4. The work done by student employees is very important, especially in academic libraries and some public libraries. Library managers often want to retain these employees for more than one semester because an experienced student worker performs better than a newly hired one. Lorelei Sterling points out that academic library jobs are often attractive to students because they are on campus and often offer flexible schedules. In addition, students are motivated by a variety of factors including food, contests, and celebratory events, but not surprisingly, student workers, like all workers, seem to be motivated by allowing them to work autonomously as much as possible, especially in terms of developing procedures for doing their jobs.48 Why does autonomy motivate workers? Can you think of ways that student library jobs could be redesigned to allow the students to work more autonomously?

If you were working in a library job as a student, which would motivate you more: autonomy or some of the other factors mentioned such as food and contests?