Experience Mandatory: Assessing the Impact of Previous Career and Educational Experience on LIS Education and the Academic Library Job Hunt

Since 2002, 97% of librarian jobs posted in American Libraries have required an American Library Association (ALA) accredited master’s degree (2004). The ALA Committee on Accreditation provides a general framework for library master’s program curriculum, “through a variety of educational experiences, for the study of theory, principles, practice, and values necessary for the provision of service in libraries and information agencies and in other contexts.” (Accreditation, 2014). ALA curriculum requirements are broad, however, so courses and requirements within ALA degree granting institutions vary immensely from program to program

Critical Race Theory and the Recruitment, Retention and Promotion of a Librarian of Color: A Counterstory

Despite the proliferation of residency programs, institutes, and scholar- ships designed to increase the numbers of African American and other academic librarians of color, academic librarianship, in contrast to the American population, continues to lacks racial diversity. According to the American Library Association’s most recent Diversity Counts report, credentialed academic librarians are 86.1% white. African Americans make up 12.6% of the American population, but only account for 5.4% of credentialed academic librarians

Who Do You Know? A Study of Connectedness in Online Education and Employment

This study explored the relationship of online course intensity to development of social networks and the impact of social networks on obtaining employment or employment information to develop a better understanding of the factors that lead to improved employment outcomes and information-gathering. Graduates from three ALA-accredited programs in the Southeastern US who took some of all of their classes online to earn the MLIS degree were surveyed. Findings suggest that there are differences in types of contacts (networks) used in job-finding related to online course intensity; and there are differences in the types of network contacts used to secure employment or employment information. The results point to the importance of fitting network development to program modality (online intensity); the necessity for encouraging and promoting career-related work experiences during the master’s program; and the importance of providing face-to-face contact however infrequently to students enrolled in online programs

Educating Library, Archives, and Museum Professionals in the US: Promoting Collaboration, Recognizing the Power of Information and Object in Professional Identity

Two digital curation educators, representing graduate schools of museum studies and information science at Johns Hopkins University and Simmons University, respectively, propose that the field of digital curation transcends disciplinary boundaries and offers opportunities for collaboration across the LAM sector. As students prepare to join the growing international digital curation community, these new professionals will be ready to communicate and cooperate with peers in libraries, archives and museums across the globe and across town. The result will be enhanced access to cultural heritage resources; greater efficiencies and economies of scale realized through wider data services; and improved service to users through the adoption of shared standards, protocols, and professional training—while at the same time maintaining the unique perspectives of each profession. Placement data shows that these graduates are finding jobs across the LAM spectrum, even in the time of Covid-19

A Study of Librarian Employment Trends from 1997-2009

This study looks at Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 1997-2009 for the occupational classification "Librarian" and attempts to identify trends among librarian employment, total national employment and national population data. The librarian employment statistics are categorized into special, academic, government, and school librarians and compared to each other as well as national employment and population figures. While national employment began to dip sharply in 2008, total librarian employment did not reflect as sharp a fall. Librarian employment had seen steady growth since 2005, although in 2008 their numbers did began to fall. Regardless of said growth, librarian job growth has not kept pace with the national population growth over the 13 years studied. The study closes with a discussion speculating as to why trends are so difficult to identify, and how librarian educators can respond to the seeming lack of job growth in the industry

The Southeastern Librarian v 62, no. 4 (Winter 2015) Complete Issue

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, vol. 62, no. 4

A Demographic Overview of the Current and Projected Library Workforce and the Impact of Federal Funding

The first section of this article examines the size of the library workforce and the projected demand for librarians in the United States. Information on the library workforce is segmented into several national data collection efforts. To develop a more comprehensive picture of the size and scope of the profession, we have analyzed data from: the American Community Survey, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, National Center for Educational Statistics' Academic Libraries Survey and Common Core of Data, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services' (IMLS) Public Library Survey. All sources, except the American Community Survey, provide a sufficient number of observations for state-level analysis. The review highlights a profession experiencing modest growth for the paraprofessional segment of the workforce and stable demand for ALA-accredited MLS librarians for the last six years of available data. The state-level analysis reveals no consistent pattern of change in the size of the library workforce as a proportion of each state's population, although when significant change is observed, it is most often due to a decline in the size of the workforce relative to the state population. The national and state-level analyses provide a point of departure for a discussion of the federal grant program designed to address library workforce issues, the IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. This program supports training initiatives that include master's-level and doctoral programs, in addition to continuing education, preprofessional recruitment, research, and programs to build institutional capacity in graduate schools of library and information science. The second section of the article summarizes the program's goals, provides descriptive statistics profiling grantees based on the agency's administrative data for 2003-5, and highlights promising developments in library and information science education and practice identified and supported by IMLS since the program's inception in FY2003 through 2009.published or submitted for publicatio

Inequality at Work: Socio-Demographic Disparities in the Careers of Library and Information Science Graduates

In this dissertation, I analyze the career experiences of library and information science (LIS) alumni who graduated from one of five LIS programs in North Carolina between 1964 and 2007. The long-term career experiences of LIS graduates are largely unknown, which is due, in part, to the lack of a systematic tracking system for these alumni. Using a sociological approach, I examine racial and gender disparities in work duties performed by managers, indicators of job quality, and risk of involuntary job loss. In the first chapter, I provide a brief demographic overview of the LIS workforce and economic trends impacting its workers. In the second chapter, I find that using student loans to fund one’s LIS graduate degree is associated with lower salaries and less job security (but none of the other five measures of job quality) and discuss what this might mean for professions that require advanced degrees yet offer relatively low salaries. In the third chapter, I find that non-white managers have lower odds of performing 6 of the 11 job functions measured and that the set of job functions performed by male and female managers is similar with the exception of human resources, which women have 38% lower odds of performing. In light of these results, I discuss the possibility that job functions may be a mechanism that produces racial disparities in upward job mobility. In the fourth chapter, I find that involuntary job loss is a rare event in the LIS field (8.7%) and is associated with lower job quality. This relationship is conditioned by both race and gender and the implications for meeting diversity goals are discussed. In the final chapter, I summarize and discuss the main findings, implications for academic literature and the LIS field, and suggest some directions for future research.Doctor of Philosoph