The library's flowers are wilting

We have a fairly new part-time employee whose job title is "research assistant" but who in reality is a library assistant, with precious little in the way of research duties. She's student at an MLS program in the region, full of enthusiasm for the profession she seeks.

The other day she got very upset with me. I forget how the conversation started, but she noted that she is disappointed with the job because it's mostly boring stuff and doesn't involve any research or much other opportunity for creativity. Mind you, I didn't write the job proposal, I didn't interview her, and I don't supervise her, so her disappointment isn't my fault. Anyway, I responded by noting that the field is mostly about process, and not content. We help others do the creative stuff, but mostly we just keep the information process operating as smoothly as we can.

We then started talking in greater depth about the field. I told her what I see: around the country, libraries are cutting back, laying off staff, reducing hours, even closing libraries. That's true in all sorts of libraries: public, academic, law and special. I also mentioned what's happening to just about all the people in the field whom I know. There's gloom across the board.

And I mentioned what's happening to my library. Next year my institute moves to a new building; for most people here, that's good news ... but for us in the library, it's definitely not. We'll suffer nearly a 50% cut in space, drastic reductions in work space and working conditions, loss of all of our bound journals, loss of the vast majority of our reference works, and loss of nearly half of the rest of our collection. Indeed, I'm already spending a goodly share of my time disposing of books, and I'll be doing that throughout the coming year. (I have to add that it's very dispiriting to be whacking at a collection I had carefully built over the past dozen years.)

And no, the losses won't be made up by electronic resources. Much of it simply cannot be replaced that way, and in any case there's no promise of corresponding increases in funding so we can afford to switch to more intensive use of electronic resources ... and they don't come cheap! And no, the researchers dependent on the library won't have anywhere else to go.

I guess I sounded pretty dispirited.

Anyway, the research assistant got really upset with my "negativity" because she is "just entering the field" and doesn't want to hear anything negative about it! Sorry sister, but the library field is a declining and increasingly stressed field throughout; like I said, I don't know anybody in the field who doesn't have dismal tales to tell. And I don't know of any libraries where morale -- or funding, or workload, or job prospects -- are improving. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. I suppose that I shouldn't be telling her about the weeding going on here and what it means for the collection, either, huh? Guess I shouldn't mention global warming or financial reform or the war in Afghanistan, either; just happy stories from here on out. Much better to be an ostrich.

It's not a good time to be a librarian. Wishful thinking won't help; the field is declining.