[Publib] Jobs and People

[Backwage at aol.com]

Today marked the end of another week during which construction workers  
filled the corridors of our office building, plying their various trades.   
There were drywall tapers and carpenters, electricians and plumbers and 
flooring  installers and painters.  We're in the midst of a renovation, and you 
can't  renovate without specialists.
 
My office is filled with plumbers and pipefitters become management  types. 
 They watch the plumbing go in and tell me what it's all  about.  And then 
they watch the mud guy laying on joint compound over rough  drywall and 
marvel at the skill, the speed and mastery of another man's  trade.
 
The man finishing the drywall is 50 years old.  He has been doing this  for 
thirty years.  His shoulders are like stone--he works with a trowel,  
overhead, all day long.  I asked him when he will retire and he gives the  same 
answer you might--"When my last kid is out of college."
 
The carpenter takes out a TIG gun and welds hinges to a doorway just  
outside my office.  He grinds away the slag and then hangs the oversize  door.  
It looks easy when he does it.  
 
In the foyer, in front of the elevators, they have hung a new ceiling from  
the metal framework.  If you stand at one end of the room and use your eye  
like a level, you will see that it is flat, square and perfectly  
unblemished.  Next week the flooring specialists will arrive to lay carpet,  and 
while they are doing this the whole clambering ballet will move to another  
floor to start over again.
 
It is easy to see what these workers do.  There is mystery, but even  that 
is obvious:  they have technique and we do not; they have skill grown  
exquisite through application.  We don't know precisely but we are sure  that 
they possess something that we do not.  
 
It is different for librarians.  The public sees a person sitting at a  
desk; perhaps they ask a question and receive an answer.  Most of the time  the 
visitor cannot even be sure that she has met a librarian.  It is easy  to 
assume that librarianship is encompassed in the labeling of books and their  
arrangement on shelves.  The trade's secrets, its expertise and skills, are  
hidden and thereby devalued.
 
The plumber receives 36 dollars an hour without benefits.  The  carpenter a 
bit less; the electrician a bit more.  Even in public service  these 
workers are more highly paid than librarians.  There are many reasons  for this, 
but principal among them is that the librarian's employers do not  believe 
that librarians have rare and valuable skills.  The city council  members can 
tell you what a carpenter does, but they couldn't draw a line  between a 
librarian and a clerk to save their lives.  Most of them don't  know whether 
the library uses Dewey or Library of Congress--if they know what  those are.
 
Most governments don't know what a library consists of.  They think it  is 
a building with some fussy folks who maintain order.  This is not their  
fault but ours. 
 
How do you know the difference between a carpenter and a plumber?  At  
least you know that one uses pipe and the other wood.  And that you call  the 
one when the water doesn't work.  Would your council member know when  your 
library was broken?  More to the point, would your chief librarian  tell him?  
 
M. McGrorty
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