The second in a series of articles by Stanley Wilder, dean of libraries at Louisiana State University, examines hiring and staffing among staff in ARL member libraries over the past 30 years.
Wilder begins this piece by stating, “We are who we hire. As it turns out, we are also how many we hire, for what jobs, with what skills, credentials, and experience.” He notes that “the 2015–2020 period is almost certain to require more hiring than any time since 1985,” especially for nontraditional library jobs. He also observes that ARL libraries are “in the midst of an unprecedented changing of the guard in leadership.”
“Hiring and Staffing Trends in ARL Libraries” is the second installment in the Workforce Trends in Research Libraries series by Stanley Wilder to be published by the Association of Research Libraries. The series is hosted on the ARL website at https://www.arl.org/workforce-trends and will be collected in Research Library Issues when complete.
To read each of the articles in this series as they are published, watch the ARL website, follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our e-mail news lists.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.
