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June 20, 2006
More from a professional librarian
"There are now about 1000 affiliated (non-professional library posts) members of CILIP. If the CILIP executive would be willing to listen to these members at the front line of library work, who can see at first hand the effect of management decisions on the service, then perhaps they could exert some influence on Chief Librarians to visit their libraries and listen to the branch library managers.
The government initiatives for libraries over the past few years have led to the creation of more professional high paid posts eating into the budgets further and diminishing the hope for more new books, and the core service is seriously affected."
Posted by Tim Coates at June 20, 2006 11:07 PM
Comments
I'm afraid your correspondent is mistaken. The number of professional posts in public libraries has fallen. See the LISU statistics at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis//lisu/pages/publications/als05.html#download
which will show that in public libraries, in the period form 1994 to 2004, the number of staff employed fell overall by 2%, but the number of professional staff employed fell by 14%.
Test this: go into a public library branch and ask to speak to a qualified librarian. I'll bet there isn't one on duty, and if you're lucky, one may visit once or twice a week.
Posted by: Tom Roper at June 22, 2006 11:05 AM
Tom
Thank you- but weren't the points that my correspondent making
a. That many of the "qualified" professionals don't generally work in libraries in "customer facing" roles- which is what you are also saying
b. That the people who do work in these roles have been offered affiliation to CILIP, if they are not fully qualified
c. That if CILIP were to represent the views of these "affiliates" they would make a very different case to that which is made by "qualified" professionals
d. We can't afford to have so many people who are not full time on the front line; it drains the financial resource available
e. That the reading public would be better served by having the best qualified and most knowledgeable people, irrespective of their qualification, available to respond to their questions in the libraries?
Posted by: Tim at June 22, 2006 11:23 AM