The doldrums are more politely known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone and in maritime lore, they are the period of the voyage where the ship drifts in dead air and still seas. In the doldrums, one waits (and waits, and waits) for the wind to change or a current to pass, and then leaps to action to make the most of the gust or ripple to edge a little further onwards. In the mean time, the ship drifts hither and thither, turns stem to stern, and everyone gets pretty surly.
You can see where this makes a nice metaphor for the labor market in libraries, archives, and museums.
The demographics of these professions have been a concern for the last five or ten years, because the majority of the profession has been (and continues to be) close to the age of retirement. Simultaneously, the developments in information technology of last two decades, from launch of Mosaic through first decade of this century, have brought a great deal of focus to our profession. Library schools got their “i”, archivist became a hot career choice, “e” began to preface all sorts of previously dignified objects and pursuits, and seemingly everyone became a “curator” of something or another. People who made smart investments in scare quotes and lower-case vowels laughed all the way to the bank.
In tandem, there was a major recruiting effort to bring people into library schools to create a new library workforce. Many have graduated from library schools into a marketplace with fewer jobs than anticipated, and it ties little looking to find many who feel an implicit promise was not kept. A little web-searching will find plenty of posts from disgruntled recent LIS grads, library paraprofessionals, and librarians concerned that trusts are being broken and the baby/bathwater ratio is gang agley.
The promise was a new-era library with jobs for everyone. The reality is a rapidly evolving profession: tied to a still complex information and attention economy, situated within complicated institutions, and all of that constrained by a global economy in crisis.
Let me say this clearly and carefully: the promise of employment within a library renaissance was not made in vain, but the forecasting was in error regarding the rate of change. It is simple demographic fact that the majority of our profession is nearing the age or retirement. The state of the economy has slowed the rate of retirement and pushed many people to stay on the job for another few years. Those few years mean nothing in a change that will shape decades of work to come, but they mean everything to a recent graduate.
There is an abundance of need for people with LIS backgrounds in a variety of workplaces. The money to hire them is not available.
There are two views to take of this. I have the privileged position. I joined the profession fourteen years ago, just at the time that library science was entering the Zeitgeist, but a few years ahead of the major recruiting efforts. I was also part of a small cohort in a specialized subset of the field, namely preservation. Mid-career librarians and early-stage library administrators have demographic advantages on both sides. We’re hirable, since we have fairly up-to-date skills and sufficient professional experience. In turn, if I need to bring talent into the library, there’s a glut on the labor market and they are very well trained and highly motivated. (I also like to think I am competent and all of that, but the wind was at my back regardless.)
The other position is the view from within that well trained and highly motivated talent pool. I do not think that we have any professional story about competitive labor markets. In the past, if you wanted a library job, you got an MLS and went to work. Keeping that job and flourishing was hard work. Many academic librarians are tenure track, or something like it, and for those who are not, the public can be a tougher critic than any peer reviewer. Hard work, but the door was open and the way was wide.
For many of you, the library job market is not a balmy place to be. Do not feel you were mislead. You were given a pretty good forecast. The forecasters had the wrong timeline, though. Spring is coming a few months later and, as with any seasonal change, it’s going to affect the harvest. (You’re the crops in this metaphor.) Be aware that for the library labor market, none of this matters very much. If we start the big turnover in 2015 instead of 2010, it will come out in the wash by 2025. For you it will matter a lot, but the labor market does not know or care about you. You have to make some decisions.
In a real ocean sailing voyage, you reach the doldrums and you’re stuck. You wait. In your professional voyage, of course, you have some options for getting off the boat. The number of places you can be of value for knowing something about metadata, information-seeking behaviors, or research is growing all the time. Most of those places don’t have a fine press collection or a trove of historically significant manuscripts, however. I don’t like writing it, and I’m sure you don’t like reading it, but we both want you to have a job.I have had several students who had to leave the profession because the jobs simply were not there. These were people who I would have been happy to have worked for – smart, dedicated, insightful, personable, all around excellent colleagues.
For some of you, though, brace yourselves. Your career is going to go far, fast. Slipping the doldrums means catching strong currents and brisk winds homewards or to new found lands. Libraries and archives are fascinating and rewarding places to work right now.
Even though not everyone can have and eat their cake with the jam of tomorrow, the cream continues to rise to the top, cherries are getting picked, early-birds are getting worms, and I’m stopping this list now.
(Also, since this is a metaphor, I’ll ask that we excuse ourselves from any colonialist apprehensions arising from the “new found lands” bit up there. Also, also, since I’m a both a bit of an Age of Sail geek and professional interested in the work going on in Native and Tribal Libraries, if you do want to talk about colonialist apprehensions sometime, call me.)