The question is asked up-thread why not parity in pay between a One-Stop-Shop manager and library manager:
A large OSS I can see would require an experienced operations manager, but I guess I'm essentially arguing a strategic level manager is needed in a community library. There is a lot more potential for the libraries at this point in time, and we need the managers to be able to manage this. We need community library managers in the age we live in to be both creative and proactive in the communities the libraries serve. This is not an operations management position.
So why specifically do libraries need this higher level of skill. Whereas OSS operations have more or less matured and plateaued out (a service operation), and while libraries have been in a state of maturity and a more or less steady operations state for the past 100 or so years, with recent new technologies things are back on the climb[1] back up to a new plateau and there will be a lot of change before operations will plateau out and settle down again. There is a need as a consequence for a lot more LIS research at this point in time. A library manager / librarian is needed nowadays to not only apply this research, but also to as far as possible participate in this research base otherwise. This takes a higher calibre of manager.
A few additional misc. points. Libraries are more important in the information economy that has grown on top of new technologies -- all a library manager has to do is start talking about the value of libraries to the library's community to increase library usage! This takes a more experienced librarian / library manager. But also the nature of the work, I don't like to use this analogy because it is emotive and does not score particularly highly on the 'wiring one's brain to reality' scale, but do we pay a brain surgeon the minimum wage - I'm not suggesting OSS operations are comparable to a production line operative, and libraries brain surgeons, but for want of a better way of phrasing this, the analogy does make a point, libraries do 'operate on our brains', OSSs less of a critical success factor, the consequences less if they fail, not as difficult a job to be done as the libraries.
Besides which and I could cite a growing number of examples as evidence, the public is beginning to expect more of our libraries. Take this latest post and slideshare presentation by blogger thewikiman: 'If you want to work in libraries' http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=1110 - I must admit I passed this by myself as not being the established canon (I'm not sure otherwise why I didn't rate it), but when Stephen's Lighthouse[2] picked up on the post in the US, and later I noticed Guardian Careers also, then I took a look.
[1] I've not seen a lifecycle graph for an industry that starts to go up again after maturing and plateauing out for a century, but this is the picture (generally with societal changes an industry declines after maturing).
[2] http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/11/08/if-you-want-to-work-in-libraries/
Gareth Osler
Library Web
http://libraryweb.info
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