Profile of the Profession and Military Libraries in February American Libraries
The cover story of the February 2006 American Libraries, the American Library Association’s magazine, is about military libraries. I knew the Special Libraries Association has a division for military librarians, so I was a little surprised to read about the libraries in an ALA publication, even though it makes lots of sense for some military librarians to belong to both organizations because many military libraries are also open to the public and/or serve the families of servicewomen and -men.
The article Get Out the Hair Dye—We Really Are Aging reports on a survey of 3,289 respondents showing basic demographics of those ALA members.
- About 80% are female
- 58% were born between 1940 and 1959
- 85% have an ALA-accredited library degree and almost one-third of those have another master’s degree
- 87% are white
The survey remains open. ALA hopes more members will voluntarily submit their demographic data so ALA can have a better idea of who’s in the organization and profession.
February 26th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
There are actually all types of military libraries — some like the academies and grad schools are academic, some are special, and some like the base libraries are like public libraries.