I’m posting a short excerpt from Sarah Long’s article on recruitment, as I suspect there are some people who will disagree strongly with the premise:
“The average age of librarians working today is between 46 and 50. It’s easy to deduce that there will be a great number of retirements in the next few years.
To be a librarian, one needs a master’s degree in library science from a program certified by the American Library Association. There are 59 such programs in the U.S. and Canada, graduating between 4,000 and 5,000 newly minted librarians every year, a number that has remained constant for the last six years.
That’s not enough to fill the expected void created as the baby boomer librarians go on to other pursuits.
There is much concern in library circles about what is going to happen as the retirements take place. Recruiting more people into librarianship seems to be the obvious answer.”
I may talk about this issue in my next full show, but suffice it to say that this does not correspond to my experience either as a job seeker or as a person in an organization with plenty of retirement age staffers.
Look for more CiL audio commentary later tonight…
