Survey of Academic Library Leadership 2024, Hiring Practices & Plans

Survey of Academic Library Leadership 2024, Hiring Practices & Plans

This report looks closely at how academic libraries hire new personnel It helps its readers to answer questions such as: how many new positions have become available this year? What about next year? How many retirements are expected? What are the favorite means used by academic libraries to find new employees? How important to them are ads in library publications, use of hiring boards, specialized library and higher ed websites, listings with library science schools and other means of finding potential candidates for opening? How much do academic libraries spend to search for candidates? How many libraries use standing committees for hiring Or specialized committees for particular positions?

Survey respondents also evaluate their library’s diversity initiatives, as well as their compensation and benefits packages. They comment on their plans for the future and evaluate the transparency of the hiring process at their institution.

Just a few of this 84-page report’s many findings are:

Research universities in the sample hired a mean of 5.88 new personnel in the past year.

Survey respondents under age 50 were far more likely than those age 50 and over to feel that more work was needed to meet diversity goals.

More than 56% of respondents said their libraries formed ac hoc committees to seek and choose candidates for particular positions.

The largest institutions in the sample spent a mean of $4,300 per year to advertise new position openings.

Data in the report is broken out by numerous institutional and personal variables such as enrollment size, public/private status, college Carnegie class or type, and level of tuition for institutions and gender and age for individual respondents.