Another Warrant Issued - Strange Bias Continues

It happened again, somebody got into trouble with the law for stealing library books. This time it is 21 year old Victoria Rogers. You can read about it here and here.

And yet again, there is a clear bias against the library for putting a warrant out for a poor single mother. This just chaps my ass. If single mom had just so happened to forget a DVD in her purse from Wal Mart, the same thing would happen. So why is keeping a library book permanently any different? Some of you may be thinking "because she paid for the book with tax money so it is hers already!". Well, yes and then no. Yes, she did pay for the book, but you conveniently left off how much of the book she paid for. Lets examine that for one second....

The City of Killeen Public Library brings in $1,294,710 a year. City population is 102,003. That is about $12.70 per year per person goes to the library... or about $1 a month. The library has a materials budget of about $157,840 a year. There are 102,012 items in the library. So every person spends about $1.57 a year on books. Lets just keep it simple and assume every book is replaced every 5 years. That gives us an inventory value of about $789,200. Divide that by the number of people in Killeen and you have $7.73 which is the amount each citizens has invested in the total collection specifically. Therefore Victoria owns about $0.009 of the book she stole ($7.73/$789,200). We can round up to 1 cent to keep it easy.

Yep, she paid for 1 cent of the book. I think that pretty much proves it is a collective book and not her own. Not that anyone was debating this fact.

I read her case closely, and it seems there was indeed another party involved, her ex husband. It seems this stellar individual went ahead and kept all the communication from the library a secret from his ex wife. I guess the moral to this story is fill out a change of address form as soon as you move out of your ex's house.

Part 3 – Demand

Part 3 – Demand

Now that we have established what is going on with supply, and how it will affect the job market, let’s take a moment and look at the final component of the discussion… Demand for librarians. Before I continue, I want to mention that I am well aware that there are exceptions to all that I am about to say. There always are. Everything I say should be considered as being ‘as a general rule’. Please to not nit-pick stuff on a micro level. Feel free to nit-pick on a Macro level tho! I LOVE debating. Seriously. I do. =)

Ok, then, here we go. Let’s start by touching on some of the things that affect librarian demand.

• Price of Librarians. How much would one cost?
• Quality of Librarians. How do they compare to other Master Degreed people?
• Price of Alternatives. How much are Paraprofessionals?
• Quality of Alternatives. How well can Paraprofessionals perform at a Librarian level?
• Number of positions nationally (Demand). Currently, there are 132,991 such positions according to the ALA.
• Number of Librarians nationally. How many MLS’s either employed or looking for a job.

The textbooks would argue that the price of librarians (at the moment this number is $56,259 according to the ALA. FWIW not anyplace I have ever lived) is the most important factor in determining the demand for librarians. I would agree if the price for Librarians was to decrease, but would contest this if the price was increasing because based on a sharply left veering Demand Curve near the Price line. Therefore there is very little flexibility in upward price. This is due in part to the fact that librarians, especially public librarians, are not funded on profit motives. In other words, the entity hiring the librarians does not have to demonstrate their worth (but there are some good ROI models out there), making the Librarian price inflexible at best, fixed at worst. Sticking it to the tax payer syndrome so to speak. However, even tho the taxpayers foot the bill without choice, you will still never see $80k a year librarians for fear of rioting. No politician feels that lucky. Hence the near horizontal demand curve as it approached Price line. I will coin this theory the “Green Ceiling for Librarians”. They cannot prove they are worth more, thus will not be worth more. I contend that in their current state (skill-set and abilities), they simply are not worth more.

Add to that the fact you have 132,991 librarian positions (according to ALA) and there is very little motivation to add more. What do you get if you add more? Better customer service? Maybe. More profit? No. Truth is, it is hard to quantify the benefit from adding another 10,000 librarians to the mix. Now factor in all the alternatives such as Google and paraprofessionals, and you have a real hum-dinger of a situation in regards to demand for Librarians.

I assert that the most important factor in determining Librarian demand is not price, but quality. If Librarian meant more to the job market then just ‘can use wooden information retrieval devices’ then it would be a step in the right direction. Librarianship needs a complete re-tooling. Librarians need to be masters of the Internet and all information in digital format. They need massive database training. They need to understand business to better manage people, libraries, and information. All industries, no matter the scope, should want a few Librarians amongst their ranks. Just like all businesses benefit from an Accountant, so too should they benefit from a Librarian.

Of course this would change the very foundation of what a Librarian is. Like we talked about in Part 2, the Librarian would posses an undergraduate that alone, would offer a profitable career. The MLS should be the icing on the cake, not the whole dish. Alas, these types of degrees are hard work and the washout rate would be high. Yay! I say! Like one of my Economics professors once said… “Money = Not Easy”. Succinct and very true. The MLS undergrad should be 2 parts Business, 1 part Computer Science, and 1 part Education. That would be the perfect foundation for the perfect Librarian. Anything else is less then optimum. Nothing else should be accepted. No longer can we accept incompetent or undereducated people into our ranks. This must stop. It has to. Our reputation is at stake! Reputation will play a key part in our Demand.

Paraprofessionals

The other great threat to Librarian Demand is the Paraprofessional. Why? Quit simple really, they can do what a librarian does almost as well, just as well, or even better, for a lot less money. Many librarians will disagree, however you are not fooling anybody. I went thru library school. I know how easy it is. I know full well that a person with an undergrad in art and an MLS is far inferior to a person with a Bachelor in Business as far as overall quality is concerned (remember the washout discussion in Part 2?). Many tell me how hard library school was. I have to try not to lol. Obviously these were not Business or Science Undergrads. You never hear the latter complaining of how hard the MLS was. What does that tell you?

Librarian Darwinism

Charles Darwin had a little theory. It went something like this…. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

This can be summed up in Minks speak as “Adapt or Die”. This applies directly to Librarians.

Librarians, due to their unique situation (i.e. tax funded and/or hard to fire) have managed to avoid the natural evolution that occurs in the normal workforce. If you offer a product nobody wants, your business fails and you are done. If you are incompetent, you are fired. You must produce something somebody wants or it is all over. Librarians however, can be computer ignorant in the digital age and still have a job. Exsqueeze me? Alas, it is true. I know many Librarians that can barely function online. They have never downloaded an E-book (or anything for that matter) and have never used a flash drive. They cannot function in Excel and you can just forget Access. They are typically older ‘boomers’ and many have no desire or willingness to learn. They will continue to suckle at the library/taxpayer teat until they see fit to retire, immune from Darwin’s grasp. And why would they retire? Sucking teat is easy, and it pays fairly well. They are not going anywhere. Their only purpose in life seems to be to make the rest of us look bad… to sully the Librarian name. Darwin needs to be allowed back into libraries. The weak, the incompetent, the people with ‘social issues’, they need to go. I don’t care where. Only once being a Librarian equates to competence and is nationally recognized to be a desirable addition to any organization can we expect to solidify the Demand curve or shift it to the right, if only just a little.

Part 2 - Supply

Part 2 - Supply

Now that we can see what our future holds, what can we do to mitigate the damage that is about to occur? As we discussed below, there are two main issues, supply of Librarians and demand for Librarians. Both issues should be addressed. Today, we will examine Librarian supply.

Barriers to Entry (link)

This is an important business term for us to understand as it relates directly to the problem and solution to the Librarian supply dilemma. I suggest you spend a few minutes in wikipedia and brush up on the concept before continuing.

The first and easiest action we can take would be to control the supply of Librarians. As is stands now, there are only minimal barriers to entry to be a Librarian. What are the current Barriers to Entry?

1) HS Diploma

2) Bachelor Degree

3) Graduate Degree entrance exams

4) Masters in Library Science

5) Education Finance

At first glance, these five barriers may seem formidable, but lets examine them a bit closer to see the truth. We will look at the problems with each and examine some solutions.

HS Diploma – Not that difficult to get, almost everybody is able to pull this one off.

Bachelor Degree – There are many different types of Bachelor Degrees available. There are easy ones and hard ones, and all sorts of them in between. MLS programs take any degree. This is problematic for several reasons. First, you get tons of people that can barely pass college enrolling in the MLS program. Second, you get MLS graduates without the basic skills needed to run a library because they have some cheesy undergrad. Third, the mass of semi-smart librarians gives the librarian profession a bad reputation. “These are the least smart of all Masters Degreed people”, the marketplace mutters. Shh,, can you hear that whooshing sound? That is the sound of Demand dropping. Sorry, I am getting ahead of myself. That is the next blog.

What can be done? First, change the Undergraduate requirements to get into Library School. I suggest a business degree (any flavor, Economics, Finance, Accounting, all will do as the core curriculums are very similar) or a computer technology degree. Absolutely no more ‘easy’ degrees should be permitted. What practical good would a undergraduate in art, political science, history, anthropology, etc. be for a librarian?

None of these topics trains you in what is really important to run a library. Nor does it make you very marketable overall. Basically, you are lower quality then all the other graduates. Other professions have strict undergraduate requirements. To be a doctor you must have a life science undergraduate to get into medical school (with astounding grades). To get a Masters in criminal justice you have to have a C.J. undergrad. The list goes on. But to be a librarian? Any lame ass undergrad will do! Not good. I hear that sound again, do you?

You want a high dropout rate too btw. My undergrad (Information Systems) had around a 50% dropout rate! I kid you not. I made it ok, but half of my peers did not. Guess what? Right out of college I was worth $50k a year. Quality over quantity. The marketplace knows of this little theory. Librarians need to too. We need to wash out the inferior. Sounds cruel, but it is critical to the fix.

Graduate Degree entrance exams – Currently the passing scores on these entrance exams is a joke. Most high schoolers could pass the tests with ease. My scores on the GRE were way above minimal passing score, and I barely studied (brushed up on my calculus a bit). Entrance exams into other programs take weeks and months of study to pass, so too should the exams into the MLS program.

Masters in Library Science – Now we get to the meat. As is stands now, the curriculum is way too easy. Do not confuse easy with fast. The coursework takes a lot of time. But again, any highschooler could do it. My entire program I never took one real test! Not one! What? Ooo,, that is bad beyond words as far as program reputation is concerned. And, for the record, I passed with a perfect 4.0… without breaking a sweat. My undergrad was phenomenally more difficult then my MLS.

To make sure MLS graduates have the necessary skills to succeed there are two ways you can go. You can skip changing the undergraduate requirement and cover some of the basics during the MLS program, or you can rely on the undergraduate program to be sure people with an MLS know how to;

Manage People

Use a spreadsheet

Understand Accounting

Use a Database

Create a PowerPoint presentation

Skilled in public speaking

Know how to dress

Understand personnel basics

No person should graduate without these skills. Where they get them, not a big issue, but not having them after graduation? Big issue. Remember, we do not want the whooshing sound.

Education Finance – Last but not least we have a barrier to entry that is on par with the others. It costs about the same to get an Art History Degree as it does to get a Finance Degree. Same goes for the various Masters Degrees available. Here is one barrier that is in place properly. Thank goodness.

Next blog… Librarian Demand. This ones gonna sting. =P