3 Questions on Academic Library Staffing for ACRL’s Mary Jane Petrowski

Mary Jane Petrowski, associate director at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), reached out in regard to my piece on academic library staffing trends. In that piece, I shared some IPEDS data that seem to demonstrate a steep drop in academic library staffing since 2012. As Mary is ideally positioned to unpack and contextualize academic library staffing trends, she agreed to help us figure out what is going on.

Q: From what I understand, the IPEDS data that I highlighted are inadequate for telling the story of academic library staffing trends. Why is this so? And what are the trends in academic library staffing over the past decade or so?

A: It’s important to note that the availability of [full-time-equivalent] academic library staffing counts has varied over time as the responsibility for data collection has rotated among several federal agencies. From 1988 to 1998, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted the Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) on a biennial basis as part of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. IPEDS is the U.S. Department of Education’s vehicle for collecting data from all postsecondary institutions in the United States on a mandatory basis. From 1988 to 2000, academic library staffing data was reported for FTE librarians, other professional staff, other paid staff and student assistants, and the response rate was close to 100 percent. However, beginning in the year 2000, NCES (with help from the Census Bureau) began collecting ALS data independent from the IPEDS data collection and continued doing so through 2012 on a biennial basis. Although the survey included counts of FTE librarians, professional staff, other paid staff and student assistants, the response rate was 15 percent lower (85 percent). In 2015, when IPEDS added the Academic Library Component (which replaced the previous Academic Library Survey), it did not include FTE library staff counts by type until 2020 at the request of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)/American Library Association (ALA)/Association of Research Libraries (ARL) IPEDS Advisory Task Force.

Academic librarians are counted as part of the IPEDS Human Resources Component, but their counts were mingled with those of curators and archivists (from 2015 to 2017) and media collection specialists (from 2018 to the present). Staff must be reported using the IPEDS occupational categories, which align with the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes. The good news is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is looking to revise SOC code 25-4022.00, which currently combines librarians with media collection specialists. Plans are underway to collect input from academic librarian experts across the country to revise the current classification.

To better understand academic library staffing trends on the national level, I compared the 2012 NCES Academic Library Survey data with the 2021 IPEDS Academic Library Component data by Carnegie Classification and found that since 2012, total FTE academic library staffing has declined by almost 20 percent (15,856 employees). More specifically, the number of FTE librarians has declined 9.6 percent (by 2,314), while the number of other professional staff has increased 31.7 percent (by 2,276). The number of other paid library staff has decreased by 21.7 percent (3,522), while the number of student assistants is down 25 percent (2,462).

Q: I’ve been getting lots of emails from academic librarians describing the reduction in staffing at their library over the past few years. Can you help us understand what is going on?

A: The first thing to keep in mind is that there were 342 fewer postsecondary schools in 2021 than in 2012, so that accounts for part of the decline in staffing.

To better understand trends on the national level, it’s helpful to look at staffing trends by Carnegie classification for a more nuanced understanding of changes across the different staffing categories.

Over the past nine years (2012–2021), community colleges have lost the most staff (5,375), while doctoral degree–granting institutions lost the least (838). This is perhaps not surprising, since there are 1,422 community colleges versus 285 doctoral degree–granting schools. Associate degree–granting schools lost 1,424 FTE librarians between 2012 and 2021, while doctoral degree–granting schools added 1,560 more librarians over the same period. Other professional staff is the only category that saw increased staffing levels across all Carnegie classes, with doctoral degree–granting institutions adding more employees in this category than librarians. The “all other paid staff” FTE category saw the greatest decline relative to other staffing categories, losing more than 3,500 employees.

Q: How should those of us outside  academic libraries approach this conversation about library staffing? What roles do nonlibrarians play as allies to our academic librarian colleagues?

A: Funny you should ask! We’re about to launch the new Academic Library Advocacy Toolkit. Developed by a joint task force comprised of members from ACRL’s New Roles and Changing Landscapes and Value of Academic Libraries committees, the tool kit is a curated collection of resources that can help equip academic library administrators and library professionals with the resources they need to advocate for the value, roles and contributions of academic libraries to their campus communities.

The tool kit was created in response to current and concrete pressures many academic libraries are facing, including challenges related to budgets, a diminished workforce, professional roles and more. In the press release for the launch of this new tool, Erin Ellis, ACRL president, noted that “We wanted to create a resource to support academic libraries and library workers in demonstrating their role as integral partners in fulfilling the academic mission of their institutions.” The tool kit is a dynamic resource that will be updated as new publications and resources become available.

We also believe that benchmarking data can help interested allies better understand the needs of their academic library. A strong ally will want to know how their library compares with the institution’s peer group(s). Ask about the ratio of FTE students to librarians, library expenditures per FTE student, hours of operation, titles held per FTE students and faculty, library expenditures as a percentage of institutional expenditures for academic support, collection usage per FTE student. How have these changed over the past five years? ACRL has developed a tool that can answer these questions and more. Since 1998 the Association of College and Research Libraries has conducted the Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey annually and published the findings to assist with benchmarking for advocacy. Our new data platform, ACRL Benchmark, currently provides libraries access to our survey data since 1998 and provides benchmarking visualizations mapped to the ACRL Standards for Libraries in Higher Education.

Over the past 21 years, ACRL has focused on helping academic libraries (and librarians) develop allies by demonstrating their impact and influence on student success outcomes and support for the mission of the institution. The quest for allies is ongoing, as Ellis noted recently: “ACRL’s Board of Directors is concerned by the continued marginalization of the contributions of academic libraries as colleges and universities examine themselves and make changes due to the impacts of the pandemic, ongoing fiscal challenges and the long-promised demographic shift.” The ACRL Value of Academic Libraries website will give your readers a robust picture of our work in this area.