Librarians Needed In California!

There's a stroke of luck for any of you librarians who want to move to the Golden State. Librarians are hard to come by in California, at least in San Benito County. They've been trying to find a county librarian for over a year but haven't had much luck. Why?

"Librarians, in fact, are a scarce commodity in California, according to Solano County Director of Library Services Ann Cousineau. There is a dearth of librarians in the state because fewer people are choosing being a librarian as a profession, she said.

On top of the shortage, Cousineau she added, San Benito faces added difficulty because larger counties can afford to pay employees more." Because of the shortage, San Benito comes in competing with other jurisdictions that might pay higher salaries," she said.

The salary range for county librarian in San Benito is between $62,676 and $80,028."

Wow! $80,000! That's pretty good for a librarian, some might say. It's a lot more than you can make working for the Toad Suck Flea Libary, that's for sure.

But then I went over to Realtor.com and searched for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in the county (I'd need plenty of room for the cats!), and the cheapest one I found was $480,000, and it looked like a dump. And 1100 square feet isn't going to leave much room for me once the cats settle in. I did a little math, and figured even with the highest salary the mortgage on that dump would cost at least half my take-home pay.

I'm encouraged by this, though, because it means that they at least haven't found another librarian sucker to take a job at ridiculously low pay, which just hurts the rest of us. The ALA is concerned with recruting and retaining good librarians. This job makes it obvious what to do to recruit and retain good people. PAY THEM MORE! (That, and make library school a lot more difficult so that not just any gibbering imbecile can get through.)

Now, the Annoyed librarian has possibly the best library job in the country, though to protect my secret identity I can't tell you what it is. However, the Annoyed Librarian will make San Benito County a deal. Offer me $400,000/year, and I'll consider being your county librarian. And I'm worth it, baby, believe me.