The Shifted Librarian: A Liminal Follow-up

The shifted librarian posts a comment to her blog about libraries losing good people. In today's information age, I'm afraid the public sector is going to have a difficult time recruiting and retaining people. The public sector will never be a well-paid sector.

The Shifted Librarian: A Liminal Follow-up: "'I've built big things for libraries, stuff you may have used, but I found that the only way to get the sort of respect, pay, and freedom my experience deserved was to leave the library world and work with it only as a consultant. It is time the field took a good hard look at itself since those people the library world desperately needs, those who maybe aren't traditional librarians, are suddenly very valuable commodities to companies like Google and Yahoo. In this information economy they now have a very attractive alternative to working in a library. I'm not saying that libraries can compete directly with the salaries and freebies the Google campus offers, but many of these people just want a modicum of respect and an income that isn't embarrassing given their training and expertise.... I do know that nothing is more important in any organization than its employees and right now most libraries are letting some truly invaluable people slip right through the cracks.'"