Research Article

Staffing of Library Publishing Programs in the United States and Canada: A Data-Driven Analysis

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Abstract

Introduction: Using the Library Publishing Coalition’s (LPC) Research Dataset, this paper focuses on the staffing of library publishing programs at colleges, universities, and consortia in the United States and Canada from 2014 to 2022.

Methods: In order to transform the data into a consistent format and write it into a single table as a commaseparated values (CSV) file, we created a program written in C# and executed on Windows 10. We narrowed the data set to focus on just library publishing programs from the United States and Canada, as well as to those that responded to the survey in early and later years. We also analyzed the data by enrollment and compared the staffing of library publishing programs to the staffing of academic libraries in general using the annual Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Library Trends and Statistics Annual Survey data.

Results: The average library publishing program relies largely on professional staff, has shown the most growth in paraprofessional staff, and has lost staff overall since 2019 while still showing growth overall since data collection began. Discussion: Compared with staffing of ACRL libraries in general, library publishing programs lost staff members at about a four-times higher rate from 2014 to 2021.

Conclusion: From 2014 to 2022, the number of library publishing staff did not grow at the same rate as the number of staff in libraries did as a whole. Also, although there are certainly general conclusions or trends, there are also opportunities for additional quantitative and qualitative research to be done in this area.
 
Link to code: https://github.com/jmeetz/LPCSurveyDataLoader
Link to data: https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/104685 

Keywords: staffing, labor

How to Cite:

Meetz, J. & Story, J., (2025) “Staffing of Library Publishing Programs in the United States and Canada: A Data-Driven Analysis”, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 13(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.17755

Rights:

© 2025 The Author(s). License: CC BY 4.0