I felt then, and still feel, that there’s another ongoing problem that may in the long run be more important: The supporting cast, those who don’t get as much public acclaim but who make sure that things actually get finished, actually work, and actually keep working. I jokingly called them–us, since I’ve always been one of them in my career–”drudges,” only to contrast them with the high-profile Movers & Shakers. (I’ve been high profile in the library field, but not generally in my job. Being a peasant at work has worked out fairly well, all things considered. Yes, Dorothea, so do I…)

And I absolutely wrongly conflated The Stars (one circle), the identified M&S group (an overlapping circle), and The True Self-Promoters (a third ovelapping circle, overlapping more with The Stars than with the M&S). I apologized for that conflation.

There are other sets of issues here that may or may not get addressed. Meanwhile, my error has generated a whole bunch of otherwise useful commentary; out of the mud grows the lotus.

[With regard to some of the notes, though, I'd say that sometimes the field as a whole may benefit from certain individuals leaving a library and moving to a role that benefits librarianship as a whole. Someone I've known very well for a very long time did just that, trading a moderately powerful position in a single library to one where they work to benefit dozens or hundreds of libraries. Vendors, after all, are part of the library field too.]

We had a brief discussion about this on the NexGenlibrarians list and it too went in a different direction. Folks kept writing about how having lots of tech skills made them over qualified and kept them from getting library jobs. Another thing that was brought up was somethinig to the effect of “everybody knows that you won’t get appreciated and a good salary in libraries so what are you complaining about?”

I’m personally more interested in what library administrators are doing to keep high quality staff instead of having them move on to more lucrative professions and contributing to librarianship outside of libraries, e.g., working for vendors.