The Librarian: From Occupation to Profession?

Abstract

AN INDUSTRIAL society has an open class stratification system; it offers some an opportunity to rise, but it offers no guarantee against downward social mobility. Compared to other types of societies, this one demands a wider variety of higher level skills and thus generates much pressure against the forces that in all societies tend to keep the individual in his original caste or class. Much of the resulting mobility is based on a radical change which has taken place in the occupational structure of modern industrial societies, one which neither Marx nor orthodox economists anticipated, an expansion of the demand for professional and technical skills of a high order.' Thus not only are individuals competing with one another in their efforts to rise in the class system, but occupations, too, are engaged in the same competition and may move up or down in power, prestige, or income. Both systems may be viewed as zerosum games. The income which one individual receives cannot be claimed by another. If an occupation rises in income level or in prestige ranking, necessarily others will lose. That many have described our job structure as diamondshaped a bulge in the middle ranges of occupations-rather than pyramidal does not change these relationships. An expanding economy may yield more real income for nearly all occupations; but at any given time there is only so much income to be distributed, each occupation has a higher or lower average income than others, and those which have risen have done so at the expense of others. With reference to other class attributes such as power and prestige, the dynamics are perhaps more complex, but essentially similar. In an industrial society far more jobs and people are to be found in the middle ranges of prestige than would be found in the same ranges in peasant societies. However, each occupation that rises does so at the expense of others which it surpasses, and when many occupations are rising, their net gain is low relative to one another. Librarians are among those occupational groups that are seeking the advantages of professional status. Not only do the professionals form a larger part of the labor force than they did half a century ago-from 859 per 100,000in 1870 to4,353per 100,OOOin 19612 -but far more of the labor force is engaged in white-collar and technical occupations that strive by various means