According to a survey conducted by the ALA, the mean librarian’s salary in 2008 is $58,960. Mind you, that’s mean, not average, which means that a few really high salaries aren’t skewing the curve. Supposedly, half of all librarians earn more than 58 grand per year.

Ahem.

AAAAAAAAAAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Great Zombie Jesus. Who writes this shit? More to the point, does anybody believe it? Certainly no one who’s ever worked in, say, a library.

My guess is that such nonsensical drivel issues forth from the same crowd that continually hypes librarianship as a “hip,” “hot” or “best” career. The same people who are always yammering about the oodles of open, desirable library jobs that are going to be coming available any second now, just as soon as all the Boomers retire or shuffle off to the Great VW Bus In The Sky.

Reality check: I’ve held several professional, MLS librarian positions, at locations in New England and the Pacific Northwest, two of the wealthier regions of the country. In no year during any of those employment stints did I earn more than $38,000. Once, I took a position that paid twenty six thousand dollars per annum – salaried, no less – because it was the best paying job available at the time.

If jobs as easy as those in the library field were actually available for salaries anywhere close to that ridiculous ALA article, I’d still be working in a library right now. Eventually, however, I came to the regrettable conclusion that paying bills was important, and much to my chagrin, had no choice but to take a job that required me to work.

The Fifty Eight Thousand Dollar Library Job is as real as Bigfoot.

(Multiple links via Annoyed Librarian)

UPDATE: Whoops, Chris informs me that I screwed up some terminology, confusing mean with median. “Mean” actually does mean “average,” so it’s possible that a few high-end salaries are artificially inflating that 58K per year number. Of course, according to the same article, the median salary is over 53K per year, which is slightly less, but still wildly out of whack with everything I’ve experienced, salary-wise.

UPDATE PART DEUX: On an unrelated note, I just fixed the blog settings to once again allow anonymous commenting. Not sure when that got changed or how…

In these increasingly contentious times, librarians are often called to deal with complaints and/or challenges from patrons whose sensibilities have been offended by material in the library. Via Jessamyn, we learn of one librarian’s response to a challenged children’s book depicting a gay wedding:

Finally, then, I conclude that “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” is a children’s book, appropriately categorized and shelved in our children’s picture book area. I fully appreciate that you, and some of your friends, strongly disagree with its viewpoint. But if the library is doing its job, there are lots of books in our collection that people won’t agree with; there are certainly many that I object to. Library collections don’t imply endorsement; they imply access to the many different ideas of our culture, which is precisely our purpose in public life.

Sure, this passage sounds measured, reasoned, sensible, and entirely consistent with the constitutional principles upon which this country has always operated. But we know the truth: such high minded rhetoric is merely a Trojan stalking horse for the insidious advance of The Gay Agenda, that fiendish supervillain who flies mincingly around the world in his fabulous pastel tights, zapping innocent heterosexual boys and girls with his Big Gay Laser of Gayness. One direct hit from this terrifying weapon will instantly turn the victim gayer than an Idaho Republican senator, gayer than an Oklahoma schoolgirl, gayer than a meth-smoking televangelist, gayer than the Gay Mayor of Gaytown.

Mein Gott! If we can’t count on librarians to protect our children from the Communist-inspired, objectively pro-terrorist notion that all people in this country deserve equal protection under the law, than who will?

I’ve been deeply opposed to capital punishment since I was 14. Well, no more, pal.

A book bandit who checked out hundreds of books and DVDs from area libraries and then sold them online will be going to prison.

Thomas Pilaar, 34, was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $53,549 in restitution. He pleaded guilty to theft in May.

(snip)

Denver Public Library last year estimated its losses at $35,000, while Douglas County reported that Pilaar had $11,000 worth of overdue materials, mostly pricey coffee-table books and DVDs.

We could spend a lot of time and burn many synapses trying to come up with appropriately vicious and agonizing punishments for this man, but why bother? The monks at the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona did all the heavy lifting for us long ago:

The Curse Against Book Stealers

“For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a Serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goes to his final Punishment let the flames of Hell consume him forever and aye.”

Damn, those dudes were not kidding around.

What’s daffier than daffy?

Writing a book about the future of libraries (you know, those places where they lend books to people)... and then charging twenty dollars to download it.

Who out there has the pun, the barb, the eloquent poison-pen quip, to sum up the silliness of this situation in devastating fashion? Let’s hear ‘em. Seriously, I’m tapped out. I got nothin’...

So, um yeah. It’s National Week Library Week. Or, rather, was. Oops.

Man oh man, I am really dropping the ball these days. First I bring shame upon my house with my inability to beat up five years olds, and now I’ve completely failed to notice and acknowledge the ALA’s desperate annual attempt to make a dying profession appear relevant.

Wicked sorry about that.

In 2006, librarianship was a Hot Job.

In 2007, it was “hip.”

Now, in 2008, librarianship is a Best Career.

Oh, joy.

Yeah, that’s just what the profession needs. All across the country, library budgets are being slashed and positions eliminated, patron traffic and reference usage plummet, and the general perception of the public library as an obsolete institution spreads ever farther. So by all means, let’s convince more people to take out tens of thousands of dollars each in student loans to pursue a pathetic joke of a “degree” that amounts to little more than a glorified union card. More people to drive up competition and drive down wages for the ever-dwindling pool of jobs in the field…a field which doesn’t pay for shit to begin with.

But that’s not even the worst of it. The worst part is that, somehow, you just know that anyone attracted to librarianship because they read about it in a “Hot Jobs” list will be a natural recruit for The Library 2.0 Cult. There will be more Hipster Librarian dingbats around to drive everyone batty with endless, pointless debate over the “meaning” of a vague, awkward marketing term that means absolutely nothing whatsoever. Eventually, the debate will get so insular and self-referential and “meta” that it will create a Black Hole of Stupidity and disappear up its own ass.

Sort of like this post.

Those of you with no frame of reference to the exceedingly closed circle of the library blog world, who have never heard of “Library 2.0” and have no fucking clue what I’m talking about, should consider yourselves lucky.

Priest: So how many wives will you be marrying today, Mr. Simpson?
Bart: Just one.
Priest: Pssh. What are you, gay?

It’s always good news when a town opens a new library. So I was pleasantly surprised this morning to discover that Colorado City is rejoining the modern world:

The log building on the corner of Central and Johnson streets has sat empty for years. Now, it’s going to become the new Hildale/Colorado City public library.

“We’re dang excited,” Stefanie Colgrove said Thursday as she carried another heavy box of books into the building. “Thank you to everyone who donated. It’s wonderful. It’s just amazing.”

Thousands of books have been donated to help rebuild the library, which closed years ago and the books disappeared. Some claim Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs had them destroyed.

(link via LISNews)

Those of you who know me personally have probably already heard the tale of the time I visited Colorado City. My former employer had just granted several public access computers to their town library, and I was sent to install the computers and train the library staff. It was an experience as surreal as anything I’ve ever experienced.

I reached the town after a sixty mile drive from the nearest hotel. When I pulled off the empty desert highway and into town, the streets instantly turned to dirt, and every pedestrian I drove past (all of whom seemingly dressed like extras from Little House on the Prairie) turned their heads to follow me until I was out of sight. As I searched in vain for the library, a car appeared from a side street and began to follow me. This continued for several minutes as I became progressively more nervous. Finally, I spied the sign for the public library and turned into the parking lot. The trailing car stopped, obviously making note of my plate number, and then drove off.

Things got stranger when I entered the building, deserted except for the two staff members. The two women – one seemingly in her forties and the other no more than eighteen – seemed surprised to see that their trainer was a man. They quickly made a phone call, and a few minutes later a gentleman in his mid-fifties arrived. He watched me as I unpacked and set up the computers, then remained for the rest of the morning and afternoon as I showed the librarians how to use and administer their new machines. He didn’t say more than ten words the entire time. I found it all a bit odd, but assumed he must be the town’s tech guy, there to learn all he could about how our grant computers were configured.

Later, I found out that the two librarians – whom I had assumed were mother and daughter due to their age difference and identical last names – were actually both married to the older man, and that the reason he was there was because women in their church are not allowed, unchaperoned, in the presence of men to whom they’re not married.

Saudi Arabia? Nope, Utah.

If you’ve heard of Colorado City at all, it’s probably because of the gruesome events retold in Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven or because of the recent flight, capture, trial and conviction of the town’s “prophet,” Warren Jeffs. It’s a bastion of polygamy, incest, and religious lunacy out in the remote desert wilds of the Arizona/Utah border. Its remoteness is intentional, as the inhabitants don’t welcome the scrutiny of outsiders and much of what they practice is flagrantly illegal. The weird, violent history of the place is well documented, both in print and online, resulting in far more attention than many of the inhabitants ever wanted.

My interest is more personal. I know for a fact that there was a library in Colorado City because I was in the damn place. But sometime between the day I visited in 2001 and today, the powers that ruled the town shut it down, as a threat to their power. The article quoted above hints that its books were destroyed, and this article suggests much the same:

“This is a most worthy cause as these women and children have had no access to books (or television or the Internet) for a long time, if ever, and education is the ticket to freedom,” Black said. “I have been (to Colorado City) several times on postal business and found the women to be extremely isolated and curious about the outside world.”

“No access”? We gave them public computers and internet access. What happened to those computers?

Oh, lovely. It looks like my former profession in my former state of residence is in big trouble:

As has happened in other states, cash-strapped schools in Washington state are dropping librarians to save money: This year, Federal Way cut 20 librarian positions. Spokane reduced 10 librarians to half-time. Darrington cut two librarians. A school in Marysville eliminated its half-time librarian.

Libraries are open fewer hours, programs minimized, jobs combined. In many cases, part-timers with little formal library training are replacing skilled veterans. In rural Pomeroy, a school now employs a combination custodian-librarian — she opens the library after cleaning the locker rooms.

I managed to secure full-time employment as a school librarian for three years in Seattle, but I was also the network administrator for the school in which I worked. And sure enough, when I left the position, the school changed it to part-time.

In a related note, this is as good a time as any to reveal that I’m no longer a public librarian either. Two weeks ago, I resigned from the position I started in August. I already have a new job lined up, as a systems admin for an IT firm. I plan on volunteering at the local public library after I get settled into the new job, but after ten years in the profession, I’ve discovered that I like libraries a hell of a lot more when I’m not in one 40 hours per week. (Plus, the IT job pays better, and with a 100+ year old house in desperate need of repairs, I need the extra money.)

The question is: can I still consider myself a librarian, even if I’m no longer a library employee?

As a librarian, it is of crucial importance that one masters the language, the culture, nay, the zeitgeist of the patrons who frequent one’s library. When the kids come in, with the hopscotch and the jungle music and the maree-wanna, you gotta be able to rap with them. You gotta be hep.

That’s why I, for one, am elated that Merriam-Webster dictionary has finally announced their Top 10 Words of 2007. Memorize these words and use them often in daily conversation, and the kids will automatically respect you. They will instinctively understand that you’re on their wavelength, hip to their jive. No one will ever ask you if you are a narc.

Without further ado:

10. charlatan
9. hypocrite
8. Pecksniffian
7. apathetic
6. sardoodledom
5. blamestorm
4. quixotic
3. conundrum
2. facebook

And the 2007 Word of the Year…

1. w00t!

So, any suggestions for the committee? Any favorite words that they missed?

Last week, the director at my library mentioned that several titles in the ever-popular “For Dummies” series had mysteriously gone missing, and suggested that I order some replacement copies. Shortly thereafter, I logged into our corporate Amazon account and purchased several hundred dollars worth of books.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying particularly close attention to the specific edition of each title I was ordering.

Needless to say, I had not previously been aware that Dummies publishes special teen-tiny editions of their books. Perhaps they’re attempting to monopolize a niche by catering to the previously-untapped hobbit market.