Despite the proliferation of job advertisement analysis studies in the past 30 years, new studies are needed all the time to reflect the current state of the job market for LIS professionals. Using traditional content analysis methods, a study in spring 2009 at the University of Maryland of over 1000 job ads for new graduates revealed that most jobs are in academic libraries and archives, average salaries rose last year, the highest salaries are in government, personal attributes such communication, service orientation, collaboration and cooperation, and team capabilities are highly desired, and many entry-level ads request some experience. Very few call for a second master’s degree. This study will be useful for faculty advising and conducting curriculum studies, as well as new graduates in the job market.

Keywords: archives employment, content analysis, job advertisements, job market, library employment, MLS students

Introduction

Job advertisement analyses have peppered the LIS research and professional literature since at least the 1980s. Some of those studies have taken a longitudinal view of trends in employer expectations and others have looked at ads within a narrow range of time. Some have looked at opportunities across the field and others have focused on positions in specific functional areas of libraries or archives. Researchers have typically employed methodologies involving quantitative analysis of data derived from a content analysis, which has yielded statistics on geographic distribution of jobs, salaries, types of experience required, and personality and technical skills necessary to be successful in the job.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a quantitative analysis of current job ads and job descriptions appropriate for recent MLS or MLIS graduates. Originally, the primary goal was to collect supporting data for a comprehensive review of the MLS program at the College of Information Studies (the iSchool) at the University of Maryland—to ensure that the MLS curriculum provides the theoretical and practical education needed for graduates as they prepare to enter the information professions. The findings however are relevant to current graduates in all ALA-accredited LIS programs, and the methodology used may be useful to other schools that wish to embark on a similar analysis in the future.

Literature Review

In designing our study we aimed to utilize as many of the methods already used as possible, but we did have to adapt them quite a bit, as will be seen. In developing a standardized list of terms for the different words used to express similar requirements, we used existing studies as much as possible, which simplified the process.

The most common methodology for job advertisement studies in the past involved the collection of a discrete sample of ads based on a number of predetermined criteria—often period of time and intended audience. All studies listed their sources for the ads and they tended to be nationally relevant publications and online sources such as Library Journal, American Libraries, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Web sites and electronic lists associated with library and information professional organizations (for example, American Library Association, Special Libraries Association, or Society of American Archivists).

The study by Sproles and Ratledge (2004) was one of the few to focus primarily on positions directed toward entry-level librarians. They analyzed ads from American Libraries over a twenty-year period to explore how required skills for entry-level academic librarian positions had changed and to see which knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) would qualify new graduates for such professional positions. They analyzed a sample of nearly 1500 ads, removing those for duplicate, non-permanent, part-time, and community college positions. They classified the remaining ads according to whether the primary responsibility was reference, technical services, or systems. An advertisement met the entry-level requirement if it met any one of three criteria: the job was listed specifically as “entry-level,” there was no explicit requirement for professional experience, or the required skills and experience were such that an entry-level librarian could have reasonably gained them at the paraprofessional level. For the job ads not excluded by these criteria, Sproles and Ratledge then coded for the required qualifications by category—education, experience, knowledge, and personal attributes. Their findings upheld two of their hypotheses, that over the years of the study employers increasingly required experience and knowledge that could not always be gained through the existing library school curricula and that practical experience, either through employment or internships, was virtually mandatory. Their third hypothesis, that the number of entry-level job ads was decreasing, was not supported by the evidence (entry-level positions remained rather constant over time), though it was clear that the qualifications for those entry-level positions had increased, especially in terms of previous experience (Sproles & Ratledge, 2004, p. 19).

Sproles and Ratledge referred often to Reser and Schuneman’s study from 1992, which used job ads published in 1988. Though Reser and Schuneman did not focus entirely on entry-level ads, they did single them out through the coding done for the “work experience” qualification (p. 53). Their methodology for defining an ad as entry-level was more restrictive than that used by Sproles and Ratledge; they made no allowance for KSAs that an entry-level librarian could have reasonably acquired at the paraprofessional level.

Beile and Adams (2000) sought to update the 1992 Reser and Schuneman study. They discovered a marked decrease in the number of advertised positions from the period covered by Reser and Schuneman. These decreases disproportionately affected cataloging positions and Beile and Adams suggested that libraries were instead outsourcing cataloging work or relying on paraprofessionals for copy-cataloging in conjunction with bibliographic utilities. Another of their key findings was the “definite trend toward the use of non-MLS-degreed professionals to fill systems positions” (p. 345). Their final observation was about the increased specialization of academic library positions, as evidenced by their coding of position titles as compared with the coding of Reser and Schuneman (1992); after standardization, Beile and Adams (2000) found twenty-two distinct job titles while Reser and Schuneman (1992) had found only twelve (Beile & Adams, 2000, pp. 344-345). Both studies cautioned against relying too heavily on salary data reported in the job ads, noting that salaries are often open to negotiation and may ultimately be higher than initially announced.

Grimes and Grimes (2008) employed more advanced statistical methods than most other studies to analyze the MLS degree’s role in academic libraries over a thirty-year period. They examined how various job characteristics and requirements correlated with the MLS requirement over time. While this specificity of purpose is not relevant to our present study—the MLS being required was the initial requirement for inclusion in our content analysis—Grimes and Grimes made use of a number of categories for data collection that were useful to include in our study.

Deeken and Thomas (2006) tracked changes in technical services job ads since 1995. Like the others, their methodology provided some useful models for our study. They employed many of the same criteria for sources and data collection; notable differences in their methodology were the use of Microsoft Access to collect and organize the data and the inclusion of non-print sources for advertisements. They also pointed out a potential problem with the more current ads: many referenced a job title and institution and then referred potential applicants to a full description posted on a Web site. They found that, due to the time difference between the original posting and their analysis, many Web sites no longer had the advertisement. They also noted that should this trend continue the value of studies of this nature will be seriously questioned (Deeken & Thomas, 2006, p. 138). Starr (2004) likewise pointed out that the drastic changes in how information professionals apply for jobs has greatly affected the ability to conduct studies similar to those conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s. Starr recognized that online job ads are essential to getting a comprehensive picture of the job market; with online library job banks such as ALA JobLIST, LISJobs.com, and LibraryJournal.com Job Zone supplanting the formerly traditional print outlets for ads, retrospectively analyzing job ad data is much more difficult without “advance planning for paper or electronic archiving” (Conclusion section, para. 1). According to Jones (2003) the benefits to job seekers of timely, easy access to a wide array of ads means online posting of ads will not only continue, it likely will grow.

The advertisement studies described so far all focused on positions available in academic libraries. Studies on ads appropriate for other specializations within LIS are scarcer. Adkins and Esser (2004) examined skills required for entry-level children’s librarians. Adkins (2004) looked at job ads for public librarians with a focus specifically on youth services. Adkins’s study covered ads published between 1971 and 2001, and thus many position requirements are now obsolete, especially in regard to technology. Nevertheless, Adkins’ listing of potential KSAs present in these ads was useful when we created our own standardized list.

One study that has received significant attention over the last few years is “The Entry-Level Gap” (Holt & Strock, 2005). As in earlier studies, they analyzed a sample of ads based on certain predetermined criteria. While they presented little direct statistical evidence, Holt and Strock raised provocative questions about changes in the employment outlook for newly-minted MLS graduates due to a steady excess of graduates in proportion to available jobs, the blurring of lines between paraprofessional and professional responsibilities, and the increased need for library experience as a qualification beyond the MLS for employment in entry-level librarian positions (pp. 37-38). Conners and McCarthy (2007) challenged Holt and Strock’s methods and conclusions. They analyzed Library Journal employment surveys from 2000 through 2005 and found that “at least two-thirds of new job seekers were able to get full-time permanent professional positions, and [that] employment of any type ranged from 83 percent to 93 percent” (p. 45). In a follow-up article, Holt and Strock (2007) emphasized that employment of any kind does not disprove the “entry-level gap,” by which they meant that many MLS graduates found themselves in positions that do not require the MLS degree due to the glut of experienced professionals in the market. Maatta (2007), writing more than two years after Holt and Strock, refocused the discussion to entry-level salaries. Maatta reported that none of the institutions she queried had expressed any great difficulty in placing graduates, but the most pressing concerns among recent MLS graduates were “salary levels [which] were not competitive with other professions” (p. 30) and a lack of interesting jobs in their current geographic location. Thus, apart from the salary issue, Maatta found that a lack of jobs was not the problem so much as graduates not wanting to (or not being able to) move to where jobs were available. A more recent addition to this discussion mentioned the entry-level position outlook in public libraries; Tuck (2008) stated that “in public libraries, there really are no entry-level jobs unless there are no applicants with public library experience” (p. 10). Tuck then extended this observation to academic libraries, her point being that experience would not be such an important factor for screening applicants if such a large pool of unemployed librarians were not available.

Some job advertisement analyses have concentrated on a specific segment of the profession. For example, Frederiksen (2005) examined ads for access services librarians. Within the area of library technical services, studies by Copeland (1997), Anthony and Garbs (2005), and Zhu (2008) analyzed ads for various cataloging librarian positions ranging from serials cataloging, to general academic library cataloging, to head of cataloging services positions; Fisher (2001) analyzed positions for acquisitions librarians; and Croneis and Henderson (2002) looked at electronic resources librarian advertisements. Foote (1997) analyzed requirements for systems librarians from 1990-1994. Wu and Li (2008) focused on jobs for reference librarians in health services libraries. Jones, Lembo, Manasco, and Sandy (2002) explored recruitment for science librarians, while White (1999) looked at academic subject specialists more broadly and Zhang (2008) focused on academic librarian positions that required foreign language skills. All of these studies covered similar ground to the more general analyses; they provided insights regarding methodology and KSAs, though their narrow focus limits the ultimate usefulness of their findings.

Another group of studies analyzed their source materials for specific KSAs, either to gauge how they have changed over time or whether specific requirements are included at all. Zhou (1996) analyzed ads from 1974 to 1994 for trends in computer-related skills. Clyde (2002) looked at job ads to see what role user instruction played in the requirements. Riggs (2005) explored how the arrival of Encoded Archival Description had changed ads in the archival profession. Promís (2008) investigated how qualities described in library job ads match up against established definitions of Emotional Intelligence (EI) competencies as defined by Goleman (1998); this study in particular provides an excellent framework for standardizing terminology from job ads in the area of desired skills and personal characteristics (p. 27).

Methodology

The methodology for collection and content analysis of job ads was based on components of earlier studies as well as specific considerations needed to provide sufficient data to the MLS curriculum review. To limit the analysis to recently-available jobs, only ads published or posted online between April 15, 2006 and May 10, 2009 were included. Sources of ads included two national library publications (American Libraries and Library Journal), two electronic lists (Maryland’s iSchool Discussion list and the Archives and Archivists list sponsored by the Society of American Archivists), and two Internet job banks (USAJobs.gov and LISJobs.com). The Chronicle of Higher Education and School Library Journal were evaluated for inclusion as sources for the study, but the first tended to have more senior positions that required professional experience and the latter tended not to include job ads at all. In order to increase the corpus of relevant and recent data for analysis, requests were sent to several electronic lists for local chapters of library and archival organizations asking for position descriptions for jobs suitable for, or recently filled by, entry-level MLS graduates.

Data collection was relatively straightforward, although in certain cases it was not possible to retrieve ads as far back as April 2006, in one case because the former incarnation of the iSchool listserv was not accessible following the switch to a new discussion list name. In another case, where ads contained little information beyond a URL and a note to find more extensive information online—similar to what Deeken and Thomas (2006) found—and the URLs no longer pointed to active Web pages, the ads had to be excluded from the corpus.

Decisions had to be made regarding the data points to collect and how best to standardize similar terms for positions requirements. Following the example set by Sproles and Ratledge (2004), the following criteria were used when deciding whether or not to classify a job ad as entry-level:

• Ad says “entry-level”
• No mention of professional experience
• No experience or duties impossible for entry-level librarians to gain

The last criterion, although it created the potential for some subjectivity in the content analysis, was determined to be an important one to include; many job ads, even though they did not specifically reference professional experience, seemed inappropriate for entry-level MLS graduates. Only ads that required an MLS or MLIS degree from an ALA-accredited institution were included; those for positions where the MLS was preferred but not required were excluded. Many archives positions would accept a Master’s in History, Museum Studies, or another related field if coursework in archival science was a component of the degree; these ads were included so long as the ALA-accredited MLS was specifically mentioned as an option. Part-time or temporary positions of less than nine months were excluded.

Three major areas of content analysis were identified—basic information regarding the job, requested personal attributes, and requested knowledge and experience. The basic information to be collected included: date, source of advertisement, position title, location (by state), salary, whether the job was for a library or archives, type of institution (academic, government, public, etc.), type of position (generalist, public services, technical services, systems), and years of non-professional experience required. For the personal attributes data points, the Emotional Intelligence (EI) competency conversion table developed in Promís (2008) was utilized to allow for a high level of detail when coding for individual EI traits but also for a more aggregate reporting of EI groupings. The data points selected were divided into categories for general, library/archives, and technology. The library/archives area included functional areas of experience: administrative, instruction, public/access services, reference, systems, and technical services. The technical services functional area was further sub-divided into acquisitions, arrangement and description, cataloging, collection management, electronic resources, general, metadata, records management, and serials. Also, because job descriptions often requested more than one area of technical services experience, the data intake form was formatted so that up to three areas could be coded.

After the content analysis, certain additional data points were defined based on information already gathered. For instance, geographic location was supplemented with census region and division information (U.S. Census Bureau Geography Division, 2000). Fields were added to indicate when at least one EI trait was requested for each of the five major EI groupings. Technical services experience was summarized to indicate how many different areas within the technical services grouping were requested per advertisement.

The content analysis was completed using a form and table in a custom Microsoft Access (Access) database and then the data were exported into a Microsoft Excel (Excel) spreadsheet for further manipulation. The resulting dataset was reviewed to remove as much duplication as possible, although because of the frequent posting of positions in multiple sources (or re-posting in the same source), it is possible that some duplicates remained. The de-duplication process became more of an art than a science in cases where the same position was advertised twice, but more than three or four months apart. Quantitative data analysis was accomplished through features available in Excel, with certain calculations and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) testing processed using SPSS. Whenever practicable, the data were analyzed in terms of whether the ad was for an archives or library position, as well as the aggregate of the two.

Results

Sources of Job Advertisements

As shown in Table 1, the final data set included 1042 ads from seven different sources (the “Direct from employer” sources resulted from inquiries to employers via local electronic mailing lists—the number is relatively small because we had already found on our own most of the position descriptions that employers sent to us). A little more than 90% came from print sources or electronic lists and less than 10% came from Web sources.

Table 1: Entry-Level Job Advertisements by Source

Given the Maryland-centric orientation of the data collection, it is not surprising that almost half of the advertisements were for positions in the South Atlantic region that includes Maryland (78), Virginia (57), and the District of Columbia (103). Over 50% of the advertisements were for positions located on the East Coast, with California (85), Texas (63), and Ohio (40) having a relatively large number of the available positions outside of the Eastern Seaboard.

Position and Institution Types

Positions available in academic libraries and archives comprised nearly two-thirds of the ads, with the next highest institution types represented being public (13.0%) and other (8.5%) libraries/archives (see Table 2). When the percentage of overall “public” and “other” ads is broken into just library or archives, though, we find that the percentage of public archives ads at 0.7% is much lower than the percentage of public library ads at 17.5%. A similarly wide variance can be seen between the percentage of “other” library ads (2.2%) to the percentage of “other” archives positions advertised (25.4%). These differences in occurrence of job ads by institution type illustrate one of the principal difficulties encountered throughout the study—agreeing on a common set of terminology for library and archives positions despite the marked differences between the two professions. In the library field, the designation “special” is fairly standard but there is no such correspondingly broad category in the archives field. To that end, the “other” institution type for archives encompasses positions at a wide variety of places such as the American Academy of Otolaryngology, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Historical Society of Frederick County (Maryland), and the National Baseball Hall of Fame—institutions that likely would have been categorized as “special” were the positions library-related. Similarly, while the institution type “public library” will be fairly intuitive to the average person familiar with libraries in general, the two archives positions listed with an institution type of “public” may seem somewhat incongruous; despite that, the “public” institution type was used because the positions were, in fact, archivist positions in public libraries.

Table 2: Job Ads by Institution Type

Looking at the number of archives/library jobs as classified first by institution type and then by position type (see Table 3), we get a picture of the distribution of jobs across both categories. The two largest-represented position types in archives are generalist and technical services, with both categories covering a wide range of responsibilities. The relatively low number of entry-level public services positions for archival institutions should not be seen to imply that public service responsibilities are not common in those institutions, only that they are not the primary responsibility of the positions as described in the ads. Many positions listed as generalist may involve reference or instruction responsibilities, but, with limited information in the ad itself, we were unable to code them more specifically. The greatest number of entry-level library positions found (52.2%) were for public services positions, which, for the purposes of this study included jobs with reference, instruction, or access services as their primary responsibilities. The next highest number of library jobs (23.9%) was in the various technical services functional areas. In both position and institution type coding, the designation “other” was applied to descriptions that did not clearly fall in the other defined categories; for example, Regional Sales Manager, Blackwell’s Book Services in the master data file is a library position that has both a position and institution type of “other.”

Table 3: Number of Position Types per Library or Archives Institution Type

Figure 1. Percentage of entry-level positions by position type

Figure 2. Percentage of entry-level positions by institution type

Salaries
Salary data were available for 401, or 38.5%, of the 1042 total ads examined. Figures 3 and 4 show the variations in salary by U.S. Census Region and Division. Though data for all census divisions are still included in Figure 4, note that salary information for very few positions in the New England (8), East South Central (14), and Mountain (2) census divisions were available, an issue that should not significantly affect the interpretation of salary figures by census region, but may call into question the ability to interpolate salary data in those specific divisions.

Figure 3. Average salary distribution by census region

Figure 4. Average salary distribution by census division

Analysis of Variance tests were performed to check whether all salary means are equal (null hypothesis) vs. at least one salary mean is not equal (alternative hypothesis) across position and institution types, with a significance level of α = 0.05. A similar ANOVA test was performed to assess the significance of the variation in salaries between all publication/posting years. In all ANOVA tests performed, p ≤ 0.001, allowing us to say that the alternative hypothesis is true and that the variation between means is statistically significant. Figure 5 shows that, although average salaries have not increased dramatically over the three plus years covered by this study, they have been increased each year, with a more significant increase in the salaries for positions posted in the first five months of 2009 over the average for all 2008 salaries. Even if the salaries do not reflect the actual negotiated salary, we were comparing only the advertised salaries across the three-year span.

Figure 5. Average salary 2006-2009

A final comparison of salaries was computed by institution and position type. Table 4 presents the salary breakdowns for archives and libraries and Table 5 presents the aggregate salary across institution and position types for both archives and libraries.

Table 4: Minimum Salary Reported by Archives/Library, Institution Type and Position

 

Table 5: Minimum Salary Reported by Combined Archives/Library, Institution Type and Position

Personal Attributes

As stated above, information coded for personal attributes requested in job ads was done in accordance with the Emotional Intelligence (EI) rubric utilized in Promís (2008). Table 6 shows that certain EI traits—especially those under the Self Awareness grouping—were found sparingly or not at all. Service Orientation, Collaboration & Cooperation, and Team Capabilities appeared in at least 20% of the ads, and Communication appeared in over 50%.

Table 6: Emotional Intelligence Traits by Individual Trait

When viewed in terms of how often at least one EI group was coded as present in a job ad (see Table 7), traits from the Social Skills, Self Regulation, and Empathy groups are the most commonly found, with Motivation appearing in a significant proportion of the ads and Self Awareness traits not commonly found. These findings demonstrate that entry-level positions are written in such a way as to emphasize social competence traits (from E4 and E5) as well as those personal competence traits (from E1, E2 and E3) that reflect on an applicant’s ability to adapt to change, meet deadlines, innovate, and take initiative.

Table 7: Emotional Intelligence Traits – At Least One Present Per Grouping

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

The types of experience listed in Table 8 were divided into two categories, general and technology. Subsequent tables provide greater detail on required years of non-professional experience and specific areas of library/archives experience. Relatively few ads (5.5%) called for a second Master’s degree or fluency in a foreign language (7.7%) and, similarly, only 12% required any specific subject expertise. For archives positions, experience with preservation or conservation of physical objects was a common requirement. Supervisory experience was requested slightly more often in archives positions than in library positions.

In terms of technology KSAs, general information technology (IT) skills such as the use of Web browsers, office productivity software, and e-mail were the most commonly requested. Nearly one-fifth of positions required experience with automated library systems, with specific integrated library systems often mentioned. The 21.1% of archives positions that requested digitization experience (either in terms of digital preservation or digitization for access) is noteworthy, as is the nearly 2 out of every 5 archives descriptions that called for knowledge of programming or markup languages—generally Encoded Archival Description (EAD).

Table 8: Requested Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

Subject area knowledge, though often mentioned as desirable, was infrequently a required qualification. Only one subject area—Sciences—was requested in more than 5% of either the archives or library positions over the period covered.

Experience

The majority of archives and library job ads did not explicitly require previous experience as a measure of years (see Table 9). Combined, 30.9% asked for at least one year of non-professional experience related to the advertised position. When separated, 40.8% of archives positions and 27.2% of library positions requested at least one year of experience. Notwithstanding those figures, specific types of library experience were frequently requested, though, for the most part, this was not expressed in terms of required years.

Table 9: Minimum Experience Required (Non-Professional)

A great many job ads requested work experience in specific functional areas of libraries and archives. Technical services, reference, and instruction were the most commonly requested areas of experience requested by libraries. Technical services was by a large margin the most requested functional area in archives job ads (see Table 10).

Table 10: Requested Library Experience by Functional Area

Taking a closer look at the types of technical services experience being requested (see Table 11), cataloging and metadata experience are two functional areas often requested regardless of whether the ad is for a library or archives position. Nearly half of all archives positions (45.4%) requested experience with arrangement and description, with records management experience showing up in only 37 of the 284 (13.0%) total archives positions. The technical services experience required for library positions is more distributed across the entire list of functional areas, with arrangement and description appearing in 1.7% of advertisements, likely due to the overlapping archives/library responsibilities in special collections libraries.

Table 11: Requested Technical Services Experience by Area

Conclusions

The data provide evidence that the availability of entry-level positions is increasing year-to-year over the period covered by this study. While this should be seen as an encouraging sign for soon-to-graduate students, it is clear that without significant library or archives experience (even including in some cases supervisory experience), those graduates will have a hard time finding themselves qualified for a professional position. Thus, this study underscores the conclusion in Sproles and Ratledge (2004) that practical experience throughout the graduate program—whether through assistantships, internships at local institutions, or part- or full-time employment—should be a part of every student’s portfolio.

The fact that overall salaries are increasing, even if only slightly, can also be viewed as heartening in these difficult economic times. However, we did not address the issue that during the same period as this study, many potential positions were not filled—job freezes, outsourcing, and position consolidations at least temporarily shrunk the pool of positions actually available for new graduates.

Even with some pre-professional experience, most graduates will need to look for positions in academic settings; only a small percentage of entry-level jobs were found in public and special libraries/archives.

Graduates interested in archives will find the most opportunities as generalists or with specialties in technical services (particularly in preservation or conservation of physical objects). This contrasts with library opportunities for new graduates, where most jobs are in public services positions (however, a significant number of positions are in technical services as well). With the importance of specific technical services experience in both libraries and archives for entry-level employment prospects, it is important to ensure that those functions are woven into the curriculum, especially with respect to how they relate to the more commonly taught information access courses.

Employers are seeking to hire individuals who not only have certain skills and experience, but also certain personal attributes such as excellent communication abilities, service orientation, a predilection for collaboration and cooperation, a penchant for participating in teams, and social and personal competence traits that reflect on an applicant’s ability to adapt to change, meet deadlines, innovate, and take initiative. It is not immediately apparent how these attributes can be taught—or whether they can be taught. Nevertheless, job applicants cannot ignore the fact that employers prefer individuals who have these personal attributes.

Finally, as several recent studies found and we found to be increasingly true in the last year or so, job ads typically appear now online, which is a distinct advantage for job-seekers, but a serious problem for future studies of this type if the ads are not captured and stored before they disappear.

References

 

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