Librarian job titles at community colleges in Canada - an examination
Description
Academic librarian job titles have historically been associated with the department or subject area that the librarian serves. Job titles such as “Business Librarian” or “Nursing Librarian” are common for subject librarians. University libraries have seen a shift in job titles toward functional area (e.g. Outreach Librarian) instead of subject area. The data presented here are an examination of librarian job titles in 2019 at community college libraries in Canada as presented on library websites. The content analysis includes information about the size of the student population and what titles are most prevalent for librarians with a functional areas job title. This work is meant to show patterns in librarian job titles in community colleges in Canada.
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Job titles were retrieved from the staff directory for each college library. For a job title to qualify for inclusion in the study, the term ‘librarian’ had to be present in the title. Part-time librarian titles were counted the same as full-time librarians. Vague titles such as, Copyright officer, Research specialist, and Archivist were excluded. Another exclusion were instances where the librarian was on leave. The librarian titles were divided into 4 categories:<ol> [S] - titles that reflect a specific subject area (e.g. Business Librarian, the title ‘Liaison Librarian’ was also placed in this category) [F] - titles that reflect a functional area of responsibility (e.g. Copyright Librarian) [SF] blended titles that reflect both a subject area and a functional area (e.g. Science Liaison and eLearning Librarian) [G] titles that were limited to a single generic title such as Librarian, Librarian Coordinator, Managerial positions with the term librarian in the title are also included here.</ol> For each library, the librarian’s names and full title was recorded. The job titles were counted in one of the four categories. Province and the number of FTE students were recorded along with the institution. The job titles for functional areas [F] and [SF] were categorized in a library service area.