8Rs Redux: CARL Libraries Human Resources Study

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Canadian association of Research Libraries
  • The 8Rs Research Team

• The original 8Rs Canadian Library Human Resources Study conducted in 2003-2004 arose in response to a growing perception in the community that libraries would be facing mass retirements within the next 5 to 15 years. In contemplating the breadth of retirements and in conducting preliminary conversations with the Canadian library community, it quickly became evident that a host of other important human resources-related questions had also never been studied in Canada. The resulting report The Future of Human Resources in Canadian Libraries was widely disseminated. Since this was the first time that human resources issues were so thoroughly and widely examined across Canada, these data were always intended to be used as a baseline from which future research would be compared. The current collection of longitudinal data, the 8Rs Redux for CARL Libraries has thus enabled a quantitative mapping (within a 10-year timeframe) of the many ways in which CARL libraries and their staffing requirements have changed, as well as how they have responded to changes in their operating environments. As was the case in the original 8Rs, a large portion of the findings pertain to librarians and results about paraprofessionals continue to be part of the analysis. Additionally, we conduct a more fulsome examination of other professionals. As was the case for the original study, 8Rs Redux involved the collection of a very large amount of data (more than 630 variables), and given the over-time comparisons, the analysis involved almost twice as many variables. What follows is a presentation of some of the most salient findings and their human resources planning implications. References are provided to the relevant tables and figures located in the full report. The full 8Rs Redux report can be accessed at http://www.ls.ualberta.ca/8rs/home.html.

• Date created

  2015-05-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Human resources
  • Libraries

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3RV0D43H

• License

  Copyright © 2015 8Rs Research Team. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original authors and source must be cited.