For 2011, as one of my helpful commenters pointed out, my predictions weren’t very daring. Despite the gloomy rhetoric coming from the library community about library closings, I was pretty sure most libraries wouldn’t be closing. I was right. For 2012, I’m less sure. This might be the year when public libraries are forced to change their mission drastically as the “information” they trade in shifts away from physical formats entirely. So let’s try for a few predictions that might be slightly less predictable. Here's a sampling of what we'll see in 2012: 1) The Big Six publishers will move away from printed books to a significant extent and offer almost everything they publish only as an ebook. 2) The Big Six publishers will keep up their hostility to public libraries, and those that currently supply ebooks to libraries will stop altogether, a move they would have made with printed books decades ago if only they could have controlled the distribution ...
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I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday. I'm suffering from egg nog overdose, but otherwise had a lovely time. Earlier this year, I made 11 predictions for 2011. Most library seers and pundits don’t revisit their predictions, at least publicly, but darn it I’m going to. Was I right or was I wrong? Let’s see. 1) The vast majority of libraries will remain open. Right! Definitely so. Not only are the vast majority of libraries still open, but the worst of the library closures seems to have passed, in this country at least. 2) The vast majority currently employed librarians will remain employed. Right! Even the ones who wanted to retire mostly stayed in place, and there haven’t been massive national layoffs. Good call on my part. 3) There will not be a widespread pro-library revolution in the United States, but it will be driven by Twitter. Right, unless you count Occupy Wall Street as both pro-library and a revolution. The movement had a library, so it was ...
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For many years American librarians have had to endure propaganda about the upcoming (always upcoming!) librarian shortage from the ALA and its accredited library schools. I thought perhaps this was an exclusively north American phenomenon, but no. Check out this news story from India: Few takers for library science. It’s a tale of despair and hope that should be familiar to anyone watching the ALA librarian shortage shenanigans over the years. It seems LIS education in India is a century old. However, “Initially seen as a decent career option, LIS education has lost its shine over time as it is not a lucrative career option.” “As is it not a lucrative career option.” That’s probably all most people would need to read. Librarianship looked good as a career at one point, only it doesn’t pay much and so people avoid it. Sounds plausible. But not everyone is convinced. One librarian thinks it’s going to turn around. He did a study of the whole ...
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Last week the biggest news in librarianship was American Libraries making the publication even less interesting than it already is, and that’s saying something. However, despite that unsurprising news, my favorite library news last week appeared in this very publication: Library Science without the Library. It’s a guest column in an amusing genre, LIS student telling the profession like it is. In this case, it’s a student who doesn’t work in or even want to work in a library finishing her first semester in what I assume is an online library school telling everyone that library schools should work harder to attract more people like herself. Library schools need to “rebrand” themselves and prepare graduates for various other careers. The writer tells us that, “Many (including myself) have discovered multimedia careers by way of graphic design, copywriting, business strategy and computer programming--without formal training as "information ...
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A kind reader wrote with a question I decided to share: Do males have a any easier time getting jobs, as I have heard, or is that another library myth? I’m not sure how we could actually answer that question without extensive research. Unfortunately, librarians don’t have time to do extensive research, and the LIS professors who do have the time don’t like to research anything to do with libraries. Thus, we’ll just have to make stuff up or go with whatever anecdotal evidence you’re willing to offer. We do know that librarians are overwhelmingly white women. According to the OUP librarian census, the current makeup of the library profession is 83% female. If that ratio were skewed towards white men, someone would be crying sexism, and they might even be right. There are all sorts of possible reasons for this. Librarianship has traditionally been seen as women’s work, along with nursing and teaching school. Thus, lots of men probably avoid the ...
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Once upon a time there was a loud and hardy cult of librarians I called the twopointopians. These giddy creatures popped up at conferences and in blog posts to declare their faith that something called Library 2.0 would be the salvation of libraries. The twopointopians had the normal trappings of a cult. Their beliefs were completely based on blind faith and they had an annoying habit of chanting “library 2.0” as part of their ritual, even though none of them could define it for us. Library 2.0 became whatever people wanted it to mean, and chanting it let you join the cult. Not chanting it - or worse, making fun of the cult - meant you were just a mean old luddite who hated library patrons and libraries, at least to the twopointopians. To the rest of us, being skeptical about groundless claims is simply what reasonably intelligent people do. According to the twopointopians, every library had to have a blog and a Facebook page and any other social media ...
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