Sticking up for librarians
March 18, 2008
It isn’t really news that librarians don’t get paid very much, and that their salaries are decreasing. So it was disappointing, but hardly surprising, when the Marathon County Public Library recently cut three librarian positions and replaced them with new “customer service librarian” positions, which pay $10,000 less per year.
What was surprising was the formal response from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies. Elizabeth Buchanan, director of the SOIS Center for Information Policy Research, posted the following statement on a Wisconsin Public Library email list:
The School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee wishes to respond formally to the recent job postings that called into question the professional status of the Master of Library and Information Science degree. We firmly believe that the role of a professional librarian should be valued, and, should be compensated appropriately as other professional degrees are. The value of professional librarians, and the complex work they do, should be taken very seriously. Libraries are indeed a public good, bridging information rich and poor and providing unfettered access to information. Professionally trained librarians, in collaboration with other library workers, benefit all members in a community. We encourage library administrators, library boards, and local officials to remember that the library has been shown to definitively improve the economic, educational, and social value of a community. Keeping this in mind, we urge those making personnel and budgetary decisions to maintain the professional status that communities expect and deserve in their libraries by providing a living wage that recognizes the value of trained librarians.
I think this lacks some force as an argument: The fact that libraries are valuable to communities doesn’t really support the contention that librarians should be paid well, and it doesn’t address the very real budget problems faced by Marathon County library administration. Also, the school has more than just an interest in the community value of libraries: they want their alumni to make decent wages. Still, it’s nice to see an information school taking a political stand in favor of libraries. In my experience, information schools generally try to raise the salaries of their graduates simply by encouraging them not to work in libraries.
Of course, the UWM School of Information Studies isn’t a member of the iCaucus—the self-styled elite group of iSchools that have banded together in their study of information, also known as the iField. (I’m not kidding.) So maybe this makes them more willing to recognize their responsibility and ties to to the field of librarianship.
