[t]he perception that being a librarian is a breeze appears to be grounded in truth. In a library’s serene sphere, you are not constantly forced to be accountable and comply with social norms, so your anxiety and stress levels drop, organisational psychologist Christopher Shen says. A piqued reaction to a fine may be as harried as it gets. (Wilson, 2009)

Image, status, and gender

In 1992, a survey of librarians in countries around the world revealed that 82 percent of librarians agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “The status of the library profession is low” (Prins and de Gier, 1992, p. 111). Respondents explained that their profession was largely invisible, i.e., that the general public knew (and cared) little about the type of work that librarians did. They also felt that fellow employees in the same organizations (schools, government, businesses, etc.), in addition to the heads of those organizations knew little or nothing about the jobs of librarians. This lack of knowledge meant those in positions of authority placed little value on their contribution; this, in turn, was responsible for low salaries. Lack of knowledge about what librarians did also left libraries at greater risk of having their budgets slashed and their staffs downsized when those holding the purse strings needed to trim costs.

Respondents to this survey also thought that librarianship was a low status profession because it was neither dynamic nor essential to a country’s economic growth. Particularly in developing nations, respondents worried that those outside the profession saw little or no connection between libraries and the growth or improvement of national economies. Instead, libraries were more likely to be viewed as a frivolity or a drain on struggling or emerging nations’ resources (Prins and de Gier, 1992).

Survey participants believed that most people could not distinguish between librarians, library volunteers (i.e., people who worked for free) and other non-professional library staff. There was also the problem that librarians’ jobs were often vastly different from one another. For example, someone employed as the head of a national library would perform none of the same tasks as someone who worked in a cataloguing department, yet both would call themselves “librarians” (Prins and de Gier, 1992). Given such a vast divergence in their respective job descriptions, the researchers responsible for this survey wondered if librarianship could truly call itself a “profession.”

They noted that the kinds of work we usually think of as true professions – e.g. medicine, law and engineering – required rigorous training of their initiates which resulted in a set of skills that could not be replicated by members of the general public. The work these professionals performed was considered important enough to warrant specific legislation in most countries to prevent unscrupulous individuals from passing themselves off as members of these professions (Prins and de Gier, 1992).

The work of a librarian, in contrast, can as often as not be performed by individuals who have not gone to library school. Librarians, unlike physicians who often only do the most skilled parts of the job and leave less skilled tasks to supporting medical staff, do a number of tasks each day which require little skill or education. Again, the designation “librarian” is not one protected by legislation as it is with other professions. As a result, anyone can legitimately declare that he or she is a librarian without ever having been specifically trained for the job (Prins and de Gier, 1992).

Librarianship, then, was seen as lacking many of the hallmarks of other “true” professions. Survey participants worried that the training for librarianship as a profession did not appear as rigorous as other professions and did not attract the same caliber of students. Indeed, respondents described library science as a discipline which attracted “second or third rate students for whom the LIS represents the last chance to become graduate students” (Prins and de Gier, 1992, p. 117). Library and information science schools were also thought by survey participants to be staffed by second rate instructors who subscribed to an outdated and obsolete curriculum.

Finally, the fact that librarianship was still largely a woman’s occupation also contributed to its low status, according to those who answered the survey. Sadly, in both industrialized and developing nations around the globe, jobs in which women made up the majority of the workforce were generally viewed as inferior, and librarianship was no different. In addition, because library work had been traditionally viewed as clerical, it was felt in many parts of the globe to be more suited to women (Golub, 2009).

One might logically think, then, that since it is a profession which largely employs women, at least women would rise to the top and work in those senior management roles traditionally staffed by men. Ironically, that is not at all the case. From the moment men began to enter the library profession, they disproportionately shot to the top management positions. In 1983, for example, 78.3 percent of the members of the American Library Association were female and 21.7 percent were male (Heim and Estabrook, 1983; Golub, 2009). Despite these percentages, 49.6 percent of men were in administrative positions compared with 30.4 percent of women. More alarming, however, was that men consistently beat out women in terms of salary “even when personal, professional, and organizational variables [were] comparable to those of females in the sample” (Heim and Estabrook, 1983, p. 37).

The good news is that since the 1980s, women have made significant strides in closing the managerial gap. Even so, they are still today underrepresented in higher administrative positions and still only earn approximately three-quarters of the wages earned by men (Golub, 2009).

There is also some suggestion that the prominence given to technology in libraries and the de-skilling of more traditional types of library work such as cataloguing and reference (particularly by passing these jobs down to less qualified library employees) are due to the increasing male influence in librarianship. Not surprisingly, men have attempted to distance themselves from the more traditional aspects of this female-dominated profession not only by changing the focus of the work, but also by changing the name of the profession itself. Once universally known as librarianship, professional schools now offer degrees in library science or information science (Golub, 2009).

These attempts to promote the image and status of the work by changing the focus as well as the name signal the ongoing problems with the profession’s attempt to sell itself as a true profession. Yet the problems with image and status are real and ongoing as can be seen in the fact that the job ultimately lacks the three hallmarks of other professions: (a) the monopoly on the work in question, (b) the specific expertise and training which is impossible for others to learn without similar education, (c) the legal protection and sanctions regarding who can declare themselves to be that type of professional.

As mentioned above, the poor image of librarians may well be responsible for the unrelenting series of budget cuts and downsizing afflicting many libraries. As librarian Regina Powers (2011) writes,

So while shutting libraries may reflect poorly on organizations or elected officials, Powers notes, laying off library staff doesn’t have the same effect. Those with the authority to do the budget cutting assume that “libraries can simply run themselves.” With this attitude, Powers wonders, why not “replace us with phone trees, self-service checkout machines and volunteers?” Sadly, in both North America and the UK, this is exactly what is happening (O’Connor, 2012).

Poor management

As with any other type of organization, ineffective leadership is also a problem for libraries. The problem begins with schools of library and information science. Although librarians often end up working in supervisory and management positions, library schools do little in the way of preparing librarians to be effective supervisors and leaders. Not much is taught, for example, on how to inspire subordinates, how to negotiate effectively with stakeholders and superiors, how to handle tricky personnel issues, or how to be both a leader and a team player. Instead, the profession tends to be “passive, inert, and [to] drift along without giving proper attention to this extremely important topic” (Riggs, 2001, p. 16).

It seems hardly surprising, then, that studies in which library staff and library directors are asked to rank top leadership traits end up producing lists of qualities that differ significantly (Young et al., 2006). These results are more than merely a difference in opinion between younger and older workers; indeed, without a shared educational foundation in the practices and principles of management, librarians and their directors will probably not agree on which leadership qualities are most important. Lack of agreement, however, may be indicative of gaps in understanding; librarians will be less likely to comprehend the motives or appreciate the actions of their directors, and directors will be less likely to sympathize with the concerns of subordinates, adjudging them to be too removed from the strains of management to understand the key issues and concerns.

Insufficient training in managerial methods, however, does more than merely lead to gaps in understanding; it is also responsible for ineffective or dysfunctional management practices down the road. This ineptitude frequently manifests itself in a number of ways. Library leaders may be unwilling, for example, to consult with librarians, library staff and other key stakeholders (Staninger, 2012). They make poor decisions because they do not seek the advice of those with expertise in the organization. Where consultation happens or advice is sought, the act is often merely pro forma and input derived from such consultation does not alter the course of management decision-making.

In addition to lack of consultation, dysfunctional management practices also include micromanagement, inflexibility and the unwillingness to share control (Staninger, 2012). Complicating matters is the fact that certain types of libraries (e.g., public libraries) have a board or commission which oversees library management. These boards and commissions can make matters worse if they have a tendency to micromanage (Bennett, 2004) or, conversely, to ignore problems entirely (“Better Oversight,” 2012). Micromanaging boards can stymie the efforts of competent managers to run the library effectively, while neglectful boards allow bad managers to wreak havoc for extended periods of time. All of this, combined with stressful economic times and with the downsizing of budgets and staff, can result in enormous problems for library management, and a stressful work environment for staff.

Budgets and staffing

In 2012, the American Library Association released an “infographic” (the equivalent of a poster presenting facts and statistics in visual form). The infographic reported that in that same year, 57 percent of US public libraries reported decreased or flat library budgets, and 40 percent of states reported decreased public library funding. The decrease in library funding inevitably meant a decrease in services and, almost as often, a cut in library staff either through lay-offs or by closing positions left vacant as a result of turnover or retirement. As one librarian surveyed by Library Journal in that same year commented,

Newspapers in recent years have been replete with stories about the “new normal”: budget and staff cuts in school, public, academic, national and other libraries. A 2010 Library Journal survey, for example, found that 43 percent of respondents had experienced staff cuts. Libraries serving larger populations were hit hardest – 93 percent of libraries in areas with over 1 million people had lost staff. In addition, 46 percent of survey participants were now relying more than ever on volunteers and self-service devices, while 59 percent of libraries trained employees to do multiple jobs in order to deal with staff shortages (O’Connor, 2012).

The new normal also involves closing branches entirely and firing librarians. In 2009, for example, the directors of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh decided to shutter four of its 19 branches and merge two other branches. The Pittsburgh system was 114 years old and had never before in its history closed a branch (“Sad Chapter,” 2009). Likewise, in 2012, the Huffington Post reported that 58 out of 124 District of Columbia schools would be re-opening without librarians in the next school year (up from 34 schools the year before). A spokesperson for the public schools noted that “[i]n these tough budget times, we have to make tough budget choices” (LaJoie, 2012). Cutting out the librarians was one of those tough choices, but the District of Columbia was not alone in its pain. Indeed, it was only one of many “hot spots” for library staff cuts in the country. Other states with similar problems, the article noted, included California, Arizona, Ohio and Michigan.

In California, for example, hundreds of school librarian positions and 328 full-time public library positions were cut in 2010 (Powers, 2011). Indiana, too, experienced massive cuts. Union representatives for the Gary Public Library announced that impending cuts would probably mean the end to their labour union. The president of the union’s local noted that, in addition to complete job loss for some staff, others had been cut from full-time to part-time status leaving them ineligible for union membership. She herself was one of the casualties noting that “her salary [was to] drop to $10,000 from $24,000 and she [would] have no benefits after 32 years on the job” (“Gary library,” 2012). The reason given for the budget crisis was insufficient revenue for public services as a result of a statewide cap on property tax.

Florida was also hit hard in 2012. In Jacksonville, the public library system was cut by more than 12 percent (Stepzinski, 2012) resulting in staff reductions. In the same year, Governor Rick Scott cut $1.5 milllion in funding from Florida’s five regional library consortia which had been key in offering local libraries training, participation in a statewide interlibrary loans program, and access to ebooks (Kitzmiller, 2012). The Miami-Dade Public Library’s operating budget for 2012 was cut by 30 percent; 153 part-time workers were chopped and full-time staff were reduced by 25 percent (Kelley, 2012).

But the pain experienced by libraries was not confined to the United States; indeed, library staff cuts also made headlines across the ocean in the UK. In 2012, library staff in North Somerset were informed of budget cuts which would mean the end to employment for 15 percent of the workers (Pickstock, 2012). Alarmed by the news, local residents in some villages offered to act as volunteer workers in hard-hit libraries rather than see them close.

That same year, The Sentinel newspaper reported that Stoke-on-Trent had closed certain libraries completely and cut the librarian complement by 43 percent (from 16 to 9). At the same time, full-time library positions in the Staffordshire County libraries had been cut by 17 percent (from 301 to 249), and in Cheshire East, five library positions had been eliminated (Campbell, 2012).

These library cuts in the UK were not unusual. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) released a report in 2012 based on a survey of 93 out of the 174 library authorities located in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Institute reported that 21 libraries had closed and 2,159 library workers or 10 per cent of all library staff had lost their jobs in the last year. Budgets had been cut by an average of 7.5 percent (about £39 million) during the same time period. Also, as with the library in North Somerset above, “13 per cent of authorities had set up community-managed libraries in order to keep local services going” (Hall, 2012). Local residents, it seems, would be required to pick up the pieces and volunteer to work for no salary if they wanted continued access to a local library.

In many parts of the globe academic libraries, too, have had their budgets slashed. While much of the cutting has been done without fanfare, in some places it has made the headlines. In 2011, newspapers reported that Melbourne University was cutting 30 library positions (Collins, 2011). A spokesman for the University noted that automation and digitization were responsible for the downsizing.

In the US, newspapers reported that University of California, Berkeley’s library had lost 70 employees in the previous four years as a result of funding cuts and was now required to shed 20 more positions as a result of further state cuts (Brown, 2012). The library system was at such a loss over how to handle this news that it had turned to the local community for suggestions on how next to proceed.

In both the US and Canada, government libraries have also been hit by budget and staff cuts. In July 2011, Governor Rick Perry “signed a new state biennial budget (FY12/13) that reduced state funding for the Texas State Library and Archives Commission by 64 percent” (Kelley, 2012). In May 2012, more than 400 employees at Canada’s national library (Library and Archives Canada) received notice that they could be among the 20 percent of employees expected to be cut over the next three years. Librarians at various Canadian government departments were also expected to be cut and their libraries closed.

Interestingly, when asked about the problem, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore said there was

Clearly, the idea that cuts were the result of “modernization” rather than budget woes has been no great consolation to those staff members receiving pink slips.

As these various accounts indicate, libraries of all stripes have found themselves cutting staff over the last few years; and these were cuts made over and above a continual process of downsizing that had already been underway for decades.

Finally and not surprisingly, no sooner had libraries began to report problems than library associations also found themselves in trouble. In 2009, for example, the American Library Association reported that it was suspending the publication of its print “ALA Handbook of Organization” for 2010 and 2011 and requiring its staff to take Memorial Day and the Fourth of July as unpaid holidays in addition to three additional furlough days during the first half of the year. The organization cited lower revenues from publication, subscriptions and conferences as part of the reason for its financial woes (Oder et al., 2009).

Budgets and acquisitions

In addition to staff downsizing, library budget cuts often mean cuts to acquisitions. Long before the 2008 recession, Atkinson (1993) commented, “[c]ertainly one of the most visible and highly publicized economic challenges facing the academic library at this time is the decline in the purchasing power of the academic budget” (p. 33). At the time, Atkinson wrote that the rising costs of publications, particularly serials, along with the new but growing costs of electronic sources were already putting pressure on acquisitions budgets. Where, for example, the price of library purchases was increasing by 6 percent a year but the library acquisitions budget was stagnant, real purchasing power was actually decreasing by 6 percent a year. Libraries found themselves trying to reduce spending on certain items simply to be able to afford much of the rest of what they had been buying all along.

Since the 2008 recession, libraries have been hit with significant cuts to budgets which have not only affected staffing but also the ability to purchase materials for the collection. In the UK for example, severe budget cuts were said to be responsible for slashing the number of new books purchased in Cambridgeshire libraries by half (Havergal, 2012). In 2009/10, that number amounted to 102,146 library items purchased; the following year, it dropped to 60,868, and in 2011/12 to 48,057.

In the US, Louisiana eliminated all state funding-aid to public libraries from its budget. Many libraries had relied on this money to help them buy books and other library materials. As one newspaper article reported:

The Commissioner of Administration in Louisiana, who also serves as the governor’s chief budget aide, blamed “tight budget times” and said that health care and education would have to take priority. He noted that local libraries could still be supported with local rather than state money, not mentioning the budget problems that local governments were themselves facing.

Libraries in Texas, like those in Louisiana, also lost state money. In 2009, the state gave the Montgomery County Memorial Library System $112,000, but reduced it to $86,000 in 2010. In 2011, the library was given no money whatsoever. What was even more difficult, though, was that the library system sustained cuts in local funding as well. As Jerilynn A. Williams, director of the library system noted, in 2008, the county had given the library system approximately $828,000 from the county for the purchase of new books. That number was cut to $500,000 in 2009 and to $250,000 in 2010. More cuts were made in 2011. “We’re whiplashed – from both sides,” she noted. “Basically, we took a 70 percent cut in our funding over the past 3 years … We are feeling the impact. Imagine trying to eat or breathe with only a third of what you had two years ago” (Peyton, 2011).

Sadly, these stories are only a small sample of the cuts to acquisitions budgets that have hit libraries everywhere. Tough budget choices by local, municipal, county, state and even national governments, in addition to schools and other organizations, have meant big hits for libraries in terms of what they can buy.

Ironically, the shift from print sources to electronic was once (and often still is) thought of a panacea for cost-saving. We explore this particular source of stress for library staff next.

The shift from print to electronic sources

Few libraries anymore have collections which are entirely print; instead, most libraries have a mix of electronic and print sources, and some libraries even appear to be doing their best to dispense with print altogether. In 2005, for example, Stanford University decided to build a new engineering library and, at the same time, to cut down on the amount of print on its shelves. Just how much it planned to cut down was startling: the new library opened in 2010 with 85 percent fewer books than it had had in the old library (Chen, 2010).

Apparently less startling on the surface, a recent survey revealed that 95 percent of academic libraries have ebooks and expect to spend approximately 20 percent of their total acquisitions budget on ebooks alone in the next five years (Miller, 2011). Public libraries are not far behind; as of 2011, 82 percent offered access to ebooks and expected to spend approximately 8 percent of their acquisitions budget on these electronic materials in the next five years (Miller, 2011).

Yet these changes are unprecedented in the history of libraries and they also raise a number of questions. With electronic materials, multiple users can access the same ebook or other document simultaneously, not only from within the library’s walls but from any other location (including home) via their computers. One important question, then, is whether patrons will continue to visit libraries if they can access materials without leaving home. A recent survey on students and libraries found that 87 percent of respondents came to the library specifically to borrow books or to browse books on site. These results seem to “fly in the face of current library orthodoxy that if we add group study and [areas for] relaxing between classes the proportion appreciating the qualities of the physical space increases significantly. The big question of course that needs asking is whether the provision of e-books will trigger the flight of students from the physical library space?” (Nicholas et al., 2008).

An obviously related question is: will libraries themselves become unnecessary middle men once publishers find some way to offer ebooks directly to patrons? Only recently, a number of publishers – Macmillan Publishing, Simon and Schuster, Penguin Group, Brilliance Audio, Hachette Book Group – refused to sell or license their ebooks to public libraries (Librarian in Black, 2012), confident that they could make more money offering their ebooks to readers directly. Other publishers have allowed libraries to purchase their ebooks but only on the proviso that the electronic book might only be loaned to one patron at a time (the same as print), or only loaned 26 times at most before a new (electronic) copy had to be purchased (Annoyed, 2012). Both conditions undermine the key advantages of electronic materials, i.e., that they can be used by multiple users at the same time, and that they never wear out and do not require repurchase.

In addition to the problems of long term survival and how to deal with publishers under the new model, libraries have had to worry about a number of other issues as the result of the growth of electronic information. These are discussed below.

Attacks, assaults and “low level nuisances”

Libraries are increasingly becoming unsafe places to work and staff, particularly those who work in libraries open to the public, have endured an unprecedented rise in physical and verbal attacks and assaults over the last few decades. In Derbyshire, England in 2010, for example,

In other industrialized countries, stories of assaults on library workers abound. In 2009, in a small village library in the Ottawa, Canada region a 15-year-old library patron waited one evening until the library was empty, and then jumped on the lone employee’s desk, beating her until she almost lost consciousness. She was then tied up, terrorized and repeatedly sexually assaulted. The patron then fled and was later apprehended by police. The library employee eventually recovered from her injuries; however, once the court proceedings were underway, her lawyer noted that she felt ashamed and embarrassed and didn’t feel she could return to work given the sexual nature of her attack (Seymour, 2010).

In 2010, in the United States, the union representing employees at the Mount Vernon Public Library in New York took their employers to task citing a number of violent incidents in the system and the lack of response by administrators. These incidents included a violent assault on the library security guard who had an eye socket fractured (McCormack, 2010), and library employees who had books thrown at them or who were groped (Garcia, 2009). Also in the US, in 2010, a library worker in Dallas, Texas was sexually assaulted before the library opened, and in 2012, a children’s librarian in Auburn, Maine was attacked by a 19-year-old patron who was described as having a “psychotic break.” She was beaten and kicked repeatedly until he was restrained by another patron and library staff members (Skelton, 2012).

Only a handful of the examples of violence against library employees make the news. The vast majority, sadly, are never reported. But what they indicate is that working in libraries which are open to the public, i.e., public libraries or even libraries in post-secondary educational institutions, puts employees at greater risk for workplace violence. This is something understood by experts who focus on workplace health and safety matters.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (2012), for example, lists several work-related factors that increase the risk for workplace violence. Among these are working with the public, handling money, providing a service, working with “unstable or volatile persons,” working alone or with only a small number of people, working in the evening or early in the morning, working in an isolated part of the building (e.g., in the stacks), and so on. All of the above are conditions in which library staff work on a daily basis, and all of them put workers at greater risk of violent incidents.

It doesn’t help, of course, that librarians and other library staff are given either no or inadequate training on how to handle workplace risks. Library schools generally do not offer training in workplace violence (McCormack, 2010). While violence and harassment clauses are fairly standard in library policy manuals, it is rarer to see these clauses followed up by extensive training.

Administrators are not always helpful either. For example, after the incident at the Auburn Public Library described above, the president of the Auburn Public Library Board of Trustees said that while the Board would review security procedures, the incident seemed like a random one and unlikely to repeat itself. “We like to offer the library as a safe and welcoming place, not security-ridden,” he said (Skelton, 2012). Clearly, this kind of politic, evasive response is rather less than front-line library workers would have anticipated or desired following the assault.

Over and above incidents of out-and-out violence, however, library staff also have to endure a steady stream of “low-level nuisances” including “people engaging in noisy, disruptive behaviour and inappropriate language, then swearing at staff when asked to stop the behaviour or to leave the library” (Mallett, 2011). Library policies often contain information about how to handle things such as verbal abuse, personal hygiene complaints, inappropriate behavior, lurking, and not abiding by the rules generally. Trying to enforce these policies, though, put library staff in the uncomfortable position of having to play security guard – a job they were never trained to do.

They also have to cope with the reality of patrons preying on each other. In England in 2011, a 14-year-old girl with learning difficulties was sexually assaulted as she used a computer in a Bolton library. Assaults of this sort in the UK are becoming more common.

But patrons preying on other patrons are also a problem in the United States. In 2008, for instance, a teenager at the Bloomingdale Regional Library in Valrico, Florida was raped, strangled, and beaten so severely she lost her eyesight in addition to the ability to walk and talk (Nguyen, 2008). The rapist was another library patron.

More recently, a convicted sex offender was sentenced to life for sexually assaulting a 6-year-old boy in a Houston Library bathroom (“Convicted sex offender,” 2012). Around the same time, a Butte, Montana man was convicted of holding a weapon to the throat of a Montana Tech student in the library restroom and then punching her in the head several times (“Butte man,” 2012). In Orange County, California, another registered sex offender was charged with assaulting a boy in the library in March 2012 (“Registered sex offender,” 2012). Meanwhile, a New York man was stabbed in the neck as he used a computer in a Brooklyn library (“Police investigate,” 2012). Once again, these stories were only some of a number of reported assaults in the United States in which one library patron had been found preying on another in that year.

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