Charting Academic Library Staffing: Data from National Surveys

Abstract

Many issues in academic library practice and research are affected by staffing patterns. To provide an overview of librarian distribution among large, medium, and small institutions, librarian to nonlibrarian ratios, and ratios of library staff to students and faculty, a database comprising 1,380 four-year nonspecialized U.S. academic institutions was constructed. Among other findings, these descriptive data show that academic librarians are distributed bimodally, with a few large libraries employing about half of all academic librarians. Findings concerning librarians, institutions, and staffing ratios by library size, Carnegie classification, and control are presented.