Saving libraries, but not librarians

In an op-ed article in the LA Times, Regina King, an Orange County librarian, laments at how the state of California underfunds and overworks librarians in the state, citing that California has 3,432 librarians for a population of 37 million, roughly 10 thousand people to each librarian. The national average, she states, was six thousand people to one librarian. The state of school librarians is even worse she says, with one librarian to nearly six thousand students; the national average is one to 865.

Photo from the L.A. Times

Public funding for libraries, she states, is at an all-time low after the operation revenue from state sources shrank from 12.8% to 8.7% from 2001 to 2008. The Public Library Fund, a state program that aids libraries individually, has never received its full allocation of funding from the state. Gov. Jerry Brown even proposed getting rid of state funding for public libraries entirely.

Librarians are public employees, but do not have the strong unions that others like firemen or policemen do. Because of that, King says that librarians are much easier to lay off. She cites the Los Angeles Public Library in 2010, when it cut 328 of its full time positions.

Public perception of librarians are also negative, she states. When asking a young student what he thought of librarians, he said, "Librarians check out books. They read a lot. They tell people to be quiet." These misconceptions are held far and wide by all age ranges. Librarians, she states, do much more than that, like run programs, build collections based on their patrons wants, and serve as "the ultimate gatekeepers and organizers of high-quality information."

King later cites national surveys which state that public library attendance has increased 19.7% since 1999, and that losing librarians at this point will compromise library quality dramatically.

The Los Angeles Times