Simon Burton.
library hiring market came post Brexit. That’s when job advertising fell. The Covid-19 effect has been significant with a complete drop off in recruitment through 2020. This has bounced back but still not to the levels seem before the pandemic. I think employers are finding it more difficult to recruit. We’re seeing the same number of visitors to the site, looking at similar number of jobs but failing to make an application. This might be a reflection of the market shift- ing to an employee market and away from an employer’s market, as talent becomes harder to find. Again, another interesting change is in the kinds of roles, rather than the volume. What we see coming up frequently are teaching and learning roles and content deliv- ery and discovery. It is a trend toward eLearning that was happening before Covid, but which seems to have been accelerated by lockdowns.”
Story behind the data
Before giving the details behind the trends, Sue Wills points out: “We’re still in the eye of the storm. The Prime Minister left a back door open when he set out the unlocking process. He will be reviewing all arrangements at the end of September. We could all be facing more changes soon.”
While there are interesting profes- sion-focussed changes going on, she warns that the biggest factors remain outside the sector, and mainly financial:
32 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
“pressures from other areas like the social care budgets and special educational needs – exacerbated by Covid – are still creat- ing financial pressures across councils. The general direction has been reducing local authority grants while the financial pressures that had been there before Covid remain, and then councils had to step in as a response to the pandemic. So, the underlying problems have never gone away, and the financial situation still has to play out.”
Ageing workforce However, she sees changes in the job market as the result of longer-term trends. “We know the workforce age profile from the national sector wide Workforce Survey and the proportion of 60 plus and 55 plus means there will be a higher proportion of the workforce retiring. This turnover of staff is happening quite quickly now. Authorities like mine have had to make decisions concerning issues like this mid pandemic, and while having to restructure to get savings over the line.”
Books are coming home
On the rise in the number of reader and collection development roles, she said it was not a short-term quirk. “This is the result of something that happened more than 10 years ago, when many authorities went down the route of supplier selection – in effect, de-skilling ourselves. I don’t think there are many people in the public
Sue Wills.
library sector left now who understand the engine room of a library management system, how to create the best experience for the reader in terms of exploration and discovery.”
However, changes in society and the publishing industry mean that public libraries need these skills in house – as well as supplier selection. “It is not so much supplier selection coming back in house. It just doesn’t take enough things into account. A lot of the stock work is reactive, based on data which is reporting emerg- ing behaviours and existing behaviours, not what might be going on in five years. The strategic element is missing. And there is not enough debate about what the impact or solution might be. And all very necessary because we have a publishing industry that has been narrowing with a subsequent loss of excitement because of the way the publishing world works now. Which leads to the other big missing element, which is the inclusion and diver- sity agenda. We’re having to work really hard to find diverse content that reflects our communities – all of this plays into the role of public libraries as a valuable part of a healthy democracy.”
Technology
Another factor is the role of technology in finding out what communities want and delivering it to them. Sue sees develop- ments like the Single Digital Presence as a wake-up call for the profession, that it
September 2021
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