Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Are you interested in being a librarian?

All of the librarians in my district get together a few times a year for various meetings and we started to notice a trend. Many of them are close to retirement AND we have no one in our district that is currently pursing the Masters of Library Science. I was one of the two newest librarians hired in the district and this is my third year. We wanted to make sure that we would be able to work with passionate teachers that get into the field for the right reasons so we decided to start recruiting.

Some of you may have seen the infographic, Anatomy of a Librarian.  This infographic mentions that over the next decade there are a large number of librarians expected to retire. I'm sure the economy slowed down some of those retirements in the last few years, but judging from personal observations I expect a large number of retirements are in the near future. There was an article in Library Journal in 2010 about this issue. Another article discusses a survey that asked "Would you recommend librarianship?". I love my job so I definitely recommend it for sincerely interested people. As of this morning, Media Specialist is still considered a critical needs area by our state department of education. This classification brings with it a loan forgiveness program. This is an enticing perk.

We decided to hold an interest meeting to share the day to day tasks of our jobs, dispel myths about our position and encourage teachers to consider the career. I will admit that during my years in the classroom I did not fully understand what the librarian did each day and to be perfectly honest, the position looked pretty cushy from my point of view. I feel that our position is what you make it. If you want to shut the library down for every little occasion, enact strict rules about student visitors, avoid collaboration, and do no active reading promotions then you can have an easy day. I feel like many teachers think our job is easy because they have worked with librarians like that. This is a big frustration for the rest of us that work tirelessly to make the library the best it can possibly be. I don't want these stereotypes to attract teachers that are just tired of the classroom and looking for an easy "semi-retirement". We work together often so we hope to encourage some of the best to join our ranks.

After sending an email invite to the district I received six responses expressing interest and we had around ten interested people attend. They had lots of good questions and I hope that some of them decide to pursue librarianship.

Do you or your district organize any type of recruiting efforts for librarians?

7 comments:

  1. Interesting. Here in Ohio the ground is littered with unemployed librarians. Every district is laying off support staff, so there are lots of them. Don't know if they want to relocate, though!

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  2. This is very interesting to me. I'm going for my master's in library science with zero teaching experience. I'm currently in my third semester, and I've enjoyed it thus far. The idea of having my own library and the memories of school libraries I visited growing up keep me going forward. I look forward to reading more on your blog.

    Found your blog when I was reading "140 new things being tried in classrooms this fall."

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    1. PS -- now following you on Twitter :)

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    2. Great! I love my job and wish you all the best. We always need more passionate librarians out there!

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  3. I'm interested in moving to South Carolina to work as a school librarian/media specialist. Do you have any advice? I am currently a media coordinator in a neighboring state.

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    1. Definitely check with the state Department of Education to see what kind of certification you need to complete in order to be hired. Winthrop University has a state wide pool of applications that you may want to look into. This allows you to put in your resume, etc and districts from all over the state can see your information. Keep an eye on district websites and Twitter feeds so that you can see the opening as they come available. Good luck!

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    2. Thank you for the information!

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