I am not sure if everyone has been following the huge budget battle that has put the Miami Dade County Public Library system on the cutting board. There was a great article by Gary Price (August 24) that is up on the Library Journal’s website. See http://www.infodocket.com/2013/08/24/miami-dade-county-will-no-longer-close-any-public-libraries-but-169-librarian-jobs-will-be-cut/ for the article.  The upside to all this is that the library system will be able to keep all its library branches in operation. The downside of this is that 169 librarians could lose their jobs and the library branches will only be open for three quarters of the time that they would normally be open. The library community will have to keep an eye on this. Price asserts that the library community has not been effective in advocating for its vital missions. Below I am placing the text that Price wrote.

“Is a public or school library really a public or school library without professionals building collections (print and ebooks for adults and children), selecting electronic services (from research databases to 3D scanners), training library users (e.g. digital literacy, web search), etc.?

As we pointed out a few weeks ago on infoDOCKET, the library community has done a poor job of explaining what librarians do (both in and out of the library facility) and why they are more valuable today than ever before.

We must do a better job marketing ourselves and promoting our skills and abilities and demonstrating (this is key) why they are important. If we don’t do this no one else will. This needs to be done in a community wide-effort (regardless of library type) but also by each one of us, individually, with those we come in contact with including both friends and family.”

Sadly Price also points to the cutting of school librarian positions in Harrisburg and New York City as signs of what comes when no successful advocacy takes place.