By LJ Staff

In 2003, during the Biennial migration of academic librarians to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference, several of the programs in Charlotte, NC, discussed the recruitment and retention of the next generation but with an obvious lack of input from newly recruited librarians. In response, with Liza Posas, a library fellow at University of California–Santa Barbara, I posted a web-based survey to gauge how new academic librarians felt about their profession and what they would need to learn in order to become library leaders.

From a total of 378 librarians self-identified as being in the profession not longer than five years, the majority of responders identified themselves as female (79.1%), 26–35 years old (70.4%), and Caucasian (82.5%). With the exception of age, little in this demographic data seems surprising when compared with national trends and statistics detailing the profession.