Who Does TS Work?
Most students in “Library Media Minor” programs fall into one of two categories: future teachers (because they want to run the school library media center or work as a children’s librarian) and current public library staff (looking for courses to supplement their skills-set at work). There is a lot of overlap in these two groups of people, given that many librarians are drawn to the teaching field, while at the same time many teachers who leave the teaching field later seek out work in public libraries. It is relatively easy for many of these people to move around, given that both careers require fairly similar people-skills and resumes. Teaching, reference work, literacy campaigns, children’s programming, etc., are all people-focused. Technical services work is not people-focused, which is mostly why it fails to attract very many people from the two above-cited groups. It should not be too surprising, then, that there is a shortage of TS people.
