Motivating library staff

Motivation is an essential elements in a workplace. In the past decades, social scientists have applied the well-known theories to the librarianship particularly Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg’s Hygiene theories. I have learned the effective strategies of motivating library support staff from these previous studies; yet when we carefully look at these studies, we notice that there are some crucial elements are missing or being failed to address:

• These studies did not address how library managers discouraged the support staff. For instance, very often I hear discouraging story like this when I go for library conferences and meetings: “I suggested and created a youth program for my library. But once the program was taken off successfully, it was taken away from me and given the credit to the librarian. Eventually the librarian runs the program and tells me that it is part of the librarian’s jobs.”
• During the economic downturns, it is not uncommon that professional librarians (those who have a MLS degree) are forced to take on paraprofessional jobs. How do library managers to motivate these underemployed (and also underpaid) library staff?

When we discuss the motivation of library support staff, the about two issues are important elements on the topic, definitely cannot be ignored or overlooked.