The other “dismal science”

When Thomas Carlyle wrote about the “dismal science,” he was referring to economics. But why couldn’t the phrase also be applied to library science? Well, library science has never been terribly scientific. It’s just dismal.

But the dismal science of economics can actually be quite helpful in answering some of the persistent questions of the library field – namely, why is information school such a joke? and why are the salaries of “information professionals” so low?

I’m going to start with the second question and work my way back to the first. For evidence of the low salaries in the field (and getting lower, as we’ll see in a minute), take a look at the results of a couple recent surveys, the annual placements and salaries survey conducted by Library Journal, and the librarian salary survey conducted by ALA-APA. The Library Journal survey looked at the salaries of recent graduates from library/information science (LIS) programs, while the ALA-APA survey looked at the salaries of currently employed librarians with graduate degrees. The results of the Library Journal survey are more interesting (and more accessible, since the ALA-APA has only made a brief press release available – if you want the full results, you’ve got to pay for them), but they both show a similarly dismal employment outlook for the profession.

According to the Library Journal survey results, LIS graduates continue to have a high employment rate (about 90%), but the kind of employment they find does not always represent the sorts of jobs one would expect them to be getting with a graduate degree. 10% of respondents reported finding a job outside the LIS profession; 10% reported finding a temporary professional job; 10% reported employment in nonprofessional positions with titles such as “technical assistant, clerk, or customer service assistant”; and almost 30% reported cobbling together multiple part-time jobs.

Additionally, all these categories of employment (temporary, part-time, outside the profession, and nonprofessional) have increased since the last annual survey, as has the average length of the job search, while the number of graduates finding permanent, full-time, professional work has decreased. Diversity in the profession has also decreased, as have salaries for minorities. Gender inequity has remained (starting salaries for women are 6.5% less than those for men), even though women make up 80% of the LIS workforce. Additionally, 16% of respondents reported having to move outside of their home region to find a job.

The one piece of good news for LIS degree holders, according to both surveys, is that salaries went up in the last year. The Library Journal survey found that average annual starting salaries of LIS graduates increased 2.2%, from $40,118 in 2005 to $41,014 in 2006. Similarly, the ALA-APA reports that mean salaries of all librarians with LIS graduate degrees increased 2.8% over the last year, from $56, 259 to$57,809 annually.

But, wait. Is this news really all that good? According to the DOL Bureau of Labor Statistics $41,014 in 2006 was worth $39,732.31 in 2005 dollars, which means there was actually a decrease in the salaries for new LIS graduates of about 1% in terms of real purchasing power. Similarly, the supposed 2.8% increase reported by the ALA-APA disappears completely if inflation is taken into account.

So why are real salaries for librarians and LIS graduates going down? An economist would say that a decrease in salaries is a good sign that the supply of qualified, degree-holding librarians has gone up while the demand for them has gone down. In other words, lots of people who are (or want to be) librarians, but not so many jobs. This suspicion is strengthened by the other survey findings: decrease in professional jobs, increase in part-time and temporary jobs, and increase in the length of the job search.

When faced with this sort of market, suppliers – in this case, information schools (who like any profit-maximizing firm, want their product – in this case, LIS graduates – to be in as high demand as possible) – have two choices: reduce supply, or do what they can to increase demand.

Information schools, by their very existence, already serve to reduce the supply of qualified applicants for LIS jobs. The operation of information schools is analogous to a situation described by Charles Wheelan in his book Naked Economics – the licensing of manicurists in Illinois:

The state legislature [of Illinois] is being pressured to enact more stringent licensing requirements for manicurists. Is this a grassroots lobbying campaign being waged by the victims of pedicures gone terribly awry? (One can just imagine them limping in pain up the capital steps.) Not exactly. The lobbying is being done by the Illinois Cosmetology Association on behalf of established spas and salons that would rather not compete with a slew of immigrant upstarts.

Economists refer to this sort of movement to reduce competition “increasing barriers to entry.” Does the American Library Association participate in this kind of maneuvering? Of course it does. And based on my experience in library school, I would argue that this is the primary reason that information schools exist – not to prepare their students to become librarians, but to serve as a sort of licensing board. Librarian accreditation is not the result of a grassroots lobbying campaign waged by victims of reference interviews gone awry.

The other option open to the librarian suppliers is to try to increase demand for their product. There are at least a couple methods that information schools can use to do this. First, they can put pressure on libraries to reduce the number of paraprofessional positions that don’t require graduate degrees. I don’t have any evidence for this happening, other than hearsay that those positions are becoming harder to find. But I have lots of firsthand experience with the second method, which is schools putting pressure on non-library institutions to hire LIS graduates, and putting corresponding pressure on students to consider non-library professions. This, I suspect, is the prime motivation for the change in terminology from “library schools” and “library science” to “information schools” and “information science.”

So in a roundabout way (as usual), I’ve come back to the first question: what is it that makes information school so terrible? I think it has a lot to do with the fact that giving students relevant, practical experience is counterproductive when there are no jobs. If information schools are concerned primarily with attracting students by placing their graduates (which I’m sure they are), then the manipulation of the supply of and demand for their product will be far more useful.