Hi. Someone wrote in response to my ALA-APA article that Vermont can’t have much of a “staunch commitment to libraries” if it will pay its librarians $8/hour. And isn’t this the rub, then? I know Vermont loves its libraries, and yet, I also know that in many cases Vermonters would love rooms filled with books and free Internet and no librarians if it would lower their taxes. I’m not sure if you can say that a desperately poor parent isn’t committed to nutrition if they can’t feed their kids better food. Can you always feed kids well for cheap? Can you always find the money to pay your librarians well? And, as is often the real choice: if you can’t do both, what has to give?
the salary thing, and a nice obit
At some level we as librarians have to be committed to our libraries as well. I firmly believe that this should be at a good – or at least equitable – pay rate. But would I take less to live in a place I loved, or with a person I loved? In a second. People used to try to get their foot in the door for good library work by working in libraries for free. My union forbids this sort of thing entirely. But Mary Jane Blackwell might not have turned out as the librarian she did if she had to wait for a paying job to come her way. Pay is important to our profession, but so is passion. [thanks beth]
“another hysteric librarian”
I hate to see the USAPA debate as an Us vs. Them thing, especially considering where a lot of libraries get their funding from. However, if a patron asks “How private is my personal information?” I really don’t know what to tell them. An editorial about this librarian bind.
a non hysterical FBI guy has his say
I haven’t yet seen the new copy of American Libraries but apparently there is an opinion column by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller explaining why he thinks we need to keep the USAPA available as a tool to use in libraries.
http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm?Section=alonline ack ack ack ack
Speaking of American Libraries, wouldn’t it be nice if American Libraries Online had a URL that wasn’t ghastly? I guess that wasn’t one of the URLs that got fixed. There is a shorter URL, but it’s not shown anywhere on the site, or in the “cite this page” entry for the AL Online site, which is where I would expect to find it.