This paper explores trends over time in library staffing and staffing expenditures among two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States.,Researchers merged and analyzed data from 1996 to 2016 from the National Center for Education Statistics for over 3,500 libraries at postsecondary institutions. This study is primarily descriptive in nature and addresses the research questions: How do staffing trends in academic libraries over this period of time relate to Carnegie classification and institution size? How do trends in library staffing expenditures over this period of time correspond to these same variables?,Across all institutions, on average, total library staff decreased from 1998 to 2012. Numbers of librarians declined at master’s and doctoral institutions between 1998 and 2016. Numbers of students per librarian increased over time in each Carnegie and size category. Average inflation-adjusted staffing expenditures have remained steady for master's, baccalaureate and associate's institutions. Salaries as a percent of library budget decreased only among doctoral institutions and institutions with 20,000 or more students.,This is a valuable study of trends over time, which has been difficult without downloading and merging separate data sets from multiple government sources. As a result, few studies have taken such an approach to this data. Consequently, institutions and libraries are making decisions about resource allocation based on only a fraction of the available data. Academic libraries can use this study and the resulting data set to benchmark key staffing characteristics.

中文翻译：

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美国学术图书馆的人员配备和支出趋势（1996-2016）

本文探讨了美国两年制和四年制学院和大学图书馆人员配备和人员配备支出随时间的变化趋势。研究人员合并并分析了国家教育统计中心 1996 年至 2016 年超过 3,500 家高等教育图书馆的数据。机构。这项研究主要是描述性的，并解决了研究问题：这段时间学术图书馆的人员配备趋势如何与卡内基分类和机构规模相关？这段时间图书馆人员支出的趋势如何与这些相同的变量相对应？，在所有机构中，平均而言，从 1998 年到 2012 年，图书馆人员总数有所减少。1998 年到 2016 年间，硕士和博士机构的图书馆员人数有所下降。在每个卡内基和规模类别中，每位图书馆员的学生人数随着时间的推移而增加。硕士、学士学位和副学士机构的平均通货膨胀调整后的人员配备支出保持稳定。仅在博士机构和拥有 20,000 名或更多学生的机构中，工资占图书馆预算的百分比有所下降。这是一项关于长期趋势的宝贵研究，如果不从多个政府来源下载和合并单独的数据集，就很难做到这一点。因此，很少有研究对这些数据采取这种方法。因此，机构和图书馆仅根据可用数据的一小部分来制定资源分配决策。学术图书馆可以使用这项研究和由此产生的数据集来衡量关键人员配备特征。