Frequent McCabe Library visitors may have noticed a change this semester: the front desk is emptier than it used to be. If you want to borrow a book, you might have to wait a while before a student employee shows up — especially early in the morning and late at night. The Access & User Services desks, formerly staffed by full-time supervisors, are frequently empty now. Those who call in with specific questions or require professional help sometimes have to leave their contact information with student employees and wait for a librarian to call back or follow up the next day.
The reasons behind the emptier front desk at McCabe are twofold. First, the Access & User Services department is currently understaffed in its full-time supervisory positions. Second, since student employees at the front desk sign up for shifts voluntarily throughout the week, staffing coverage is uneven. Some time slots are more popular than others, leaving less desirable hours with thinner staffing.
McCabe Library has been facing staffing shortages since two full-time employees in the Access & User Services department resigned at the beginning of this semester, Director of the Swarthmore College Libraries Anne Houston told The Phoenix in a written statement. Their departures immediately resulted in a 50% vacancy rate in the four-person team responsible for supervising student workers, staffing the main desk, managing the library’s opening, and providing other front-line services such as answering research questions. Houston clarified that the understaffing is unrelated to the 3% budget cut for the library last semester.
Currently, this means that McCabe does not have a regular daytime supervisor. According to a student employee who prefers to remain anonymous, most responsibilities of this role have been temporarily covered by Kim Gormley, head of McCabe Access & User Services. However, the adjustment has still created gaps between supervisors’ shifts, resulting in regular periods without supervision during which student employees must manage service responsibilities on their own.
In early February, student employees at McCabe Library received an email from Gormley, acknowledging the understaffing issue and notifying them that “there will be many shifts in the upcoming weeks with no supervisors on duty.” For student employees, the supervisor on duty is responsible for assigning their work during the shift and helping answer complex patron questions. During an unsupervised shift, however, student employees must consult the task assignment sheet posted in their portal and determine priorities based on their own experience.
Kit Knapp ’27, a day-shift student employee at McCabe, told The Phoenix that this change hasn’t made much difference in her work. “It feels a bit odd when there are no staff in the building, but ultimately it’s a benign change,” Knapp said.
Regarding the resignation of the two employees, another anonymous McCabe student employee told The Phoenix that they believe the turnover rate seems high. According to their knowledge, at least one staff member has resigned each semester over the last three semesters.
In response, Houston said that she found nothing unusual about McCabe’s staff turnover rate after reviewing the staff retention data. “Turnover in college staff due to resignation is routine and not uncommon, but we were just unlucky to lose two staff at once,” Houston explained.
As of now, one of the two staffing gaps has been filled by a new hire in February, and the library is still in the process of recruiting for the other position.
Another factor that has contributed to the vacancy at McCabe’s front desk is student employees’ shared preference for working shifts in the middle of the day. Typically, the first shift from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and the last shift from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on weekdays are the two slots most often avoided by student workers.
In principle, two to three students are assigned to each shift. Their duties are designed for a team: while one student walks around the shelves retrieving and returning books, the rest remain(s) at the front desk to assist patrons. When staffing is uneven, some students may have to work alone, which means they sometimes must leave the front desk unattended to complete other tasks. This semester, for example, the first morning shift has routinely been covered by only one student employee.
Late-night shifts face similar difficulties. In recent years, McCabe moved up its closing time from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m., lessening the burden of the closing shift. That said, the imbalance has not been fully resolved and has been compounded by understaffing at the supervisor level. A student employee told The Phoenix that there was an occasion a few weeks ago when the library had trouble finding a student to cover the closing shift because no supervisor could stay that day to help close the library. They are unsure whether the issue was ever resolved or how it might have been addressed.
When asked about this situation, a student employee suggested that one possible solution would be to introduce a stratified wage system for student library work, which might draw more students to early and late shifts that are currently less desirable. This, however, may be difficult to implement, partly because students’ schedules often change, making it challenging to design a stratified system that is widely perceived as fair. In addition, student workers at libraries currently receive $17 per hour, which is already among the highest hourly wages students can earn on campus.
For now, the most immediate and practical step may be simply filling the remaining supervisory vacancy. “We’ve taken all the usual steps that we take to fill positions, working with college [human resources],” Houston said. Until the search is completed, student employees at McCabe will likely continue to work unsupervised shifts.
