisfaction Survey (examined in Take This Job and Love It ). The overwhelming majority of the 1,209 academic respondents—some 70 percent across all age groups and institution size—reported being either “very satisfied” (32.1 percent) or “satisfied” (37.9 percent) with their jobs. Just under a quarter reported they were “somewhat satisfied” (23.4 percent). Only 6.7 percent admitted they were dissatisfied with their career choice.
The survey, however, also amplified some persistent challenges facing librarians, including keeping up with rapidly changing technology, stressed budgets, management and career advancement issues, campus politics, concern over their role in the academic enterprise, and, of course, low pay.
No surprise: when asked about job satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—answers frequently involved money. Overall, 50 percent of respondents said they were underpaid; 48 percent said they were fairly paid (and yes, two percent said they were overpaid). The survey results also suggest a solid correlation between salary and job satisfaction levels: those who said they were “very satisfied” with their work had an average annual salary of $63,800, while those who said they were “not satisfied at all” averaged less than $50,000. In addition, 70 percent of those who said they were unsatisfied also said they were underpaid.
Advancement, in terms of pay and rank, also emerged as a vital, complex job satisfaction issue. A glaring majority (62 percent) rated their chances for advancement at their institutions as “fair to poor.” The survey also found that although advancement was a challenge, jobs nevertheless are changing, mostly driven by external factors. Just two percent said their jobs changed owing to their own initiative or other proactive measures such as a library expansion or earning an advanced degree. On the other hand, 49 percent said their jobs changed because of technology, followed by staff reengineering (36.3 percent) and downsizing (17.4 percent). More than 10 percent said they had to leave their library for another to have a chance to advance.
Despite challenges in their careers, academic librarians clearly value their jobs. Three out of four respondents said they planned to remain in librarianship until retirement. Only 3 percent said they would likely abandon the profession; 86 percent said they would choose librarianship again if they had it to do it all over again and 87 percent said they would recommend a career in academic librarianship to a young person entering college. That bodes well for the future. In fact, the change and uncertainty that can cause uneasiness on the job were also cited by many as draws. “I wanted a career that changed and evolved,” commented one respondent, “where I wouldn't know everything I needed to know within a year of starting.”
The academic survey is the second in a three-part series on job satisfaction based on a comprehensive survey by LJ. For the October overview of the entire survey results see Great Work, Genuine Problems. The next article, forthcoming in March 1 issue of LJ will focus on those who work in public libraries. The full results of the survey will be online after the third installment is published.
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Librarians Say the MLS Matters; Cost a Key Issue
Although a vigorous debate continues to rage about what should be taught in MLS programs, respondents to Library Journal’s recent job satisfaction survey suggested there was one overarching reason why the MLS was important to them: advancement. But, while you can’t afford not to have the degree if you expect to advance professionally, paying for the degree is another matter. “Cost is a huge issue,” library student Claudia McGivney told the LJ Academic Newswire. “It is difficult to work full-time and go to school, and many people do not want to be burdened by more loans.”
McGivney’s is a fairly common story in academic libraries. Already with an M.A. in English she was happily working in a library when she decided to pursue her MLS. At $2500 per course, however, she quickly realized that on a $26,000 annual salary, getting the degree would bankrupt her or saddle her with paralyzing debt. In order to take advantage of tuition reimbursement, she had to quit a job she “loved,” to take another at the school offering her MLS degree.
In LJ’s survey, 80 percent of respondents said the MLS is important, with 73 percent of directors saying it was “very important.” But some thorny issues emerged. Some respondents commented, like McGivney, that it was difficult for them, already working in library staff jobs—and often doing librarians’ work—to have to go back to school, pay for the degree, only to come back and do the work they are “already doing.”
With lagging salaries and rising education costs, if administrators wish to keep the MLS at the center of the profession, as the survey suggests, and retain staff they have invested in they may have to look to at progressive tuition programs like the one at Ohio University’s (OU) Alden Library. Because OU does not offer the MLS degree, it offers tuition reimbursement, up to 50 percent of costs, for library staff who wish to pursue an MLS elsewhere.
“Anyone on our staff who is working at least half-time and has completed the probationary period for new employees is eligible,” OU interim library director Jan Maxwell told the LJ Academic Newswire. “As they [staff] learn, they bring new skills and ideas to their work in the library. The program benefits our employees, the library, and the university. It certainly has helped us retain good people we’ve invested in.”
With no disrespect to her current position, McGivney said that a program like the one at OU could’ve made a difference in whether she stayed in her first library job. “Unfortunately my first employer was not in a position to offer reimbursement outside of their own programs,” she noted. “I never really did want to leave. Even if my former employer could have contributed half of the tuition,” she says, “I would have stayed. The work, environment, and people were superb.”
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LJ Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview: Student Open Access Activist Gavin Baker
This week SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) announced the launch of its Right to Research campaign aimed at educating upcoming generations of students. It tapped Gavin Baker, a student activist and SPARC’s first summer intern, to help get the forward-thinking initiative off the ground. The LJ Academic Newswire caught up with Baker this week to discuss open access, technology, and the impact of faculty. Librarians, take note: your students, including your undergraduates, are paying attention.
LJAN: How did you first become involved with open access issues?
GB: I had been aware of open access, but only really connected with the issue when my undergraduate university, the University of Florida, prepared to cut $750,000 in journal subscriptions due to budgetary limitations. I had no idea that serials costs totaled three-quarters of a million dollars for one school, let alone that they could be much more than that. The realization that libraries really struggle with costs to provide access to their users ignited the urgency of open access for me.
How do you approach the subject of open access with students? Is there any real knowledge base there to work from?
Issues like open access are certainly niche issues for students, who are more accustomed to hearing about issues like the Iraq war, the environment, and the like when someone talks to them about political and social issues. But when I've talked with students who have no prior knowledge of open access, they grasp it pretty quickly. Everybody’s had the experience of finding a paper that looks relevant to their work, then discovering their library doesn’t have a subscription. Graduate students especially are cognizant of the academic publishing system and understand how the subscription-only model works against the research community. And, of course, most students today have grown up online. My generation expects access to information, and systems that don’t provide this seem foreign to us. Students are fertile soil for supporting open access. It just takes someone to plant the seed.
How much does technology affect the way students today are thinking about information access and scholarly communication?
Tremendously. The divisions between disciplines, and between academic and nonacademic audiences, are weak for students, largely due to the expectations coming from new communication tools like blogs and social networking sites. The idea that only others in their discipline would be able to read their research seems a bit backwards to students. It’s hard to overestimate the impact of search engines like Google. It is certainly not the only way that students retrieve information, but it’s usually the first stop and it shapes our expectations about how other information retrieval tools will work.
Do you often, or ever, find yourself educating your teachers about open access?
When I was a student, I did this a little. I think the only professor I ever asked directly about it already routinely posted his papers online even though he wasn’t necessarily knowledgeable about repositories, self-archiving, journal prices, or anything like that, he knew it was to his benefit that people be able to find his papers when they came to his web site. At other times, when talking with faculty or librarians who were knowledgeable about open access, the initial response was usually surprise that students were interested, followed by enthusiasm.
Do you find faculty open to exchanges with students on these issues, and, if so, how do you encourage that?
One issue we encountered when preparing the campaign was the influence of faculty advisers on student publishing decisions. Almost everyone I asked told me that a student working on an article, thesis, or conference presentation would be most influenced by their faculty when considering how to disseminate it. There are certainly many faculty who are very forward-thinking and knowledgeable on such subjects, but there are also many others who are used to the old system and somewhat passive about the success of open access. I hope faculty will use the new campaign to talk to their students about open access, but we’ll also be using other channels to reach students directly, as well as through their libraries and student organizations. Whether it’s initiated by faculty or the student, I hope the campaign will be a conversation starter.
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Methodist Ministers May Attempt To Stop Bush Library at SMU
Methodist ministers are reportedly making a “final, yet improbable attempt” to keep the George W. Bush presidential library from landing at Southern Methodist University (SMU). According to Associated Press, (AP) opponents to the library within the church are asking the library be voted on at the church’s delegates’ meeting this summer.
SMU officials, however, say it already has all the church approval it needs, when the Methodist mission council gave its blessing last year. Scott Jones, president of the church’s College of Bishops and an SMU trustee told reporters that the delegates “had never failed to ratify any decisions by the mission council.” Andrew Weaver, however, organizer of an online petition drive against the project, told the New York Times that “35 percent of the delegates were progressives opposed to the plan,” suggesting that it would not be impossible to “inform and recruit 16 percent of the moderate delegates to block the project.” Bush officials have been in exclusive negotiations with SMU for over a year regarding the library and a policy center.
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Best Sellers in Geography (13 digit ISBNs in brackets), June 2007–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
- Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu
Bergreen, Laurence
Alfred A Knopf
2007. ISBN 140004345x [9781400043453]. $28.95
- World Map, 1300-1492: The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation
Edson, Evelyn
Johns Hopkins University
2007. ISBN 0801885892 [9780801885891]. $50.00
- Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century
Miles, Jonathan
Atlantic Monthly
2007. ISBN 0871139596 [9780871139597]. $25.00
- Maps: Finding Our Place in the World
Editor: James R. Akerman
University of Chicago Press
2007. ISBN 0226010759 [9780226010755]. $55.00
- Tourism in the Mountain South: A Double-Edged Sword
Martin, C. Brenden
University of Tennessee Press
2007. ISBN 1572335750 [9781572335752]. $32.00
- History of Cartography; V. 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance
Woodward, David
University of Chicago Press
2007. ISBN 0226907325 [9780226907321]. $400.00
- Routledge Atlas of Russian History
Gilbert, Martin
Routledge
2007. ISBN 041539483x [9780415394833]. $100.00
- Historical Atlas of California with Original Maps
Hayes, Derek
University of California Press
2007. ISBN 0520252586 [9780520252585]. $39.95
- Geospatial Web: How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 Are Shaping the Network
Scharl, A.
Springer
2007. ISBN 1846288266 [9781846288265]. $99.00
- Tourism and Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities
Becken, Susanne
Channel View Multi Matter
2007. ISBN 184541067x [9781845410674]. $119.95
- Flying the Black Flag: A Brief History of Piracy
Bradford, Alfred
Praeger
2007. ISBN 0275977811 [9780275977818]. $49.95
- Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
Druett, Joan
Algonquin of Chapel Hill
2007. ISBN 1565124081 [9781565124080]. $24.95
- Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire
Dalziel, Nigel
Penguin Books
2006. ISBN 0141018445 [9780141018447]. $20.00
- Cartographic Strategies of Postmodernity: The Figure of the Map in Contemporary Theory and Fiction
Mitchell, Peta
Routledge
2008. ISBN 0415955971 [9780415955973]. $95.00
- Key Concepts in Tourism
Lomin, Loykie
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 1403985022 [9781403985026]. $22.95
- Global Citizen's Handbook: Facing Our World's Crises and Challenges
Collins
2007. ISBN 0061243426 [9780061243424]. $19.95
- Remote Sensing: The Image Chain Approach
Schott, John R.
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195178173 [9780195178173]. $119.50
- Oxford Atlas of the World
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195334000 [9780195334005]. $80.00
- Captain Cook: Voyager Between Worlds
Gascoigne, John
Hambledon and London
2007. ISBN 1847250025 [9781847250025]. $29.95
- Marine Ecotourism: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Cater, Carl
CABI Publishing
2007. ISBN 1845932595 [9781845932596]. $110.00
Library Journal Academic Newswire
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