It appears that there is more movement than usual affecting the status of our profession. As I understand it, there are libraries around the country that are experiencing reductions in services, changes in librarians’ professional status, closing of branches, etc. In Wausau, WI, positions were eliminated and replaced with new job titles and less pay. In Memphis, TN, the library director was dismissed by the major and a political appointee without the library degree or library management experience was appointed to the position. In Dartmoth, MA, the library system has cut branch services and is looking at outsourcing some services. What the heck is going on?
Having served as the top academic library administrator most of my career, I know that there are two sides to every story. And, I haven’t been privvy to hearing both sides. Nonetheless, there appears to be something wrong in each of the processes.
During my administrative career, my management teams and I did reorganize and affect change. But, I can say that in doing that, we never lost sight of the original purpose of reorganization — to provide better services to our users. We listened to user focus groups; we surveyed our users; we got input from library employees. We were careful not to make arbitrary nor capricious decisions. We never compromised the integrity of the process.
We also realized that IT allowed us to rethink and reinvent our library organizations. But, in reorganizing, no one ever lost their jobs or suffered a reduction in salary. And, when job duties were changed, we worked to re-tool and retrain folks. Again, all this was done to better serve our users.
In the case of the Memphis mayor, I would suspect that there was not much integrity in his process. I would suspect that he didn’t hold library patron focus groups, talk with staff, nor survey folks. I would also suspect that the person that replaced the library director (albeit might be a fine manager in other circumstances) has no sense of the public library culture.
All this to say, we must be concerned about what is happening to our profession. We have a component in place that you as members pay for — ALA APA — whose purpose is to deal with improving status of our profession (as well as improving salaries/benefits). However, I would maintain that we have to deal with our status in order to improve our salaries.
I have pledged, as your ALA president, to work with ALA-APA to make it more effective for members. However, you all have to become engaged with ALA-APA. It is your association and should be responding to your needs/concerns. It’s only through more of your involvement that we can move forward.
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