OLDER STAFF, GREATER COSTS - NOT A HAPPY THOUGHT

G.E. Gorman, Editor, LibraryLINK

A recent publication by Haworth Press has stimulated my thinking in several directions, not least in the field of library finance in terms of how libraries can afford to pay staff what they are worth when the staff profile changes significantly. This is an important issue, when staff account for a significant proportion of most library budgets. The publication I refer to is Stanley Wilder�s The Age Demographics of Academic Librarians: A Profession Apart (New York: Haworth Press, 1999). Completed in 1995 but not released until the end of last year, this is a significant study of the age demographics of US academic librarians which resonates clearly with realities in other countries, including Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Wilder opens with a telling summary of his findings:

In demographic terms, librarianship in North America is a profession apart. Relative to comparable professions, it contains one-third the number of individuals aged 35 and under and almost 75 per cent more individuals aged 45 and over. Librarians, particularly academic librarians, are older than professionals in all but a handful of comparable occupations (p. 1).

These findings are based on a study of the extensive data collected annually by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) which most of us look at in terms of annual salaries. Using these data, Wilder found in particular that the percentage of ARL librarians aged 45 and over increased from 48 to 55 per cent between 1990 and 1994.

How this trend affects library finance is touched upon in the third chapter of Wilder�s study, which focuses on population projections. Wilder projects that the age distribution will continue to move forward through 2010, when librarians aged 50 and over will comprise 58 per cent of the ARL population. From 2010 to 2020, large numbers of these professionals will leave the workforce, resulting in a sharp drop in the aging trend.

There are in our view several significant factors in this scenario that will affect the health of library finances. First and foremost, one can assume that older and therefore longer-serving professionals will be paid at the top of their scale, thereby placing considerable pressure on staffing budgets. Second, this in turn has implications for the ability of libraries to hire new, recently trained staff who might be �bought� for considerably less than older, more experienced staff. A flow-on effect of this may be a glut of newly trained professionals finding it more difficult to enter the profession at a suitable level - some may choose to work for much less than they are worth, and one sees many unscrupulous libraries already offering morally indefensible salaries to such individuals. Third, as the older professionals leave the workforce, they do not cease to be a burden on the budget but in fact will take with them rather large superannuation packages funded in part by the employers. Another blow to the budget. Fourth, and this point is picked up by Wilder, projected age distributions contain fewer young people than is normal because there are proportionally fewer of them in the population. �One possible consequence of the shorter supply of young people is that as ARL libraries lose progressively larger shares of their populations to retirement, pressure will build to increase salaries� (p. 35).

One can see, in other words, that budgets are being squeezed on all sides: older staff requiring higher salaries as befits their experience and length of service, retirements drawing on superannuation commitments, remaining staff requiring higher salaries in order to stay in their jobs. But what is not yet clear is where the funds will come from to cope with the growth in staff expenditure that inevitably results from an aging professional workforce.

Various solutions are being tried by libraries, sometimes with reasonable results, but often with disastrous consequences that are swept under the carpet. One obvious solution, one that was tried when Maggie Thatcher was doing her best to destroy Britain�s information infrastructure and much else besides, is to freeze existing positions until such time as the climate allows a thaw. But when might this be? If we are looking as far forward as 2020, a whole generation of librarians will be lost. As we know only too well, freezing posts works for only a short time; in the longer term services suffer dramatically, and libraries lose clients, often forever. A vicious cycle sets in - fewer staff result in fewer or less professional services, which results in fewer users, which means that staff can be reduced further when budgets become still tighter.

A second solution is to employ non-professional staff in professional positions, or perhaps para-professional technicians in countries where these exist. University libraries, including one not many metres from where I sit, are wont to rely on �student assistants� on criminally low wages to do the most mundane tasks (shelving, for example), but the temptation is to move them to reference desks at non-peak times because there are not enough professionals to provide �out-of-hours� reference service. Have you ever tried to ask a totally untrained undergraduate even the simplest reference question? �Please come back tomorrow� is a typical answer (the �please� is optional), but of course tomorrow is usually too late. This is one reason why I rarely darken the portals of my university library. The use of para-professionals has results that are little better; these people are usually adequate in backroom activities but somewhat inept when it comes to user service of any description, and they certainly are not competent to handle more complex queries about resources or services - although they would have us believe otherwise (the Australian literature is replete with set pieces on how wonderful technicians are at all sorts of professional duties).

A third solution, and this is perhaps the most dangerous of all in the long term, is to downsize the services that a library offers, or to introduce fees where previously these did not exist. Already libraries operate in an increasingly competitive market, with Internet-based services presenting an attractive alternative. The less a library offers, the less it costs, with smaller collections and fewer staff clearly allowing significant savings in the budget. But the less a library offers, the less it is needed, and eventually the institution withers and dies. This perhaps is the ultimate saving - no library means no cost for information services, and this may be what some institutions have in mind. Certainly in my view some university librarians are moving in this direction, albeit unknowingly. And all because they cannot find a creative and proactive solution to the increasing costs of aging staff...

Wilder himself does not offer solutions to the conundrum that his data highlight, but he certainly does give us pause for reflection. Libraries have a responsibility to look after their staff, and to provide the best possible staff that money can buy. It is unprofessional and unethical for senior management to try the various solutions we have outlined above, because the end result is not only maltreatment of staff but also a fatal reduction in services that users have a right to expect. At the very least Wilder causes us to realise that new solutions to staffing and budgetary restraints are required, solutions that are fair to both those staff who have served well and long and to the users who have a right to quality service.

G.E. Gorman
Editor, LibraryLINK

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