In my three decades working in public libraries, I have found library staffing as a whole to be uniquely diverse in ways that go beyond sex, race, sexual orientation, and age to encompass social, economic, and cultural diversity, particularly in comparison to to the staffs I have worked with during stints in the private sector.
Despite that, the profession of librarianship itself is purported to have a diversity problem, at least in regard to race. Just under half of the librarians at my current workplace are white, but I work in the Los Angeles County area, which is exceptionally diverse, so I pulled demographic statistics for the U.S. population and for librarians from the United States Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to get a better picture. I could not locate statistics regarding the percentage of librarians who identify as LGBT or recent statistics regarding public vs. academic librarians.
In comparison to the professions as a whole, librarianship has an overrepresentation of whites and women. Asians appear overrepresented in the professions relative to their population numbers, while underrepresented in librarianship. The professions still have a way to go in terms of parity for black and Hispanic populations; the librarian profession lags further behind. According to the Department for Professional Employees, librarianship skews older than than the general workforce, and there could be a correlation between a profession skewing older and being less representative of demographic change. The DPE lists higher percentages for black (9.5%) and Hispanic (9.9%) librarians that more closely align to the professions, but they pull their data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I’m unsure why the numbers don’t match up.
Ideally, scholarships, mentoring, and outreach will move the needle. Statistics have improved slightly since 1998 in regard to black and Hispanic librarians, but the demographics for MLIS degrees awarded in 2020 are not encouraging, and college graduation rates provide further challenges.
Photo: ALA opening ceremony with Michelle Obama and Carla Hayden (43071880411).jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
This is a treadmill. Librarianship has worked persistently on this challenge for many years and we seem to stay in place. There is the ALA Spectrum Scholarship Program and the efforts by the ethnic caucuses to provide scholarships. If we had not worked so hard it would be far more worse. Last year the ALA Black Caucus and REFORMA (Latino Librarians) held 50 year anniversary celebrations. There have been many achievements but not significant increases in workforce participation. Every 4 years there is a Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC). In 2022 it will be in Florida. Participation in JCLC events would be a good opportunity to recruit and support. https://www.jclcinc.org/jclc-2022/
I would like to think the DPE data for black and Hispanic librarians is correct because it shows significant change since 1998, but I don't think it is. There are a lot of jobs lumped into "professions" that don't require a master's degree and many don't require a bachelor's degree, so that might account for some of the higher numbers for other professions, but then again, in some professions that do require graduate degrees the numbers are higher than librarianship. It all needs a lot more analysis!
You are right. The best data are the library education graduation stats and they aren't easily available. I did a small article about 2018 grads...The findings are as follows: (1) overall LIS graduates' diversity has improved from 6.79% to 17.47% over the past 30 years, and particularly, the increase in the number of Hispanic graduates is noticeable; (2) however, LIS graduates' diversity does not follow the trends of the US population diversity: whereas 37% of the US population is minority, 17.43% of LIS graduates are minority students...
but it was just a snapshot.
JungWon Yoon, and Kathleen de la Peña McCook. 2021. “Diversity of LIS School Students: Trends Over the Past 30 Years.” Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 62 (2): 109–18.
And yes....the LIS grad. rate is just one metric. ALA has stopped hiring librarians in most of its offices...so if they set a different structure others must as well and DPE may just count people at one or two job titles.
This is a treadmill. Librarianship has worked persistently on this challenge for many years and we seem to stay in place. There is the ALA Spectrum Scholarship Program and the efforts by the ethnic caucuses to provide scholarships. If we had not worked so hard it would be far more worse. Last year the ALA Black Caucus and REFORMA (Latino Librarians) held 50 year anniversary celebrations. There have been many achievements but not significant increases in workforce participation. Every 4 years there is a Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC). In 2022 it will be in Florida. Participation in JCLC events would be a good opportunity to recruit and support. https://www.jclcinc.org/jclc-2022/
I would like to think the DPE data for black and Hispanic librarians is correct because it shows significant change since 1998, but I don't think it is. There are a lot of jobs lumped into "professions" that don't require a master's degree and many don't require a bachelor's degree, so that might account for some of the higher numbers for other professions, but then again, in some professions that do require graduate degrees the numbers are higher than librarianship. It all needs a lot more analysis!
You are right. The best data are the library education graduation stats and they aren't easily available. I did a small article about 2018 grads...The findings are as follows: (1) overall LIS graduates' diversity has improved from 6.79% to 17.47% over the past 30 years, and particularly, the increase in the number of Hispanic graduates is noticeable; (2) however, LIS graduates' diversity does not follow the trends of the US population diversity: whereas 37% of the US population is minority, 17.43% of LIS graduates are minority students...
but it was just a snapshot.
JungWon Yoon, and Kathleen de la Peña McCook. 2021. “Diversity of LIS School Students: Trends Over the Past 30 Years.” Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 62 (2): 109–18.
Thank you!
This topic is ripe for a doctoral thesis! If other professions requiring advanced degrees are doing better, why is that?
And yes....the LIS grad. rate is just one metric. ALA has stopped hiring librarians in most of its offices...so if they set a different structure others must as well and DPE may just count people at one or two job titles.