This infographic (not quite a year old) has some incredibly interesting statistics about librarians around the world.
Some of the stats:
1.5 billion visits to the library per year.
78% are women, 22% are men.
Reference librarians answer more than 7.2 million questions every week.
65% of people polled have visited the library within the last year.
Conclusion: Libraries are needed now more than ever and librarians ROCK!
We need to stop perpetuating the false idea that “lots of librarians will retire in the next decade.” That old horse has been bandied about for too long and created a badly over-saturated market for young librarians and library science graduate programs. Yes many librarians may be of retirement age, but they are not retiring, by and large. And when they do, their positions are often retired along with them due to state and local budget cuts. The overall message is great, an accurate, but my graduate adviser told me when she retired 2 years ago that recruiters had been saying “Oh all the old librarians will retire” since SHE went to Library School!
Thanks for your comment, Ruby. We couldn’t agree more and the “Are Librarians Getting Old?” portion of this infographic is our least favorite, but we thought it bore enough good info to post anyway.