Librarians are “Excellent”
January 11th, 2006Marydee Ojala links to an article from U.S. News and World Report that calls librarianship an “excellent” career for 2006. Impressed? Hardly. Take a look at what they write about us:
“This is an underrated career. Most librarians enjoy helping patrons dig up information. They learn in the process and keep up to date on the latest books and online resources. The need for librarians, unfortunately, may decline because search engines make it easy for patrons to find information without a librarian’s help. The job growth for librarians will be in nontraditional settings: corporations, nonprofit organizations, and consulting firms.”
The first sentence is the only one that makes sense. “Most librarians enjoy helping patrons dig up information” sounds like it came from one of those 8mm films we saw in junior high school. Chalk it up to bad marketing (”Sure, I’ll pay for the honor of presenting at your conference!”) and a stereotype that just won’t go away. Also, search engines make the user BELIEVE that finding information is easy, not that it’s actually easy. There’s a big difference. Last, isn’t there a job growth in public/academic libraries as well? I remember reading that all libraries are hiring more these days, but I could be wrong.