Hiring and Staffing Trends in ARL Libraries

Hiring decisions are palpable expressions of our evolving values, and in 2015 ARL’s demographic data series reflected a profession in a state of flux unlike any since the data series began in 1986.1 In some cases, change is consistent with longstanding trends, but some changes in the ARL data are recent, surprising, even counterintuitive. Taken as a whole, these changes in hiring amount to an epochal shift in the nature of library work, in what it means to be a library professional, and in the value that research libraries propose to contribute to society.