Libraries and Librarians Rock

Are we dumbing down and de-humanizing our libraries?  Are we speaking out against this process? John Berry’s article on “The Vanishing Librarians”  from Library Journal 2/15/2008 portrays a grim picture of today’s  libraries indeed, but it looks like it is not so far from the truth.

At my Library in Wausau Wisconsin, the 3 masters degree librarians with many years of service (myself included)  are receiving yearly salary cuts of $10,000 each because the work is professed to be less complex today.  See the two recent articles from the Wausau Daily Herald for yourself here and the second article here.

Librarians—we are in big trouble if our Directors and Library Boards do not value libraries and librarians, and see a professional librarian’s work as “less complex” and therefore less valuable today.  It is anything but.  Today’s librarian faces many more challenges and much more complexity today than in the past, and it is becoming much more so very rapidly.  

Librarians provide much more complicated reference and research assistance, assist with complicated technical and inappropriate behavior problems in the Library, write curriculum and teach computer classes for the staff anad public, plan programs,  give reader recommendations, show customers how to evaluate websites, recommend web sites to use, coordinate passport services (at some libraries) and summer library programs involving many branches, and multi-task themselves to death.   Librarians try desperately and  frantically to keep up with new technologies by playing with them at home. 

Customer expectations have risen. Customers are much more demanding today and tired from their fast-paced lives, bringing their stress and frustration to us.  We provide help, comfort, empathy, reassurance and information as quickly as their needs demand so that they can  move on to the next task in their busy lives.

The more that we, Librarians, participate in eroding our own value, and allow library boards and administrators to “dumb down and de-humanize” Librarians and Libraries alike, the more difficult it will be to get and keep public support and therefore adequate funding for libraries so that we can grow, survive, thrive, and meet and exceed the needs of today’s and  tomorrow’s users .   Libraries and Librarians can do many wonderful things to try to attract new users and reinvent themselves, but all will be worthless if we continue to de-value, downgrade and under-appreciate ourselves, our professional colleagues, and our libraries in the process. 

I agree with John Berry.  We need to scream, raise our voices in alarm, and proclaim our value before we are are perceived as completely worthless and disappear, librarians and libraries alike.  “Do not go gently into that good night….” (Dylan Thomas)

Sharyn Heili