The story begins inside a school district office in Nomadland, where Jen, a library assistant, watches her boss quietly pack up her desk for the last time. The boss has a master’s degree, decades of experience, and a reputation for deep institutional wisdom. The district calls it a “transition.” Jen calls it what it is: her boss was pushed into retirement so that someone lower paid could take the same job under a different title.
Jen describes the feeling with disarming honesty: “I felt like I betrayed my boss by taking her job.”
Those words linger in the air long after the scene ends. Because the truth she stumbled into—unintentionally, regretfully—isn’t just about one job in one district. It is about an entire profession facing a slow and quiet erosion of its boundaries. Her fear wasn’t unfounded. Her boss’s role wasn’t made redundant by technology. It was redefined downward.
If this were just one story, it would be sad.
But it isn’t one story.
It is a pattern.
A Parallel Scene in Today’s Academic Library
Shift the setting from a Colorado library office to a small academic library on the East Coast. A full-time librarian retires, leaving behind a portfolio that includes instruction, liaison work, database licensing, assessment, and campus-wide partnerships. Before the job posting goes live, someone notices a line in the HR review:
“Reclassifying to a technician-level IT/Library Specialist role.”
The position now requires “technology skills,” “customer service,” and “light instructional support.”
The MLIS is no longer required.
The salary drops by $22,000.
A paraprofessional hears through the grapevine that “the job is basically yours if you want it,” because they already know the students, the circulation desk, and the learning management system. They do know these things—and they’re good at their job. But they also know something else:
They are being asked to become the bridge between a job that once required a graduate degree and one that now requires an associate’s degree.
They are being set up to feel grateful and guilty at the same time.
They think of their colleague who retired—quietly, graciously, though the shift wounded her.
And they whisper privately: “It feels like I’m replacing her.”
This is where the worlds of Nomadland and academic librarianship overlap. Not in setting. Not in pay scale.
But in quiet structural decisions that reshape an entire profession from the bottom up.
The Disappearing Middle of Professional Identity
Research supports what workers have described for years. Studies show a widening role confusion between professional librarians and paraprofessional staff, as institutions shift reference work, program design, technology troubleshooting, and even instruction to roles that were never formally designed for them. The boundaries blur. The responsibilities expand downward. The credential expectations contract upward.
And while paraprofessionals are extraordinarily capable—often doing heroic work in under-supported contexts—they are also among the first to say:
“Some of this should be done by a librarian.”
This echoes the data from researchers who examined how changing staffing patterns reshape libraries: paraprofessionals are repeatedly asked to perform highly complex duties with minimal training, little institutional clarity, and no structural safeguards. Their roles grow, but their recognition does not. Their job titles shift, but their compensation does not. The professional ladder doesn't expand—it evaporates into fog.
It becomes a workplace version of Nomadland’s quiet grief: work hollowed out, redistributed, and reframed under the gentle language of “efficiency,” “reclassification,” or “modernization.”
Why This Matters for Academic Libraries Now
At the same time libraries face these internal pressures, the broader academic ecosystem is undergoing its own storm of questions:
Is the bachelor’s degree still worth it?
Do credentials still matter?
Should expertise still command higher wages?
Do librarians still need an MLIS?
These aren’t abstract questions.
They are the structural winds shaping the future of the profession.
Studies on the monetary value of degrees show a widening gulf: certain fields produce high financial returns, others stagnate, and the social sciences and humanities—long intertwined with librarianship—fall behind. When higher education itself begins questioning the value of graduate degrees, librarianship becomes vulnerable to reductive thinking:
“If degrees don’t guarantee higher wages, why should this job require one?”
But academic librarianship isn’t a commodity. It is a practice grounded in pedagogical theory, information ethics, collection analysis, research support, technology integration, and the stewardship of scholarly communication. It is one of the few academic professions responsible for both teaching and infrastructure, for both student development and faculty partnership.
And yet—if the profession does not clearly define its boundaries, institutions will define them for us.
What Academic and Professioanl Associations Must Do Now
This is where advocacy matters. This is where organizations like ACRL must lead with clarity, courage, and a willingness to articulate what the profession has hesitated to state plainly:
Academic librarianship is a profession.
It requires expertise.
It requires graduate-level preparation.
And professional roles must not be quietly eroded through incremental reclassification.
Associations must help institutions:
- redesign position descriptions rooted in professional standards
- differentiate professional and paraprofessional work without devaluing either
- define the competencies that require an MLIS or specialized graduate degree
- gather data on the long-term impact of role erosion
- establish ethical frameworks for staffing transitions
- create guidelines that protect both paraprofessional growth and professional stability
Because when role clarity disappears:
- paraprofessionals feel exploited
- professional librarians feel replaced
- students and faculty receive inconsistent service
- and the library loses its identity as an academic partner
The question is not whether paraprofessionals should grow—of course they should, and many aspire to do so.
The question is whether professional roles should be disassembled in the process.
They should not.
A Call to Reclaim the Profession
Advocacy is not nostalgia. It is protection.
It is the work of ensuring that a profession built on intellectual freedom, critical inquiry, and ethical stewardship is not chipped away until it becomes unrecognizable.
Nomadland shows us what happens when the narrative of “efficiency” becomes a justification for replacing expertise with cheaper labor.
Academic librarianship cannot afford a similar fate.
We have a chance to define our future before someone else does it for us.
Advocacy is how we begin.
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