The Liminal Librarian

I just read on the ALA Inside Scoop blog that ALA’s membership numbers are dropping because of the recession. (Yup, this was posted 3 weeks ago — I have a lot of blogs to read, people!)

With ALA Publishing Department revenue already in decline, membership dues revenue at $4.3 million is under budget by $127,000 or 2.8%. The number of new and renewing members has declined from 67,827 to 65,437, or -3.52%.

On the plus side, ALA continues to see growth in student membership; May numbers were up by 2.3%. Year-to-date statistics show a flat renewal rate overall for personal members and new membership enrolments are down 6.33%. The YTD statistics also show movement from regular and other classes of membership to the “continuous member” category, which is up 8.7% and no doubt reflects the retirement trend within the profession.

Of ALA’s 11 divisions, only the Young Adult Library Services division has seen growth of 1.04% over FY2008. Not surprisingly, the Public Library Association has born the severest drop at (12.67%), followed by the Reference and User Services Association (8.24%), the Library and Information Technology Association (8.18%), the Library Leadership and Management Association (7.25%), the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (6.05%), and the American Association of School Librarians (5.17%).

YALSA makes sense to me, since they seem to be the rockingest division of all. I’m trying to wrap my head around this decrease in numbers, though, in conjunction with reports of the very strong conference attendance in Chicago. And am wondering if the decrease in memberships is a temporary fluke or signs of an ongoing trend. Are people going to re-up when the economic situation gets better, or will they find that they don’t miss the membership?

Then I went a-reading further and saw Nicole Engard over on What I Learned Today posting about library association memberships. Her reason for not joining more associations?

I was recently asked to participate in an interest group for an association. I said, ‘heck yeah, but I’m not a member do I have to be?’ Apparently I can participate for a period of time without being a member – but why not join the association?? It’s simple. I do a lot of speaking and I have only one rule when it comes to speaking – I will not pay to speak for an association (local libraries – sure – but big associations – fat chance). I will accept a reimbursement of my expenses (without honorarium) in most cases, but I will not pay out of pocket to speak for an association when I can educate librarians at no cost to me via several other venues.

Today I filled out forms to speak at 3 conferences. Two of them require that members speak without any compensation and I just can’t live with that – so I don’t join. I spoke at a state conference last year and had to fight to get my mileage reimbursed because they insisted that association members and librarians who work in the state don’t get paid to speak. Why?

I want to belong to more associations, I want to help the library profession and share my knowledge, but I do not want to – and will not – go bankrupt doing so.

This has always been a mystery to me, and is one reason why I let my own state association membership drop lo these many years ago.

Anyway. Sorry for the post-o-quotes, but I’ve been up with some (hopefully 24-hour) flu since 3AM and am too fuzzy to think about this further — I just wanted to throw the topic out there and see what you all thought. Even comment on Facebook, if you must.

I’ve been thinking lately about speaking and libraries and the effects of the economic crunch on library conferences. By this point in the summer, I’m usually confirmed for at least 3-4 presentations or workshops for the fall — and right now, I’m scheduled for a big, fat, zero. Now, it could be that I’m just not so interesting to hear anymore, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the craptacular economy than anything else. Invited speakers are a logical place to cut back.

Then, I just read in LJ that the Ohio Library Council has cut its entire convention this year — largely because people just can’t afford to go:

OLC made its decision in the wake of a survey of library directors that showed that very few could afford to send their staff to the event. “In light of the recent developments in the state’s public library funding and the drastic adjustments that all libraries have been making to their operations, the OLC made the most fiscally-responsible route for both members and the organization,” OLC said in a news release.

Ohio of course is an extreme case (and if you want to help, check out some of the links over at Pop Goes the Library). I presented there a few years ago and remember the conference organizers as committed and energetic people, so it’s disturbing to read this.

Then again, ALA attendance appeared to be great, although the number of vendors was down. Are smaller conferences going to be more heavily affected? Have those of you who do the conference circuit noticed huge drops in attendance, or a decline in speaking invitations?

I’ve been doing some talks lately on career building in a down economy, so was interested to see ALA’s new Getting a Job in a Tough Economy Toolkit. It’s obviously a work in progress, and kind of weirdly organized, but I’m cheered to see any association movement toward helping librarians instead of solely focusing on libraries.

Dear ALA: Here’s a shamelessly self-promoting suggestion — why not link up to LISjobs.com? Just a thought.

Anyway. What do you all think of it?

I usually blithely repost announcements on Beyond the Job without comment, whether or not I find something personally interesting or agree with its focus. But, this one made me snort coffee. I just gave a talk at UM-Milwaukee last week for their “Get That Job!” day about career building in a down economy, one part of which stressed free/low-cost professional development opportunities (including student rates and volunteer opportunities at conferences). So the topic’s been on my mind — then this crossed my inbox last night:

STUDENT DISCOUNT NOW AVAILABLE!

The Northeast Document Conservation Center Welcomes Students of Library and Information Science to join us at:

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS: Fundamentals of Creating and Managing Digital Collections

MAY 27-29, 2009
Westin San Diego
San Diego, California

CONFERENCE FEE: $700 (includes a Networking luncheon on Day 1 and the Conference Reception)

DISCOUNTED STUDENT RATE: $595 with a copy of a valid student ID (emphasis mine)

(See: http://www.nedcc.org/education/ddsdstudent.php for Student Rate instructions)

Coffeesnort! I haven’t been a student for a while, but in what world is $595 a good student rate? And here I was thinking the $140 ALA wants to charge was a bit high… No disrepect intended to NEDCC in particular (hey, it is $105 off the regular rate!) but especially in the current economy, I think some of these conference structures bear rethinking.

It fascinates me that after years of doom-and-gloom articles about how bad Americans are at saving, now we see articles like “Hard-Hit Families Finally Start Saving, Aggravating Nation’s Economic Woes.”

Ah. It’s the savers’ fault. That clarifies things…

Yes, I read the whole article; I get it — and think “the paradox of thrift” is one of my new favorite phrases… So, perhaps this can be my excuse to go buy something extravagant. “I’m just helping the economy, honest!”

When we focus on the recent feel-good stories about people turning to libraries in tough economic times, I’m wondering if we think enough about the other side of the equation: More people visiting libraries instead of buying books doesn’t much help out the book industry, which has been feeling the economic downturn badly. If you’ve missed the many, many stories about this, see:

• More pain for book publishing and Macmillan joins others downsizing, freezing wages (LJ)
• Publishers announce staff cuts (NYT)
• Layoffs at Random House, Simon & Schuster (AP)
• Parsing Black Wednesday (Quillblog)

Over at BookLust, Patricia Storm — herself a writer — says that:

Sadly, one of the areas where I have had to cut back on is book-buying. I find this very, very hard, ‘cuz I walk into bookstores and see all the pretty new and delicious books and I just want to buy them all!! But I can’t. So instead, I trek it over to our local library and sign out books that only a few months ago, I would have bought.

It’s fascinating to look at the effect the economy seems to be having on publishers’ willingness to experiment with older models. Over at the Issues in Publishing blog, Fran Toolan offers some predictions for the next year, suggesting that it’s “going to be a great year for small and nimble companies.” Although neither small nor, generally, nimble, some of the larger publishers are taking tentative steps toward mixing things up. For instance:

Borders Group Inc. has agreed to accept books from HarperStudio on a nonreturnable basis, departing from a decades-old publishing tradition.

Under the terms of the deal, the nation’s second-largest bookstore chain by revenue will get a deeper discount on initial orders of books published by the new imprint of News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers — 58% to 63% off the cover price, instead of the usual 48%. In exchange, Borders won’t return any unsold books to HarperStudio, instead probably discounting them in the store.

In response to the crisis, The Association of American Publishers has also launched a “Books are great gifts” campaign at BooksAreGreatGifts.com. (Aren’t they?! And don’t forget that you can share the gift of Karen Schneider’s writing — or of mine, not to leave out the big ITI blowout sale .

Maybe what we need here is a “Librarians buy great books” campaign. I always give books to the kids (and sometimes the adults) in my life, how about you?