Mean Total Paid Staff, by Quartile, at Public Libraries, 1990-2002

Abstract

Total staff at the nation's public libraries increased over the period for each of the five groups analyzed. The groups formed from the second and third quartile libraries had the highest percent increase in staff while the fourth quartile and the 95% libraries had the largest increases in raw numbers. There is a related analysis of staff per population served. Note that between 2001 and 2002, the number of employees at the first quartile libraries fell although these smallest libraries still have an increase in national averages over the entire period.

Chart

This chart of the mean number of total paid staff in FTE by the libraries grouped into the four quartiles by the population of the legal service area with a fifth group that is also a part of the fourth quartile. On this chart, the means by year show the libraries in population served employ more people as the size of the population served increases. Further conclusions are below.

Note that the vertical axis is not registering values evenly. Given the fact that the lower three quartiles are so close to each other, a consistent axis makes distinguishing between them difficult.

Data

The chart summarizes these values:

Conclusions

The mean number of staff employed at the public libraries in the US examined here has increased during the period from 1990-2002. The totals increase from 103,685 in 1990 (N=8,095) to 129,844 (N=8,167). The different number of libraries in each year is a result of missing numbers, a characteristic of the dataset examined that makes calculating a percent on the total dubious. The reader will recall that this set of libraries is made of those that reported each year during the period but not all reported all variables each year. However, when all libraries are examined, we will find that there are new ones forming and these new ones will employ new staff members thus adding to the count of Total Paid FTE Staff. So, this group of libraries underestimates the total. Given those facts, the change from 1990 to 2002 in these libraries was 26,159 and that is a 25% increase between the staff figures for those two not completely comparable years.

The NCES published E.D. Tabs for the 1990 data reports total staff of 108,246¹ (N=8,736) and 133,456² in 2001 (N=9,129), an increase of 23%. The 2002 E.D. Tabs is not yet available. This calculation is less dubious as a result of the fact that the 2001 data, at least, are a national estimate with imputations--that is, an attempt to get at the total from all public libraries. I read the disclaimer for 1990 as an indication that there were not imputed data in that year. That would probably mean that the 1990 figure is an underestimate of the true but unknown figure for that year and, hence, the percent increase is higher than the true figure. Still, the two numbers are close and we can reasonably conclude that total staff employed at libraries increased on the order of 20% during this period.

Analysis often leads to further questions, for instance, while staff increased, what happened to the number of staff per population served and did the number of ALA-MLIS librarians increase or decrease over the period? I peaked ahead at both questions but have not analyzed either question in depth but: there apprear to be more staff per population in libraries in the First Quartile than in the larger groups--a result consistent with experience at academic libraries and that the ratio of staff to population served increased in the larger groups. It also appears that the percent of librarians to total staff rises over the period. Fuller analysis will follow.

Notes

¹ U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics Public Libraries in the US.: 1990. E.D. Tabs, June 1992. p. 24. There is a disclaimer that this estimate may be low because of nonresponses.

² U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2001. E.D. Tabs, June 2003. p. 46.

November 19, 2004