A Demographic Overview of the Current and Projected Library Workforce and the Impact of Federal Funding

The first section of this article examines the size of the library workforce and the projected demand for librarians in the United States. Information on the library workforce is segmented into several national data collection efforts. To develop a more comprehensive picture of the size and scope of the profession, we have analyzed data from: the American Community Survey, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, National Center for Educational Statistics' Academic Libraries Survey and Common Core of Data, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services' (IMLS) Public Library Survey. All sources, except the American Community Survey, provide a sufficient number of observations for state-level analysis. The review highlights a profession experiencing modest growth for the paraprofessional segment of the workforce and stable demand for ALA-accredited MLS librarians for the last six years of available data. The state-level analysis reveals no consistent pattern of change in the size of the library workforce as a proportion of each state's population, although when significant change is observed, it is most often due to a decline in the size of the workforce relative to the state population. The national and state-level analyses provide a point of departure for a discussion of the federal grant program designed to address library workforce issues, the IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. This program supports training initiatives that include master's-level and doctoral programs, in addition to continuing education, preprofessional recruitment, research, and programs to build institutional capacity in graduate schools of library and information science. The second section of the article summarizes the program's goals, provides descriptive statistics profiling grantees based on the agency's administrative data for 2003-5, and highlights promising developments in library and information science education and practice identified and supported by IMLS since the program's inception in FY2003 through 2009.