Recruit, Retain and Lead: The Public Library Workforce Study

Citation

McFaul, M. (2002), "Recruit, Retain and Lead: The Public Library Workforce Study", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 58 No. 4, pp. 493-495. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd.2002.58.4.493.6

Some years ago, a well‐known Sunday newspaper published an annual careers guide which identified librarianship as one of the third‐level education courses with the lowest entry requirements. It also reached the conclusion that most students drifted into the profession because they simply were not good enough to succeed at anything better.

Those of us who can remember this sad commentary will not be shocked or surprised by the findings in this report.

Usherwood and his team have completed a research project of considerable scale and importance, utilising focus groups and interviews with players throughout the library community. Much of the work centres on a major questionnaire‐based survey of public authorities that achieved a respectable 84 per cent response rate. A million words of transcript have brought forth a report that confirms our worst fears – The Public Library Service is facing a manpower crisis, a “ticking time bomb”, with most staff coasting to retirement and no‐one falling in behind to replace them.

Three main problem areas are highlighted:

1. (1)

   The public library service is not attracting and, hence, not recruiting high calibre staff.

2. (2)

   Any staff who do show potential tend to leave at the earliest opportunity.

3. (3)

   The profession lacks potential leaders. (A particularly shocking finding being that only one‐third of employers surveyed felt they had staff who were capable of holding down a senior management position.)

The question that must be asked is why, at a time when the public library service is enjoying what should be a new lease of life with the government‐backed “Peoples Network” rolling out and new libraries being designed as major civic buildings, the workforce required to mange this renaissance in the future is simply not going to be there?

Rigorous though its methodology may be, the failure to research outside the library environment is a major disappointment and a missed opportunity. Where are the views of “nearly librarians” – the young people who might have considered a career but rejected it? To have surveyed this group might have revealed more of the truth. How far can we believe those colleagues who claim to have joined the profession out of a sense of public duty and “wanting to help people”? Step forward the assistant librarian, ten years in the same post, who will admit they simply could not aspire to anything better.

We need to hear the opinions of those in teaching and from those active in the wider education field and also from the government itself. How do all these groups perceive the public library manpower need – does it even embrace any level of professionalism at all? Although librarians have always tended to see themselves as skilled individuals albeit undervalued by others foolish enough not to recognise their true worth, the reality is that all public library staff are first and foremost local government officials. As a consequence they have to endure the burden of all the baggage that role brings to the job – low levels of remuneration, absurdly narrow and archaic pay scales and a job evaluation process that does not recognise professionalism per se. Add in trade union representation which cares not a fig for library staff other than as part of the mass of underpaid, overworked public service workers, is it any wonder morale is so low and the prospects so dire?

Ultimately the report fails utterly to face up to the implications of its own findings. There is almost a studious avoidance of discussion on the key and fundamental issues of pay and status, as if to do so would compromise ones professional outlook. The idea that ambitious, high‐calibre students can be recruited to the service through the call of public duty is one utterly foreign to today’s young school‐leavers, a generation for whom career advancement and prospects mean everything.

And what can be done about this state of affairs? Sadly, the answers will not be found here. A failure to grasp the nettle has resulted in a series of recommendations staggering in their inadequacy and lack of imagination. More working groups will be set up, bodies with vested interests will consult with each other; the usual suspects will talk on and on; nothing much will happen.

There is a small hint that the solution may be found in the private sector, where able employees are identified, nurtured, fast‐tracked and rewarded according to their ability. Unfortunately, this avenue of exploration is not developed even though, arguably it offers the most promising way forward, releasing the service, as it would, from its local government harness.

Perhaps, as if conscious of its relentlessly negative slant, Recruit, Retain and Lead holds back from spelling out the obvious conclusion that doomsday is just around the corner (although in the process of research several chief librarians were prepared to admit that the situation was beyond recovery).

Without leaders prepared to countenance a vision involving radical change, it seems highly likely that, in five years time, remaining staff will start to put the lights out in public libraries across the country. We may not recognise their eventual replacements but that is not to say we will dislike what we see.