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Minority Representation in the 2012–2013 ARL Annual Salary Survey: Taking a Closer Look

lac2014-morris-kyrillidou-poster
View/download PDF of poster

A poster (PDF) analyzing trends in minority professional staff in US ARL university libraries through 2012–2013 was presented at the recent Library Assessment Conference by ARL’s Shaneka Morris and Martha Kyrillidou.

The poster examines data reported for 8,844 professional staff in 99 US ARL university libraries, including law and medical libraries. A total of 1,283 (14.5%) of the 8,844 professional staff were members of the four non-Caucasian categories about which ARL keeps records. Their distribution was as follows: Caucasian/Other 85.5%, Asian/Pacific Islander 7.0%, Black 4.3%, Hispanic 2.8%, and American Indian/Alaskan Native 0.4%.  Racial/ethnic minority professional staff in US ARL university libraries were disproportionately distributed across the country, with minorities concentrated in the Pacific, South Atlantic, and West South Central regions and underrepresented in the West North Central and New England regions.  

This analysis complements the ARL Annual Salary Survey 2012–2013 by providing a deeper understanding of minority representation in ARL libraries. This is the first time that an analysis of the minority representation by gender and rank has been made publicly available. Also for the first time, trend data were compiled on the changes in minorities’ average salaries over a 10-year period.

Highlights of the findings include the following:

  • Minority staff increased 20.8% from 2002–2003 through 2012–2013, compared with 4.4% overall growth.
  • Women, on average, had more years of experience and earned less than their male counterparts in the various racial/ethnic groups.
  • The pay gap between minority average salaries and the average salaries of US professionals overall decreased from 8% in 2002–2003 to 4.5% in 2012–2013.
  • The authors examined the data for the three major rank structures (3-level, 4-level, and 5-level). There were no major differences in salaries between minority professionals and others, though minority staff had slightly fewer years of experience across different rank levels.

The poster is available on the Library Assessment Conference website.


The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.

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