A response to ages past. Commentary on Harris, R. M., Michell, B.G. & Cooley. C. (1985) The Gender Gap in Library Education

Abstract

Human resource planning is an issue of considerable concern throughout the world: not least in the West as those in the post WWII population bubble known as the baby boomers move from paid into retirement. This will leave a considerable deficiency in available workers as we move into the mid-21st century. There is also a considerable shift in employment patterns as political, economic and social power moves from North America to Asia. The rise and rise of China and India as places with an emerging middle-class will have an enormous impact on who does what, and where this is done. One is perhaps more acutely aware of this when one lives in the Asia-Pacific region as I do. With these changes upon us, we need to manage our human resources well to ensure that there are skilled workers in the right places to do the that needs doing. This is no less the case in the professions-and perhaps more so because of the place in history where we find ourselves.When Roma Harris and her colleagues from the University of Western Ontario wrote The Gender Gap in Library Education in 1985, they reviewed employment patterns in education from 1965 to 1983. In that era much was different in the world of work, especially for women and especially in the earlier years of that time period. The ready availability of reliable birth control and the changing attitudes to the role of women as a result of the rise of second wave feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, changed patterns of employment with great effect. This was particularly so in North America where this research was undertaken. The lives of women in other Western countries were similarly changed in this period, not least by the wide scale availability and acceptance of university education for women.In the second decade of the 21st century women now outnumber men as graduates in many countries. Workplaces have changed and a significant number of professions, not least the academe, have introduced quotas to support the movement of women in to positions of leadership. When one attends conferences and symposia focusing on the needs of faculty in Schools of Library Education (such as the annual ALISE conference) one searches for the token man in the room. In publications for educators such as JELIS there is a significant gender bias in the papers sub - mitted. And this bias is towards women.Much too has changed in the environment since the years of Harris' review. Many schools have closed or been absorbed into other departments and in recent time numerous jurisdictions have conducted reviews of library educa- tion to assess education, training, and human resource needs for the future (American Library Association, 2009; Chawner & Oliver, 2012; Cossham, Wellstead, & Welland, 2014; Hall, 2009; Partridge et al., 2011; Simmons & Corrall, 2010). And of particular significance has been the impact of technology that has rendered the of librarians and workers almost unknowable to those teaching in the period 1965-1983. As a result of these reviews and technological changes many universities have renamed their Schools of Library Education as iSchools or Schools of Information.But where have these sociological and technological changes led us over the last 30 years in terms of employment patterns? It is clear that women now outnumber men in LIS faculty and have significant opportunities for career advancement in the academe and elsewhere in the profession. But what has not changed is that librarianship (and most forms of information work more generally) is still considered a profession for women, and often there is not even that token man in libraries one visits, or in the classes one teaches.So as many things have changed, as Loriene Roy points out in her review of Jane Robbins Carter's paper on Multi-cultural Graduate Library Education in this volume, many things in our profession have remained the same. …