Presentations and Getting Paid to Be a Librarian!
December 19th, 2005As you might know (and if you don’t, take a look at the right hand side of my blog), I present and organize sessions at many library conferences on the local, regional, and national level. I also expect to get paid for these presentations.
GASP! What did I just do? Spark an interest? Good. Keep reading.
I just finished reading Jenny Levine’s second post about having to pay to speak at PLA in March (which I think is atrocious - shame on you ALA [note: I'm a card-carrying member of ALA and get paid by PLA to co-manage their blog]) and one of her comments caught my attention:
“In addition, until this last year, I didn’t charge an honorarium for my presentations, period, exclamation point, and end of sentence. If an organization can afford it, I do charge a fee now because MPOW needs to recover costs for what I do and the time I’m not in the office. They set the price, and we’ve used a sliding scale or waived it in some cases, especially for small organizations. I never charge a member library, fellow library system, or Illinois library/organization (although, sometimes they offer it anyway), which is just one of the many ways I believe that I/we “give back” to the library community. I turn down as many invitations as I accept, but never for lack of an honorarium (mostly it’s a lack of time or I’m already booked for that time period).”
Jenny and I used to have conversations about getting paid to present all the time (lately, we’ve both been too busy to even see each other, IM, or even chat on the phone, and I miss her!) and we’ve agreed to disagree on this point. I can’t tell by her post whether she keeps her honorarium or gives it to her workplace (she can clarify that if she wants to - none of our business, really).
I’ve been on the “circuit” for a few years now and have made it a point to get paid for my services. I’ve been blogging since 2000 and using RSS (because of Jenny!) since early 2002, so I was one of the “early” adopters not only in the library profession, but on the Web itself. This is not a pompous statement, but one that is pertinent to this post. Since then, I’ve been asked to speak at many library (and non-library!) events over the years and have accepted gracefully. Here’s the part that you’ll enjoy:
Almost 100% of those institutions have told me even before I brought up money that they will pay me an honorarium and reimburse me for expenses.
Sometimes the offer is lower than I expect to be paid, and other times (rare) it’s higher. If it’s lower, I try to negotiate a higher price. I should also be up front that I have NEVER solicited an organization to speak at their event and get paid for it. These organizations contacted me from referrals and from reading my blog and column (soon to be columns).
I have the luxury that my workplace allows me to go to all of the speaking engagements and get paid for the presentations I give. If my workplace didn’t allow it, I wouldn’t be working there. In fact, one of the reasons why I do work there is that they understand the importance of marketing, outreach, and name/brand recognition (something the library field should take a hard look at once the leaves settle from the Jenny Levine debacle - more bad press for ALA - shameful). I bring my company name wherever I go, hand out business cards with my company logo on it, and tout the company products during the presentation (if warranted - I am under no obligation to do so).
I get paid to speak because I know stuff other people don’t and I give kick-ass presentations. This is not coming from my mouth either, but from the continuous feedback forms I receive after the fact. I’ve said this time and time again: Librarianship is a business and we should treat it as such.
I was going to be part of the panel that Jenny and Michael Stephens are on, but had to bow out a few months ago because I need to focus 100% on the PLA Blog (as well as a few other non-related issues). Both deserve to not only get reimbursed for their presentations but get paid to do so. If they decline, it’s their business, but they should at least be reimbursed for their travel and expenses.
Jenny also talks about her blog:
“I have turned down numerous offers of sponsorship or ad placement over the years on any library-related page of my site because I wanted to be able to say what I want to say without any question of my intent, goals, or motivations.”
If you take a look around my blog, you’ll see the standard ITI boilerplate. Yes, I get paid to blog too. Last year at this time, I was in talks with ITI to do a blog sponsorship. It was very good timing, because they wanted to start sponsoring blogs. After coming to an agreement, the new Library Stuff was launched in January 2005. Many asked if that meant that I would be impartial when talking about certain topics that may be construed as a conflict of interest to ITI or any of their sponsors or partnerships. Heck no! I made it clear to ITI that I would continue the blog as is, that the content would be owned by me, and that I would be able to write about whatever I wanted to write about. They agreed, with one stipulation. No cursing (which I did once I think - right after the 2004 presidential election). So, no worries, no intent issues, and no motivations. I still bug Bill Spence (head IT guy at ITI) to create more RSS feeds, and I knock ITI when I feel they deserve to be knocked.
The one piece of work that I don’t get paid for is my column for Public Libraries, which I’ve had for almost 5 years. They didn’t pay when I signed on and it was too early in my library career (I was so fresh out of library school, I think I still had my parking permit on the dashboard of my car) to be asking for money, so I just leave this one alone.
This was probably one of the longest posts that I have ever written, so I want to end it on the following note. Lawyers get paid a lot of money because they know minor details about minor pieces of law and doctors get paid tons of it because they can diagnose illnesses and perform surgeries with robotic-like skill. They get paid alot because of what they know. Librarians get paid for what they know as well, but not enough. If we want to be taken seriously with what we do, we should get paid well for it. Between my day job and my other work (this blog, writing books, articles, chapters in books, preparing for presentations) I wind up putting in 16 hour days, sometimes more, and I deserve to get paid for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, but it is a job. Once we can get beyond that, the whole Jenny Levine situation seems a bit clearer.
ALA, please reverse your stance on having Jenny and other speakers pay to speak at your conferences. You’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t.