Growing Pains: How Technology Is Influencing Human Resources in Academic Libraries

Abstract

The nature of librarianship and the roles librarians play in academic libraries are undergoing a dizzying amount of change with increased levels of technology permeating librarianship. These changes have great consequences on the management of human resources. This article seeks to better understand some of these changes. These include the creation of new jobs and departments, changes in wage disparities between traditional and non-traditional jobs, differences in pay between librarians in technical positions and their non-librarian counterparts, changes in training, increased job stress as a result of new technologies, and potential gender gaps in non-traditional and technical library positions. A few solutions are also given as to how library administration can manage some of these changes.