The only way I can take the courses I do is due to the university tuition remission program for staff. At my age, it’s a ridiculous notion to think about going tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a degree that, quite frankly, just isn’t that difficult. (as taught by many universities). Paraprofessional staff know this, and they resent being artificially walled off from career goals and monetary rewards based on a piece of paper that is only hard to get financially.

Paraprofessional staff at our library literally don’t make enough money to pay all of their bills. Starting salaries are below a living wage. Even once you manage to move into another staff position that pays a living wage you’ve likely already gone into debt, and you’re still one illness or major car repair away from new debt you’ll never be able to get rid of. There’s no career ladder and you’ll never even make as much as an entry level librarian. One staffer who’s been there 40 years is still making 5K per year less than a baby librarian. Paraprofessional staff often end up teaching the new librarians how to do their day to day jobs! So of course we resent it. It is demoralizing to have library faculty and administration tell us patronizingly that we just need to manage our finances better (I’d like to see them manage to live on only 18K per year…it’s easy to say when you’re making 50K!). We watch them take each other out to eat at a nice restaurant for lunch right after they’ve talked with us and seen that someone is in tears because she can’t go to the dentist or replace a cracked windshield. They are aggressively refusing to see the misery in their very midst and at the same time heaping ridicule upon us to by calling us “just c a cataloger” or stating that trained monkeys could do staff work.

In my library, staff do not do research, write papers or go to conferences, not because some don’t want to, but because we are not allowed. It conflicts with our mandate which in cataloging is production volume. We literally risk getting into trouble if we stop and talk to each other for what seems to be too long a time (as calculated by a librarian) even if it’s about work related issues. It would drop our production numbers.

Nevertheless, I’ve managed attended a few local workshops and conferences for librarians and I’ve found them to be embarrassingly content-free. All I could think about was that these people were getting paid at a minimum of 2x my salary and often 4-5 times (if they’ve gone administrative). Yet they really weren’t that bright. The googles and amazons of the world are leaving our OPAC in the dust, yet these people other than sounding an alarm, aren’t doing a danged thing about it. They keep re-identifying the problem and talking about change, yet take no initiative to actually change a single thing.

At this point, I’m so disgusted at the behavior of the librarians that I work with that I’m doing every thing in my power to leave this profession behind. I used to think that I’d love to program for cataloging, work with database vendors, do web design etc for a library…but not any more. Some people here may work at libraries that aren’t as bad as the one I’m in. But I guarantee you the same artificial divide this there in your library too and you have staff who resent you and who are being prevented from helping themselves and your library because they didn’t purchase the right degree. They also know that your degree isn’t a hard one to get, it’s just more expensive than they can afford. So that deepens the resentment.

Now, library science isn’t the only profession with an artificial divide. When I left neuroscience many years ago, I was treated as if my IQ fell 50 points over night. I no longer had access to information, was no longer welcome at seminars and round tables, and could no longer write or attend conferences. So as the years rolled on, I *became* exactly the dumb tech they expected all technicians were. They *created* a much less adept individual.

Education is a big economic engine. So these issues are as much economic as they are psychological. But society is losing when talented people are prevented from contributing to a profession (that I’ll stress once again isn’t complex like medicine or engineering), prevented from getting access to the larger picture, and growing their skills just because some MLS folks need to justify their degree or the money they spent to get it. I suggest that the MLS folks begin to work on overcoming the cognitive dissonance that is clouding their reasoning on this issue. (read “Mistakes were made, but not by me” for a great introduction to this natural human behavior)

Bottom line: We are ALL losing by continuing this behavior.

If I went back to school for another two years I’d want to study something I could really sink my teeth into, like philosophy, or more history. I would not want to spend two years studying to gain practical knowledge of limited application which I either already have or could get very easily on the job.