NEW SCIENCE LIBRARIANS—IS THERE A FUTURE?

The objective of this study is to determine how many opportunities are actually available for new science librarians. As a result of forecasts stating that there will soon be a shortage of librarians, several recruitment efforts are under way to ‘grow' more librarians. At the same time, budget cuts and hiring freezes occur daily and threaten the pool of jobs available.

One of the hottest topics in the literature today is about the graying or aging of the profession. Much has been written about the education needs for new catalogers (Hill,1997; Letarte, 2002 and Turvey, 2002). Black (2002) studied the socialization needs of (employed) entry-level librarians. Martindale (2004) discussed opportunities for entry-level librarians in the geographic information systems field. After discovering an increase in the number of positions that require three or more years of experience, Russell (2003) alluded that “entry-level positions are becoming rarer.” However, there appears to be a dearth of literature concerning the specific topic of permanent jobs available to a wider range of new librarians interested in science librarianship.

For this study, a content analysis of job advertisements from 2000-2005 issues of American Libraries will be conducted. American Libraries was selected because it is the official magazine of the American Library Association and it lists advertisements for academic, public and special libraries. Additionally, it has a subscriber list of 64,000 and a readership greater than that.