curran.p65 134 College & Research Libraries March 2003 134 Succession: The Next Ones at Bat William M. Curran William M. Curran is Director of Libraries at Concordia University; e-mail: wcurran@alcor.concordia.ca. Throughout North America, more than 83,866 librarians will soon reach the age of 65 and will be taking, or plan to take, retirement. The exodus of practicing librarians will result in a severe shortage. With the depar- ture of the older baby boomers, a serious collective loss is imminent in terms of experience and expertise because there are few experienced, trained, middle-level managers, supervisors, and administrators within the “middle” age group of librarians who could ensure appropriate suc- cession in the libraries following such a massive retirement exodus. he Aging Workforce Reality Check It is estimated that over the next eight years (i.e., by 2010), Canadian universities will be seeking to recruit approximately 30,000 new faculty.1 Not since the early baby boomers first entered elementary schools in the early 1950s, and later when that same group proceeded into North American univer- sities in the mid-1960s, has there been such a need for an influx of new faculty. The competition promises to be stiff. Is- sues such as status, benefits, salaries, sab- batical leaves, and so on will weigh heavily in scholars� decisions to accept tenure-tract positions in universities. In a paper presented to the Canadian Eco- nomics Association meeting in Montreal last summer, Dr. Paul Davenport warned that faculty retirements over the next de- cade will be very high as the cohort hired for the first baby boom retires.2 Universi- ties will have to double their current an- nual hiring levels in order to maintain current faculty�student ratios at a time when (1) the United States will be com- peting for the same hiring pool, (2) Ph.D. enrollments have not expanded in pro- portion to the need in either country, and (3) demand for Ph.D.�s outside universi- ties has increased in response to the needs of the knowledge economy. Academic libraries will face exactly the same ordeal in recruiting librarians. Indeed, Quebec�s Corporation of Professional Li- brarians (http://www.cbpq.qc.CA/corpo- ration/profil_membres2000.html) is alert- ing its members that 20 percent of the cur- rent membership has already reached the age of 55. The oldest baby-boomer librar- ians will thus be approaching retirement within the next five to eight years. James Matarazzo, dean of the Library School at Simmons College, warns that by 2010, 83,866 professional librarians will have reached the age of 65 and will be taking, or plan to take, retirement. 3 The exodus of practicing librarians will result in an inevitable shortage that could prove critical. It is important to note furthermore that Dr. Matarazzo�s figures exclude those librarians who will leave the profession to pursue other careers, as happens in the normal course of events, nor does it take into account other forms of attrition, such as illness and death. Stanley Wilder, the University of Rochester�s assistant dean, Succession: The Next Ones at Bat 135 states that over the next fifteen years, 50 percent of librarians in Canadian ARL li- braries will be retiring. And librarians are substantially older than those in compa- rable professions. Only 12 percent of li- brarians are in the 25 to 34 age range com- pared to 25 percent in that range in com- parable professions. 4 In 2001, Quebec�s Corporation of Pro- fessional Librarians chose as its theme for the annual conference, Société cherche bibliothécaire désespérément. Desperation? Perhaps, but one must ask how the pro- fession reached this point. Hiring, Retention, and Development In one academic library recently sur- veyed, 84 percent of the professional staff are over the age of 40, and 55 percent are over the age of 50.5 Only three percent of librarians are between the ages of 20 and 30. In another academic library, 78 per- cent of the librarians are over age 40. In a third academic library, it was found that 68 percent of professional staff are older than 50 years of age and 44 percent are older than 55 (half of whom are presently occupying management or �leadership� positions).6 Considering those eligible for retirement, apart from any �early� retirement packages, these libraries could lose half their senior professional staff within a given year. More significant, there are very few experienced, trained, middle- level managers, supervisors, and admin- istrators within the �middle� age group of librarians (40 to 50 years of age), who could ensure appropriate succession in the libraries in the event of a massive re- tirement exodus. An acute shortage of professional librarians will likely be felt at these levels, as well as at the entry level. It is not too surprising that the Univer- sity of Manitoba Libraries� Task Force on Recruitment and Retention recommends that its director, or a designate, partici- pate in CLA and ACRL job fairs.7 There are many reasons for this. For the past fifteen years, academic libraries have faced major budget cuts, which were not limited to collections but extended to staff positions as well. Many middle man- agement positions were abolished when they became vacant, not because the po- sitions were not needed, but purely as cost-saving measures. According to CARL Statistics, Table II shows that during a 6-year period, between 1993 to 1999, the national average of administrative librarians decreased from 16.96 to 14.04. The Que- bec provincial average for the same period went from 16.50 to 13.33.8 Indeed, one hidden aftereffect of the cuts to supervisory and middle manage- ment positions in academic libraries has been an obstruction of the �natural� pro- gressive promotion conveyor belt for li- brarians leading to senior administrative positions. Consequently, there have been few, if any, opportunities for progressive moves into increasingly responsible su- pervisory positions for an entire middle- aged group of career-tract academic li- brarians. The careers of many academic librarians who, in the mid- to late 1980s, should have been moving into supervisory and middle management positions were effectively �arrested� as these types of management positions were merged and/or abolished. The impact of a sudden, massive re- tirement of librarians who have adminis- trative experience could be disastrous. The situation is not unique to any one academic library, so the chances of find- ing suitably experienced candidates from elsewhere to fill these managerial vacan- cies are slim. As far back as 1994, 82 percent of li- brary directors among the ARL member- ship were between 45 and 69 years of age. Between 1990 and 1994, the percentage of the population aged 55 and over went from 25.5 percent to 43 percent.9 The study conducted by Peter Hernon, Ronald R. Powell, and Arthur P. Young aims to: (1) determine succession; (2) iden- tify those skills and competencies required of future directors; and (3) identify career paths and provide avenues for attaining senior administrative positions. It is im- 136 College & Research Libraries March 2003 portant to note that the paths that enabled those who are now senior administrators to attain their positions will not automati- cally be the same�or appropriate�ones that will lead to the senior administration positions of tomorrow. Conditions change. As with every other professional library position (e.g., cataloguer, reference librar- ian, etc.), those skills required fifteen or twenty years ago that paved the way for today�s directors may or may not be needed for library administration posi- tions in the future. Be that as it may, one common denominator that will remain indispensable for senior administrators is prior management experience. The best example of poor succession planning is promoting a good technician into a FIGURE 1 Age of United States Librarians and Comparable Professions, 1998 FIGURE 2 Age of URL University Librarians, 1986-1998 Indicates almost 40% of librarians are in the 45�54 age group compared with other professionals where that age group represents 25% Shows a disproportionate number of university librarians in the 40�55 age group compared with the 25�35 age group. Per cen t o f P op ula tio n Age Comparable Professionals Librarians <20 20�24 25�34 35�44 45�54 55�64 >=65 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% <=24 25�29 30�34 35�39 40�44 45�49 50�54 55�59 60�64 >=65 25% 20% 25% 10% 5% 0% Per cen t o f P op ula tio n Age 1986 1990 1994 1998 Succession: The Next Ones at Bat 137 manager�s position. Similarly, in a library setting, it would be difficult to imagine a scenario where an incumbent is �para- chuted� into a senior administration posi- tion without appropriate management ex- perience, acquired at progressively respon- sible stages of one�s career. To add to this mix, Hernon, Powell, and Young point out: The challenge of replacing retiring directors is increased by the rather small size of the pool of academic librarians qualified to be directors of large academic research libraries and by the fact that a number of qualified librarians are not inter- ested in becoming directors of such libraries.10 Regardless of the organization, succes- sion is a fundamental administrative com- ponent of planning. As vital to a vision of where the organization is�where it is going, when, and the impact of changes, service, products, and so on�is the ele- ment of who will lead it in the future and who is presently being trained to direct it and thus ensure its continuity. This may not have been such an im- portant question in the past. Library man- agers and administrators assumed, often correctly, that some assistant or second- in-command could �fill in� when the time came for the organization to seek a suc- cessor for a retiring administrator. Suc- cession planning was relatively simple as long as there was a pool of competent applicants�or a potential for such. How- ever, academic libraries have undergone enormous cuts, which extended over a period of fifteen years. The cuts to the acquisitions budgets were merciless, and collections will never �catch up� or �re- stock� despite infusions of so-called rattrappage moneys or of one-fell-swoop efforts to replenish the bare cupboards of research collections. That train has left the station. But the impact of fifteen years of cuts extends beyond collections to the expertise of professional librarians. In academic libraries, this became the prac- tice: Vacant positions were either abol- ished on a routine basis or filled �inter- nally.� Annual academic library staff re- ductions were rampant. If a position be- came vacant through attrition, it was not filled but, rather, put on hold (tempo- rarily) until a suitable time, such as when the next budget was decreed or when the position could be abolished. More often than not, this was welcome news because it meant no one would be laid off. Those who willingly left their positions were seen as doing a favor for those who re- mained. Supervisory and middle man- agement positions that became vacant were �fused� or �merged� with other ex- isting positions. This served to reduce the salary mass as well as the number of su- pervisors/managers in the library. It was almost routine to expect unit heads and supervisors to undertake additional workloads, sometimes doubling the origi- nal volume, and to supervise more staff, either on a temporary basis or perma- nently, occasionally, with a concession that a lower-level, part-time position be created. Often labeled under the rubric �organi- zation reengineering,� the practice dras- tically reduced the number of middle management positions to which academic librarians could ascribe, but it also dis- couraged those already filling middle management positions from progressing into more senior positions with additional responsibilities. With little opportunity for �advancement,� low morale pre- vailed. Through no fault of their own, academic librarians thus reached a �pla- teau� at very early stages of their careers. Stagnation was not an uncommon side effect and fifteen years represents more than half an average career span. That key requirement to develop library leaders identified in the Hernon, Powell, and Young study (i.e., �a local environment that is nurturing and offers guidance and opportunities to grow and gain new and varied experiences� 11) was absent. For those exceptional positions that had to be filled, internal candidates were selected, sometimes with little or no managerial training and/or aptitudes. There was little new blood entering aca- 138 College & Research Libraries March 2003 demic libraries, when, as CREPUQ fig- ures show, between 1980 and 1999, pro- fessional positions decreased by 30.7 per- cent.12 If an external candidate had to be hired, this was more often than not on a part-time or full-time, contractual basis. It was not uncommon in the mid-1980s for professional librarians following graduation from library school to wait four or five years before landing a per- manent position in an academic library. Academic libraries were closed shops. (See table 1.) In 19 years, professional positions in Quebec academic libraries diminished from 486 to 337. Between 1995 and 1999, the numbers diminished from 396 to 337. Coaching and training, usually grati- fying tasks in themselves, often became onerous, time-consuming �impositions� for academic librarians because the only ones being trained were part-time or stu- dent librarians who would leave the li- brary as soon as their contracts ended or when a permanent position became avail- able elsewhere. Long-term mentoring, counseling, and sponsoring became ob- solete in academic libraries. Those very crucial retention components�orienta- tion, mentoring, communication, train- ing, leadership, and job enrichment op- portunities�disappeared in the flurry of daily working life. Results Many academic librarians have labored for the first fifteen to twenty years of their professional careers without chances for advancement into progressively respon- sible positions, in libraries where little, if any, new blood was likely and where an- nual cuts to acquisitions budgets were the norm. Inevitably, academic libraries could not affect so-called healthy organizational structures in terms of staffing levels, where, ideally, one has a breakdown of 20 percent of senior staff with many years� experience, 20 percent of (relative) new- comers, and 60 percent with a wide range of and varied professional experience. Extremes are always problematic. (El- ementary and high schools have experi- enced similar problems. In one Montreal elementary school last fall, fifteen out of eighteen teachers had less than three years� experience.) It is the same syndrome: Long decades with no new teachers, and then, in two or three years, all the invaluable experience disappears with massive retire- ments. Despite unparalleled advances in technology providing quick and easy ac- cess to information for users, academic li- braries have lived through a long, dry sea- son for fifteen years. Now, with the baby- boomer cohort heading for retirement, the first loss for academic libraries will be in terms of numbers. Without a pool of po- tential replacements with administration experience, senior administration jobs will remain vacant and there will be fierce com- petition with other institutions to fill va- cancies. This is regrettable because great strides have been accomplished in coop- eration and resource sharing among aca- demic research libraries. But with the departure of the older baby boomers, a serious collective loss is imminent for academic libraries. That is the sudden loss of the invaluable experi- ence and expertise of staff acquired over several decades. Quebec hospitals learned a bitter les- son a few years ago when hordes of ex- perienced surgical and emergency room nurses availed themselves of attractive early-retirement packages offered to them as cost-cutting measures. The sweet deal was a short-sited road to disaster, particu- larly for emergency room and surgical TABLE 1 General Statistics of Quebec University Libraries Professional Personnel 1980/81 486.8 1985/6 459.8 1990/91 402.3 1995/96 396.2 1996/97 392.2 1998/99 381.4 1999/00 337.3 Succession: The Next Ones at Bat 139 units, where jobs went crying for months. A similar situation could be felt in aca- demic libraries. Faculty also are at risk of facing simi- lar problems, where entire departments could be wiped out in three to five years. To counter this potential problem, senior university administrators are openly en- couraging deans to consider offering bo- nuses to certain faculty to remain at the university, even if they have reached normal retirement age, to avoid hiring exclusively newly graduated faculty (to prevent the same problem from recurring when they reach retirement age) and to carefully plan for an ideal mix of age levels of faculty, avoiding, whenever possible, that more than 20 percent of faculty in a given de- partment be born in the same decade. Although these may seem extreme mea- sures, the thought process and the plan- ning exercise are indeed very sound. Conclusion It is important to remember that aca- demic libraries will never manage them- selves. Printed or electronic sources can be stocked anywhere. It will always be the professionalism of the staff who ani- mate the contents and transform data into knowledge for users, who in turn transform such into wisdom. In compli- ance with ACRL standards, academic li- braries must ensure that users have the ability to �determine the nature and ex- tent of information needed, access it ef- fectively and efficiently, evaluate it, and use it to accomplish specific purposes� and �understand the economic, legal and social issues� in order to use informa- tion �ethically and legally.�13 Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Google cannot do this. The time has come for the profession to strategize for succession planning. There is no question that North America will need to import professional librarians. The ALA�s recognition of international �equivalents� in its accreditation pro- cesses will not solve the problem. Library schools and professional associations have a significant role to play in ensur- ing that professional qualifications are not diluted in the rush to fill vacancies. The teaching profession managed admi- rably to �upgrade� the professional qualification of teachers despite the ab- ject shortage in the 1950s and early 1960s. By 1965, almost all elementary school- teachers under the age of 30 had bacca- laureate degrees and the two-year teach- ers� college programs were discontinued. There may be a potential among nonpro- fessional library staff, which should be tapped. Further studies are needed. En- suring the succession in academic librar- ies is as basic and vital to sound man- agement as ensuring that equipment is in place to accommodate the ever-chang- ing formats in which information is found. Administrators appreciate know- ing �who�s on first,� it is now high time to assess �who�s next at bat.� Notes 1. Renovating the Ivory Tower: Canadian Universities & the Knowledge Economy. Policy Study, ed. David Laidler (Toronto: C. D. Howe Institute, 2002), 37. 2. Ibid, 1. 3. Peter Hernon, Ronald R. Powell, and Arthur P. Young, �University Library Directors in the Association of Research Libraries: The Next Generation, Part One,� College & Research Librar- ies (Mar. 2001). 4. Rebecca T. Lenzini, �The Greying of the Library Profession: A Survey of Our Professional Association and Their Responses,� Searcher 10, no. 7 (July/Aug. 2002). Available online from http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jul02/lenzini.htm. 5. Concordia University Libraries. Annual Report 2001�2002. 6. McGill University Libraries� Annual Report. Retrieved May 2002 from http:// w w w.library.mcgill.ca/admin/reports/anrpt01.htm. 7. �Recruitment & Retention: Toward a Strategy for the University of Manitoba Libraries,� prepared by the Recruitment & Retention Task Force, University of Manitoba Libraries, 2002. 8. CARL Statistics, Ottawa, Canadian Association of Research Libraries. 140 College & Research Libraries March 2003 9. Hernon, Powell, and Young, �University Library Directors in the ARL: The Next Genera- tion,� College and Research Libraries (Mar. 200l). 10. Stanley J. Wilder, �The Changing Profile of Research Library Professionals,� ARL 208/ 209. Retrieved June 2002 from http://www.arl.org/newsltr.208_209/chgprofile.html. 11. Hernon, Powell, and Young, �University Library Directors in the Association of Research Libraries: The Next Generation, Part Two.� 12. CREPUQ, Statistiques générales des bibliothèques universitaires québécoises (Montreal: Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Quebec). 13. ACRL, �Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Librarians.� Available online from http://www.ala.org/acrl/guides/objinfolit.html.