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The primary draft of this weblog put up was written earlier than I revealed a put up on 1/22 titled How Do Educational Libraries Spend Their Cash?
That preliminary put up generated some sturdy reactions on Twitter, each optimistic and unfavourable – and plenty of emails.
My understanding of the critiques of that unique put up (critiques that I welcome) have been that: A. I didn’t do sufficient analysis to reply the questions I used to be posing. B. The concept educational library budgets are fungible exhibits ignorance of how these budgets work. C. I ought to have reached out on to educational librarians to reply the questions posed.
Once more, honest criticism. Over the previous couple of weeks, I labored with various educational librarians and an professional in larger ed finance to create a collection of Q&As that explored educational library funding. These Q&As included:
For the IPEDS knowledge that I’m surfacing beneath, I wish to prolong the identical invitation to the tutorial library neighborhood to assist make sense of the numbers.
One of many variables within the IPEDS dataset is employees by employment standing and occupational class, from which the variety of librarians, curators, and archivists could be examined.
The info out there spans from 2012 to 2020. Here’s what it appears to be like like:
Full+Half-Time
2020 38,510
2019 40,884
2018 41,479
2017 41,490
2016 41,993
2015 42,782
2014 43,610
2013 44,677
2012 67,074
Undecided why there was such a major drop between 2013 and 2012. Most likely some change in how library employees are counted.
Even when we begin 2013 in comparison with 2020, the decline in library staffing seems massive.
Have educational libraries misplaced ~14% of their employees over the previous decade?
The entire variety of folks employed at postsecondary establishments solely declined by 2.5% between 2013 and 2020, from 3,969,226 to three,868,066
These knowledge inform me that educational libraries are dropping a disproportionate variety of employees in comparison with different components of the college.
What’s going on?
From every thing I’ve seen, the calls for on educational libraries have solely elevated over the previous decade. Libraries appear to remain open later and are open extra usually. College students and school depend upon educational librarians for collaboration in studying and analysis.
The vary of digital, knowledge, scholarly, and studying companies that educational libraries provide has elevated — whereas the variety of folks employed by educational libraries has considerably declined.
So, three questions:
1) Why is educational library headcount dropping?
2) What’s the end-point of this development?
3) How are educational libraries managing with fewer folks?
After all, the massive query is, what’s the impression on instructional and scholarship high quality if educational libraries are shrinking?
If in case you have perception, knowledge, and perspective on these questions – and are prepared to do a Q&A – please attain out.
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