the U.S. average. As in other years, too, the range from highest "high" to lowest "low" salary reported by the schools was all but fantastic: the U.S. high was $10,200, the U.S. low was $2,760; the Canadian spread was somewhat more reasonable the highest for a Canadian placement was $8,500, the lowest was $4,200. The range within which most U.S. salaires clustered (which, in a sense, best represented the "normal expectancy" figure for the 1961 graduate) was $5,000-$5,300. The person who came to library school and substantial relevant previous background acquired either through training or experience would expect to receive substantially more, perhaps as much as $1,000-$1,500 more, than his inexperienced counterpart, although this statement needs much more qualification, and this figure must be applied much more circumspectly than the preceding ones. This, in a nutshell, is the placement picture for the graduate from fifth-year library school programs in 1961.

The accompanying tables break this information into such facets of usable detail as the schools were able to supply. Table I presents the salaries of the 1961 graduates in terms of "high,” “low,” and “average” for each school. In table II, the schools present their placements arrayed by type of library, while table II-A presents a comparison of these data with those reported for previous years. Table III analyzes the "special library" placements by type of specialty.

Those familiar with the earlier articles in this series of annual summaries begun in 1952 need read no further (see “AALS Newsletter," January 1952; Lj, June 1, 1953 and 1954; and Lj, June 15, 1955 through 1961, inclusive). The limitations and the deficiencies and the infinite myraid variables are in kind the same as those that were present in the years past; only the detail is different. But for the newcomer to the series, whether recruiter, library school faculty member, administrator, prospective recruit, or simply casual reader, these somewhat unadorned remarks deserve some explanation and amplification.

The purpose of these articles has always been to present as meaningfully and succinctly as possible an answer for two groups of people whose aims are different but whose concerns are very similar indeed-the administrators in the field and the very considerable and (we hope) growing body of people who, for one reason or another, are considering entering the field or bettering themselves in it by the period of study leading to a fifth-year degree. The administrator asks, "How much must I pay in order to compete on even terms with others who, like myself, are confronted with more vacancies than there are people to fill them?" The prospective librarian, on the other hand, asks quite bluntly, "How much can I expect to receive after getting my first professional degree?"

As one can readily see, the answer to both these questions is subject to a very considerable number of variables, both for administrator and for prospective newcomer into the field. Geography, type of library, setting of library (urban or rural), individual circumstances of all sorts (a need to be near an infirm relative, a desire to accompany one's husband or wife, a preference for a certain kind of work or a certain location, the amount and kind of previous library and nonlibrary experience, a limited and specialized subject interest, which may or may not be marketable)—these are but a few of the multiple factors which, alone or in combination, bear in on and consequently affect the whole placement picture in individual cases and in various ways. To mention only one (and one which has been noted in each of the preceding articles), the salary levels in the United States and Canada are not compatible-which, incidentally, causes us to exclude Canadian salaries in arriving at an average, even though they are included in the tabular representation.

The emphasis throughout this article, as in earlier ones, is on the fifth-year graduate. The exclusion of graduates of sixth-year Master's programs and Ph.D. programs is deliberate; as a group, these are statistically insignificant as well as demonstrably different in comparison with the fifth-year group.

1 SALARIES

More than any other single aspect of the library placement picture, salaries reflect the myriad variables mentioned above. Perhaps, indeed, there is no single placement for 1961 which corresponds exactly to $5,365 (this is 12 times a very awkward something), which is the "average" for the 1961 graduate. The range of salaries reported for first placements, as already noted, is staggering—from $2,760 to $10,200. The lower figure obviously reflects some indi

1 "Salaries" (like "placements") throughout the article refers to full-time annual salaries, regardless of length of vacation. Thus, a 9 or 10 months' school appointment is the same as an 11 or 111⁄2 months' appointment in other types of libraries.

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vidual personal circumstance adversely affecting its recipient; the higher figure with equal certainty is the result of some unusual situation, born most likely of substantial relevant background or experience affecting the graduate's placement. One could easily become vaguely disturbed by the lack of any apparent pattern in these first placements. If one accepts the fact, however, that there are bound to be irregularities in placements in a profession which attracts to itself persons of such disparate backgrounds as new graduates from A.B. and B.S. programs, M.A. degree holders, Ph. D.'s, and an assortment of transfers from other fields ranging all up and down and across the scale from coaching and contracting to teaching and even dairy farming, this lack of pattern is explainable at least in some degree. However, there is some disturbing evidence that beginning position salaries are being advanced at the expense of the middle and top-level positions in the "catch-as-catch-can" effort to fill these same positions in the face of frantic competition-but that is another story.

In an effort to bring some meaningful order out of this chaotic range of salaries, we have hitherto asked the schools to provide the "average" figure for all its fifth-year placements, in full recognition of the fact that the "average" here, as in all other human endeavor, may be more myth than measure. At the moment, however, evidence seems to be mounting that the numbers of fifth-year placements at the high end of the salary scale are increasing whether from competition or from the field's attracting a greater number of highly trained persons, it is impossible to say. Therefore, in subsequent articles, the introduction of the "median" as well as the "average" figure may become not only desirable but indeed necessary.

NOTE.-Foreign students returning to their own countries and religions are included in placements but

not in salaries and salary computations.

The present report, however, must confine itself (like the earlier reports) to working with the average figure. In this connection, it is of perhaps passing interest to note that the average reported by each of 6 schools, representing 410 placements among them, was very close to the $5,365 general average: $5,356, $5,360, $5,366, $5,370, $5,385, $5,389. In all, the 29 schools reporting on this broke as follows: 17 schools reported averages above $5,365; 17 schools had averages below that figure, as table I shows.

This 1961 average of $5,365 was the highest ever reported in the 11 years covered by this series of articles, and preserves the pattern of an increase of from $200 to $300 annually which has been evident over these years:

Being reluctant to accept the "average salary" figure without some validation, we have of late years also asked the schools to report the "cluster range" of salaries, i.e., the range wherein the greatest concentration of salaries is observable. Obviously, to be meaningful, this range must be kept as narrow as possible; at the ridiculous extreme, each school could report its "cluster" as the whole range between its highest and its lowest salary. To avoid this, we have suggested that the limits of the range be kept within $500, granted, of course, a discernible clustering were evident.

On this point, 28 schools reported. For some, their cluster ranges were very broad: one school reported it as $4,704 to $5,448; another replied simply "no cluster range apparent." For others, it was expressed in narrow terms, like $5,200 to $5,400 or $5,300 to $5,500. One school reported the ultimate in narrowness-the single specific figure of $5,090, which was quite proper and doubtless quite right, since it placed heavily in the New York area and this figure was at that time the starting salary of a very large library in that area.

Two examples illustrate the usefulness of a cluster range which, incidentally, we believe to be the single most usable figure of any presented in these annual summaries as a reliable index of the salaries available at the beginning level in the field. One of the larger schools reported a cluster range of $5,000 to $5,400 and indicated that 30 out of its 72 salaries averaged $5,131; by contrast, its overall average, obviously distorted by several rather high salaries, was reported as $5,593. Another school reported a cluster range of $5,000 to $5,300, within which 16 out of its 32 known salaries were concentrated.

1 Discrepancy between this figure and number of placements reported in table I not explained by school.

When the reports from the 28 schools were combined, the range wherein the greatest number of positions was concentrated came out to be $5,000 to $5,300 (these figures showed in two-thirds of the schools' reports). The fact that the cutoff point for these concentrations falls somewhat below the general average salary figure of $5,365 would seem to lend weight to the argument that a median figure as well as an average one might be useful in subsequent reports, if for no other reason than as a cross-check on the validity of the average.

Before leaving the subject of the cluster range, we must observe that it, like the average salary figure, is considerably above that of the preceding year and (again like the average) is the highest ever reported:

To assess with any adequacy or exactness the overall effect of previous experience on salary is all but impossible. This is particularly true in the case of librarianship which, as already noted, attracts to itself persons of endlessly varied backgrounds and at every stage in life from the newly graduated baccalaureate to the retired Army colonel, schoolteacher, or homemaker. Subject specialist and subject generalist alike with an enormous variety of backgrounds and experience levels come to the field to seek-and usually to find-new outlets for their interests and competencies.

The best-and the truest-statement one can make, this year as in others, is that the field of librarianship accepts and is prepared in most cases to reward through a higher salary any substantial relevant experience.

Enough information on the point of "experience" and "no experience" placements was supplied by enough schools to lend cosiderable strength to this state

ment. Taking the U.S. schools alone, one finds 17 schools able to analyze salaries for 644 placements in these terms. This represents well over half of the 29 U.S. schools reporting and almost exactly half of their 1,294 placements for which salaries were known.

Number Percent Number Percent Numver Percent Number Percent Number Percent

1 Figures for individual years 1951-55 are available in the preceding articles in this series. NOTE.-Percentages for 1956 and 1957 total only 99; 1 percent lost in rounding.

For the placements analyzed in this fashion (i.e., “with previous experience" versus "without previous experience"), no single average figure has any meaning at all. The variables of "how much," "how long," and "what kind" are simply too great. Here again, therefore, we sought to establish from the schools' reports an "average range" for each group, weighted (as with all of the figures used throughout this report) in terms of the relative number of placements reported by each school. For the persons with no substantial relevant previous experience, the average range (kept wide to accommodate the wide variations in highs and lows among the several schools) was $4,764 to $5,402. In sharp contrast, the average range for the persons whose experience was sufficient to affect their salary upon graduation was much higher and (as would be expected) broader-$5,445 to $7,550. A glance at the highs in table I will show that several schools reported their "high" placement at above the $7,550 figure.

TABLE III.-Breakdown "special and other" placements

Science and technology

Medicine__-

Government agencies (excluding national libraries, overseas, armed services).

State and Provincial_

Business (e.g., business administration, insurance, advertising)

Religious (e.g., seminary, theology)

Hospitals (including VA).

National (L.C. and Dominion) –

Armed service (excluding overseas).

Law---

Overseas (United States)

Art---

Teaching library science

Finance (e.g., banking and brokerage houses)

Historical (e.g., societies)

Publishing.

Journalism.

Music____

Foreign relations_.

Theater___

Miscellaneous: 2 each reported as "Agriculture (India)," "Special collections"; 1 each reported as "Far Eastern languages and literatures," "Library for blind," "Midwest Interlibrary Center," "National Library of Ethiopia," "Science and technology (Israel)," "Section Chief, Ministry of Education, China," "Social agency," "State Natural History Survey," ""Transportation," "United Nations". Total___.

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