This survey gathers data on salaries for more than 14,000 professional positions in ARL member libraries and tracks minority representation in ARL US libraries. The data collected include the average, median, and beginning salaries; salaries by position and experience, sex, and race/ethnic background; salaries in different geographic regions and sizes of libraries. Additional tables cover law, medical, Canadian, and nonuniversity research libraries.
The salary data are used to determine whether salaries are competitive, equitable across institutions and personal characteristics, and keeping up with inflation.
The data from this survey are published in the ARL Annual Salary Survey series. See the Publications & Resources page for more information about this publication.
ARL charged a Salary Survey Task Force to review the ARL Salary Survey and recommend improvements for enhancing data collection for the 2020 survey cycle and beyond. The task force’s recommendations affect the Salary Survey’s data collection, definitions, and instructions. See “ARL Salary Survey 2020: Summary of Changes” for an overview of the changes.
