PRESIDENT'S PAGE Salaries and professional authority In my statement of aims for my candidacy for president-elect in 1990-1991, I stated that salaries should be a core issue in our advocacy plan because pay has a ripple effect on everything we, as librarians and as an association, try to do [1]. For many of us, salary is not the highest priority for job satisfaction. But Blalock, a prominent social statistician, indicates in his latest work that an individual's salary becomes a kind of common denominator by which otherwise noncomparable goods can be evaluated. . . making it possible for outsiders to evaluate their [the professional's] worth and to assign them a comparable social status [2].
Wiegand writes in his work on library education, "librarians continue to rank at the low end of salary scales among groups calling themselves professionals" [3]. To attempt to explain this, he presents an analytical framework as an instructive method to distinguish librarianship from other professions. He then goes on to use this framework to reexamine the role of library education in the development of librarianship during the past 100 years. Low salaries have harmful effects on our profession. How will we attract the best and the brightest to our profession? Our low salary scales compel people entering the field to look for the least expensive and least time-consuming graduate degree program available. Low salaries may prevent talented people from considering the profession at all. Who can afford to pay top dollar for the degree, and then enter the field at a salary in 386
the twenties-and without expectations of ever making enough to pay off the school loans? Library schools exacerbate the problem because they do not dare to rock the boat by increasing the curriculum content, or by stiffening the criteria for earning the degree. This dilemma extends to validating our low status within our institutions and keeping our priority for institutional funding at a very low level. We feel powerless, undervalued, and underpaid, Our clients and society perceive us as just book handlers. Why? The Council on Library Resources offers a possible answer to this question: at the heart of many of the present problems facing librarians and library education is the failure to describe the profession and its present role in terms that are compelling, expansive and accurate. The principles, the responsibilities and the body of knowledge that shape the profession are real and of great importance ... but they are either implicit or incompletely formed and certainly not widely understood
[4].
The shape of our role is not clear. And as we stretch to meet exciting challenges in the midst of turbulent technological change, we face fierce competition. Therefore, we must take action to determine the causes of our predicament and to elevate the professional authority of our discipline-medical librarianship. We can accomplish this by defining our unique role and our value to our institutions. And we can do this in a variety of waysfrom small individual actions to sophisticated research projects. The Status and Economic Interests of Health Sciences Personnel Committee is conducting a study of salaries earned by other allied health professions with similar educational requirements. With this
information, the director of a library can ask the human resources department to compare the salary scales paid to librarians with those paid to other allied health employees, such as pharmacists, nurse clinicians, and social workers. I did this at my institution in 1990 and succeeded in having the classifications for librarians raised two grades. I also pointed out the need for advanced knowledge and skills in using computers and online databases to retrieve information from a broad spectrum of complex knowledge bases. This clarified for the human resources department the need for equating our status and, therefore, salaries to those of nurse clinicians and pharmacists, whose impact on patient care is more easily understood. Through professionwide surveys, trends in salaries can be ascertained and analyzed, but description alone can provide neither recommendations nor justifications for changes in society's perception of our value. Winter, a sociologist, emphasizes that the prestige of the educational programs and educational attainment of the practitioners of a profession are two of the standard indicators of professional recognition and concomitant remuneration [5]. MLA has developed a credentialing program that is invaluable for designing a plan for each member's continuing professional development. The certificate of membership in the Academy of Health Information Professionals should be prominently displayed in each member's work place just as other health professionals display their credentials. And to make it easier for members to acquire new knowledge, MLA is working on making continuing education opportunities more accessible and flexible. To better define the competenBull Med Libr Assoc 80(4) October 1992
President's page
cies needed for professional practice and to support their acquisition in graduate school and beyond, MLA's Task Force on Knowledge and Skills has produced an important document, Platform for Change: The Educational Policy Statement of the Medical Library Association. It provides structure for education and professional development for health sciences librarianship and also provides concrete guidelines for graduate programs in our discipline. Most importantly, it provides an agenda for future action, which is already in process with the appointment of a Research Task Force and appointment of a National Library of Medicine (NLM) planning panel on education for health sciences librarianship [6]. The most effective way to elevate the authority of our discipline will be through research to provide empirical evidence of our value to our clients and to society as a whole. To help us do this, a Think Tank on Research Initiative was held at the Ninety-second Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. As a result of these deliberations, the invited members of the group and the Library Research Section recommended that a Research Task Force be appointed and charged with designing an action plan to develop an MLA research program. Its charge includes, but is not limited to, the following objectives: * Creation of a research program infrastructure that will
Bull Med Libr Assoc 80(4) October 1992
* be institutionalized under the professional development department, * include association-wide involvement and participation, and * state the association policy of its support for research. * Identification and development of educational activities, including * a curriculum of research-related CE offerings in a variety of formats; * basic and new perspectives courses; * annual meeting programming; * increased collaborative activities and planning with NLM, graduate schools, and other associations; and * activities such as mentor programs, databases of ongoing research projects, doctoral fellowship support, and funding sources. * Increased awards, funding, and recognition, including * fund-raising, * new methods of recognizing excellent work, and * modification of Academy of Health Information Professionals credit for research. * Increased marketing and production of research: * publishing research results and information about research methods, and * publicity about the importance of research and MLA's active promotion of research in health information provision. Overall, the recommendations for action should be aimed at creating a research culture for health sciences librarians and MLA. This task
force has been appointed and has started to work on its charge to develop a plan of action. Using history as a guide, we should provide empirical evidence of our value to our clients and to society as a whole as a first step in elevating our salaries, our resource allocations, and most importantly, our professional authority. Action is key to the success of our endeavours in all these areas. MLA will advocate, facilitate, and support these activities. But the basic responsibility rests with each and every one of us working proactively to make this happen. Jacqueline D. Bastille Treadwell Library Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, Massachusetts
References 1. BAsTILLE JD. Official candidate background information for 1990/91 MLA election. MLA News 1990 Oct;(229):13. 2. BLALOCK HM JR. Understanding social inequality: modeling allocation processes. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991:33. 3. WIEGAND WA. Perspectives on library education in the context of recently published literature on the history of professions. J Educ Libr Inf Sci 1986;26(4):268. 4. Platform for change: the educational policy statement of the Medical Library Association. Chicago: Medical Library Association, 1992:1. 5. WiNTm MF. The culture and control of expertise. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988:34. 6. Platform for change, op. cit.
387
Wiegand writes in his work on library education, "librarians continue to rank at the low end of salary scales among groups calling themselves professionals" [3]. To attempt to explain this, he presents an analytical framework as an instructive method to distinguish librarianship from other professions. He then goes on to use this framework to reexamine the role of library education in the development of librarianship during the past 100 years. Low salaries have harmful effects on our profession. How will we attract the best and the brightest to our profession? Our low salary scales compel people entering the field to look for the least expensive and least time-consuming graduate degree program available. Low salaries may prevent talented people from considering the profession at all. Who can afford to pay top dollar for the degree, and then enter the field at a salary in 386
the twenties-and without expectations of ever making enough to pay off the school loans? Library schools exacerbate the problem because they do not dare to rock the boat by increasing the curriculum content, or by stiffening the criteria for earning the degree. This dilemma extends to validating our low status within our institutions and keeping our priority for institutional funding at a very low level. We feel powerless, undervalued, and underpaid, Our clients and society perceive us as just book handlers. Why? The Council on Library Resources offers a possible answer to this question: at the heart of many of the present problems facing librarians and library education is the failure to describe the profession and its present role in terms that are compelling, expansive and accurate. The principles, the responsibilities and the body of knowledge that shape the profession are real and of great importance ... but they are either implicit or incompletely formed and certainly not widely understood
[4].
The shape of our role is not clear. And as we stretch to meet exciting challenges in the midst of turbulent technological change, we face fierce competition. Therefore, we must take action to determine the causes of our predicament and to elevate the professional authority of our discipline-medical librarianship. We can accomplish this by defining our unique role and our value to our institutions. And we can do this in a variety of waysfrom small individual actions to sophisticated research projects. The Status and Economic Interests of Health Sciences Personnel Committee is conducting a study of salaries earned by other allied health professions with similar educational requirements. With this
information, the director of a library can ask the human resources department to compare the salary scales paid to librarians with those paid to other allied health employees, such as pharmacists, nurse clinicians, and social workers. I did this at my institution in 1990 and succeeded in having the classifications for librarians raised two grades. I also pointed out the need for advanced knowledge and skills in using computers and online databases to retrieve information from a broad spectrum of complex knowledge bases. This clarified for the human resources department the need for equating our status and, therefore, salaries to those of nurse clinicians and pharmacists, whose impact on patient care is more easily understood. Through professionwide surveys, trends in salaries can be ascertained and analyzed, but description alone can provide neither recommendations nor justifications for changes in society's perception of our value. Winter, a sociologist, emphasizes that the prestige of the educational programs and educational attainment of the practitioners of a profession are two of the standard indicators of professional recognition and concomitant remuneration [5]. MLA has developed a credentialing program that is invaluable for designing a plan for each member's continuing professional development. The certificate of membership in the Academy of Health Information Professionals should be prominently displayed in each member's work place just as other health professionals display their credentials. And to make it easier for members to acquire new knowledge, MLA is working on making continuing education opportunities more accessible and flexible. To better define the competenBull Med Libr Assoc 80(4) October 1992
President's page
cies needed for professional practice and to support their acquisition in graduate school and beyond, MLA's Task Force on Knowledge and Skills has produced an important document, Platform for Change: The Educational Policy Statement of the Medical Library Association. It provides structure for education and professional development for health sciences librarianship and also provides concrete guidelines for graduate programs in our discipline. Most importantly, it provides an agenda for future action, which is already in process with the appointment of a Research Task Force and appointment of a National Library of Medicine (NLM) planning panel on education for health sciences librarianship [6]. The most effective way to elevate the authority of our discipline will be through research to provide empirical evidence of our value to our clients and to society as a whole. To help us do this, a Think Tank on Research Initiative was held at the Ninety-second Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. As a result of these deliberations, the invited members of the group and the Library Research Section recommended that a Research Task Force be appointed and charged with designing an action plan to develop an MLA research program. Its charge includes, but is not limited to, the following objectives: * Creation of a research program infrastructure that will
Bull Med Libr Assoc 80(4) October 1992
* be institutionalized under the professional development department, * include association-wide involvement and participation, and * state the association policy of its support for research. * Identification and development of educational activities, including * a curriculum of research-related CE offerings in a variety of formats; * basic and new perspectives courses; * annual meeting programming; * increased collaborative activities and planning with NLM, graduate schools, and other associations; and * activities such as mentor programs, databases of ongoing research projects, doctoral fellowship support, and funding sources. * Increased awards, funding, and recognition, including * fund-raising, * new methods of recognizing excellent work, and * modification of Academy of Health Information Professionals credit for research. * Increased marketing and production of research: * publishing research results and information about research methods, and * publicity about the importance of research and MLA's active promotion of research in health information provision. Overall, the recommendations for action should be aimed at creating a research culture for health sciences librarians and MLA. This task
force has been appointed and has started to work on its charge to develop a plan of action. Using history as a guide, we should provide empirical evidence of our value to our clients and to society as a whole as a first step in elevating our salaries, our resource allocations, and most importantly, our professional authority. Action is key to the success of our endeavours in all these areas. MLA will advocate, facilitate, and support these activities. But the basic responsibility rests with each and every one of us working proactively to make this happen. Jacqueline D. Bastille Treadwell Library Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, Massachusetts
References 1. BAsTILLE JD. Official candidate background information for 1990/91 MLA election. MLA News 1990 Oct;(229):13. 2. BLALOCK HM JR. Understanding social inequality: modeling allocation processes. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991:33. 3. WIEGAND WA. Perspectives on library education in the context of recently published literature on the history of professions. J Educ Libr Inf Sci 1986;26(4):268. 4. Platform for change: the educational policy statement of the Medical Library Association. Chicago: Medical Library Association, 1992:1. 5. WiNTm MF. The culture and control of expertise. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988:34. 6. Platform for change, op. cit.
387
