Uncle Albert Needs You!

SUMMARY

The terms “recruiting” or “recruitment” are regularly used in two very different connotations: hiring (and retention) practices and also recruiting into the profession itself. This article will focus exclusively on recruiting to the profession. There has been a shortage of science librarians since the 1950s, or earlier, and yet the problem has still not been adequately resolved. While there is a general acknowledgement that something needs to be done, in many cases, practicing librarians seem to feel they only have impact in one particular area-encouraging library student assistants to pursue a library science degree. There are many other ways individual librarians can participate in recruiting, even on a very small scale. Recruiting need not be a daunting, time-consuming task. This article provides some radical ideas to get people thinking and acting in ways to improve the visibility and attractiveness of science librarianship as a profession … and not just by serving as a good role model for student assistants they may (or may not) supervise.

Key Words:

• Recruiting
• Each One Reach One
• vocational guidance
• science librarians
• engineering librarians
• academic librarians