Payday | LJ Salary Survey 2014 | Data Tables

by Library Journal
Jul 03, 2014 | Filed in People
Data from LJ's inaugural salary survey presented in tabular format
Table 1: 2013 Compensation by Library Type and Education Table 2: 2013 Satisfaction with Current Job Table 3: Public Librarian 2013 Compensation by Library Size Table 4: Academic Librarian 2013 Compensation by Type of Library Table 5: School Librarian 2013 Compensation Other Librarian 2013 Compensation 2013 Compensation by Gender

Table 1: 2013 Compensation by Library Type and Education

Type of Library
PUBLIC ACADEMIC SCHOOL OTHER
% Salary % Salary % Salary % Salary
ALL RESPONDENTS 100 $47,446 100 $53,000 100 $58,000 100 $52,334
Respondents with MLS 75 50,163 90 54,000 63 58,413 86 53,890
Respondents without MLS 25 34,000 10 37,392 37 55,000 14 42,250
*Full-time, median annual compensation for U.S. librarians and paralibrarians
**“Other” includes special, corporate, government, and state libraries
SOURCE: Library Journal Salary Survey 2014

Table 2: 2013 Satisfaction with Current Job*

Type of Library
Public Academic School Other **
Very satisfied 30% 26% 34% 33%
Satisfied 40 41 38 30
Somewhat satisfied 22 23 20 23
Not too satisfied 6 7 7 11
Not at all satisfied 2 3 1 3
*Represents U.S. librarians and paralibrarians, both full- and part-time.
**“Other” includes special, corporate, government, and state libraries.
SOURCE: Library Journal Salary Survey 2014

Table 3: Public Librarian 2013 Compensation by Library Size**

POPULATION SERVED
TOTAL <25K 25K–99K 100K–499K 500K+
ALL RESPONDENTS $47,446 $45,900 $45,000 $47,000 $52,690
Library Director 59,392 50,600 66,930 * *
Assistant Library Director 65,825 39,500 62,000 86,500 *
Library / Branch Manager 55,383 40,500 52,000 58,175 58,850
Reference / Info Services 43,000 * 43,000 40,000 48,000
Collection Development / Acquisitions 51,334 * * 51,584 54,000
Circulation / Access Services 33,000 * 33,588 32,825 *
Electronic Resources / Digital Content Management 52,000 * * * *
Technical Services / Systems 54,000 * * 60,000 *
Adult / Public Services 47,000 48,942 46,000 47,425 49,600
Children’s Services 47,000 46,000 47,168 45,981 50,033
Teen / YA Services 40,000 37,000 39,521 42,813 *
Youth Services 40,947 35,900 39,537 44,000 51,183
*Size of respondent base is too small to report (a minimum of ten responses is required)
**Full-time, median annual 2013 compensation for U.S. public librarians and paralibrarians
SOURCE: Library Journal Salary Survey 2014

Table 4: Academic Librarian 2013 Compensation by Type of Library

TYPE OF ACADEMIC LIBRARY
TOTAL POSTGRADUATE LIBRARY 4-YEAR COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY 2-YEAR/ COMMUNITY COLLEGE
ALL RESPONDENTS $53,000 $58,000 $52,000 $49,000
Dean of Libraries 135,500 * * *
Director of Library Services 68,000 77,944 68,000 60,299
Assistant Library Director 73,500 * 72,000 *
Library Manager 57,750 62,900 75,500 47,000
Reference/Info Services 48,000 52,500 47,500 43,000
Cataloging 52,873 * 49,000 *
Technical Services 52,185 63,550 50,900 *
Electronic Resources 51,320 * 53,874 *
Circulation/Access Services 40,520 45,300 39,000 *
Instructional Librarian 51,115 48,375 49,200 56,650
*Size of respondent base is too small to report (a minimum of ten responses is required)
**Full-time, median annual 2013 compensation for U.S. academic librarians and paralibrarians.
SOURCE: Library Journal Salary Survey 2014

Table 5: School Librarian 2013 Compensation

TYPE OF SCHOOL LIBRARY
TOTAL ELEMENTARY MIDDLE/JR. HIGH HIGH SCHOOL OTHER SCHOOL (K–12, K–8, etc.)
Median salary $58,000 $56,360 $56,817 $60,200 $53,301
Public school 58,000 56,000 56,407 62,250 $55,000
Private school 49,000 53,000 * 49,500 $44,283
*Size of respondent base is too small to report (a minimum of ten responses is required)
**Full-time, median annual 2013 compensation for U.S. school (K-12) librarians and paralibrarians.
SOURCE: Library Journal Salary Survey 2014

Other Librarian 2013 Compensation

TOTAL $52,334
Special $51,000
State or Government $59,423
Nontraditional Library $60,000
Other $49,000
* Full-time, median annual 2013 compensation for U.S. librarians and paralibrarians.

2013 Compensation by Gender*

Male Comparable %** Female
All Job Titles
$58,000 89% $51,780
Library Director
$76,000 74% $56,250
Library/Branch Manager
$55,000 100% $55,000
Reference/Information Services
$47,000 94% $44,187
Adult/Public Services
$55,000 85% $47,000
Technical Services
$50,900 106% $54,000
*Comparison of full-time median compensation for a selection of job functions working at all library types.** Percentage that women make of comparable men's salaries
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Sarah Tobias

My library serves a population of 18,000 and the libraries surrounding me serve populations of 2,000 - 5,000. This means that our Director salaries would be lumped together for comparison in this study. This is going to skew the numbers low for average salary and make it very difficult for Directors in bigger libraries within their population range to use this study to help improve salary structure. Maybe future studies could break things down further.

Posted : Mar 17, 2015 02:13

Laura Girmscheid

We heard from many more library directors serving populations under 25,000 than from those serving larger sized libraries. This skewed the overall median salary quite low. Conversely, we received fewer responses from assistant library directors serving under 25,000 populations than we did larger libraries, resulting in a higher median for that job title. I think this is a fair representation of the number of people in each of those job titles nationwide. There are many more small libraries nationwide than large ones. Most have a library director but rarely do they have an assistant director. Unfortunately we didn't receive a high enough response from large library directors to do a robust comparison by library size.

Posted : Jul 08, 2014 01:20

Roger Strouse

In Table 3, the Total column comparing Director and Assistant Director salaries is misleading (as is the row label for Assistant Director, but that's another story). Generally in statistical analysis of this type, if you are missing a data point in one segment but not in another, it is not recommended to directly compare the two segments. Your approach results in the erroneous conclusion that Assistant Directors make more than Directors.

Posted : Jul 08, 2014 12:30

Andromeda

Any chance we can get some disaggregation of the lines in that salary-by-gender table? In particular the library director and tech services lines are standing out to me. Are there reasons for the magnitude of the discrepancy (in the first case) and the direction (in the second)?

Posted : Jul 03, 2014 07:39

Laura Girmscheid

We originally thought the reason might be that male directors were more common at large public library systems, where salaries are generally higher across the board. But what we found was that our sample of male library directors was dispersed across all library sizes. And the women directors had more experience. Digging into the technical services difference we found that the female technical services librarians had more experience than the males. The number of responses from men was also low, they only just met our threshold of 10. Additional salary information can be found at: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/07/careers/more-data-lj-salary-survey-2014/

Posted : Jul 03, 2014 07:39

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