After reading Bobbosphere’s excellent article on teachers and the impact of low wages, increased workloads and ineffective unions, I could not help but ponder my library system’s own turn to full-time temps to fill vacant spots rather than hiring full-time permanent employees.
This move has been years in the making. After the dismal years of 2008 and 2009, when property taxes took a giant hit, our system suffered since our budget comes from property tax. When librarians left, their positions remained vacant—there was no money to hire another to take their place. Tough economic times made working in a public library tough as well.
When small increases in budget came, our system did not hire permanent, full-time librarians. Upper management decided that temps were needed. They came cheaper than a permanent librarian, and had the added benefit that they could be dismissed at a moment’s notice due to their “at will” status. So temps were hired. Temps were strung along for several years at times, even though the Union agreement stated that temps could only work up to one year, then must either be released or made permanent. Some managed to promote to full-time status, but many, after becoming comfortable in their jobs since their temp contract had been renewed, received their Dear John letter giving them a day’s notice that their job was terminated.
I was shocked and dismayed when this happened to a close colleague of mine. My system strung her along for 2½ years before dismissing her. Her replacement? A 90 day temp from a local agency, someone neither of us are certain actually has a library master’s degree (a requirement to be a librarian). Her manager, who fought to make her a permanent employee because she felt my friend was a valuable asset to our system, suddenly had to run a children’s program on top of her regular duties because the 90 day temp still had to be trained.
A 90 day temp replacement seems shocking, until one realizes that my system is hiring temps for lead children’s librarian positions rather than promoting an experienced children’s librarian. That is far more surprising and worrisome. Even though the lead children’s temp has a library degree, she does not have the experience to accompany it to effectively fill the position—it takes time to learn to be a good children’s librarian. She is a warm body that fills an empty position, and I have doubts as to whether a full-time librarian will be promoted into the position any time soon (and no, the Union is doing nothing about it, which, as far as I can tell, is typical). The public library system is going the way of academic institutions—hire more and more temps that can be underpaid then released when needed to save money. Expertise is hardly a motivating factor when choosing temps over permanent employees.
I’m certain quite a few people think nothing of this, especially since all too many believe that a librarian’s job is so simple that any half-baked idiot off the street can do it. This is not true, but unfortunately this idea is stressed more and more in my system. How? By taking all aspects of a librarian’s job that requires the degree and shifting it to a central location where only a few librarians, aided by part-time staff, complete the work. Cataloging has this distinction, and many large systems, public and academic, have been cataloging centrally for years. In fact, catalog records are usually purchased from a separate company so no local cataloging needs to be done—despite the fact those records can be poorly created and are oftentimes wrong (at one point in my graduate career, I had a cataloger tell me that 50% of the records from OCLC were wrong. That was several years ago, and I took the statement with a grain of salt, but the point is these records can be wrong, and unless one can convince a centralized cataloger that it is vitally important that they take the time out of their workday to correct a mistake, it will never be fixed). Ordering books, labeling them, deciding shelving location (new book, etc.), are done centrally, so those on the front lines no longer have to worry about such trivial things. We cannot suggest reading titles to customers, just in case someone complains about inappropriate material in the book, and must point them to NoveList, goodreads, or other, similar services for recommendations. Reference questions that last more than 5 minutes are supposed to be referred to a central reference service, and the customer must wait for an e-mail or phone-call with the answer. All promotional materials, including listings of hours, bookmarks, flyers, posters, etc., must be created using a template and approved centrally. If they are not approved, one cannot use them. My system also does not allow librarians to write articles or give talks at conferences without first having their article or talk approved by upper management—and if upper management does not like what is said, the librarian cannot publish the article or give the talk. Sometimes these individuals are not allowed to even attend the conference after that, since the upper management is concerned they may give the speech anyway—or they are demoted. On top of it all, we are not allowed to participate in politics in any fashion, which means we cannot advocate for our own library, even if it is threatened with hour reductions or closure.
There are far more changes than I have listed, all designed to allow a person with little to no experience to man a job where expertise no longer matters. Any temp, whether they have a library degree or not, can sit behind a desk and point to the restroom, then pawn a customer off to a central reference center when a hard question passes the desk. Teaching information literacy or performing any other task that is central to librarianship is ignored or actively nixed. My job has become a dull wash of pre-approved programming and nothing else.
Customers notice, too. Recently, after conducting a storytime, I was told by a mother that I should go to school and get a degree to do a real job. I was stunned. I have two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree, which happens to be in Library and Information Science. When I told her about my degrees, she did not believe me. She was positive that one did not need any advanced expertise to become a librarian. She thought it was a part-time job one got after graduating high school. While libraries do hire part-time workers (pages, aides, the people who shelve books and check them out to customers), librarians do much, much more than that.
Is it why corporations like LSSI, who focus on part-time help rather than employing librarians, are gaining ground—librarians are not seen as valuable assets but overpaid, unskilled public employees. In fact, Frank A. Pezzanite, who was once in charge of LSSI, has said that librarians basically sit on their butts their whole career and do nothing until their pension kicks in, and if they are hired for a private company, they at least have to work. Because, apparently, that is all librarians do. Their expertise in finding the appropriate book or information for a customer is inconsequential (you only need to know a few Dewey or LC numbers, right?). Teaching a child how to determine whether a website is lying to them is not considered a viable skill. Supporting local education at all levels by choosing materials suited to the community is laughable—one-collection-fits-all is now the appropriate answer (when you must purchase materials for a dozen libraries all at once, it is far easier and less stressful to buy multiple copies of one book than it is to carefully plan a well-rounded collection. How do I know this? When you receive 4 copies of the same book on catapults, it is kind of obvious). Anyone can read a book to a child during storytime—parents read to kids all the time and they are hardly trained, so it doesn’t matter who sits in front holding the picture book and trying to get kids excited about literacy. As long as a library provides internet service so adults can use Facebook, nothing else matters. After all, everyone can download books for free off the Internet. Who needs libraries? /end snark