Cathy Van Hoy
library consultant

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ODL's First Salary Survey Now Online

About the Survey

Did you know that the average pay for a library director with a budget under $100,000 is $8.89 an hour but is $14.35 for libraries with budgets between $100,000 and $200,000?

That some library directors only make minimum wage of $5.15 an hour? That the average pay for a police chief is $18.89 an hour?

Did you know that the average pay for a library clerk is $6.18 for libraries with budgets under $200,000 but $7.56 for libraries with budgets over $200,000? That the average pay for a city general clerk is $9.92 an hour? That every category of library employee is paid better on average if they work in a library system?

These and many more eye-opening facts are available in the ODL Salary Survey. There is a national shortage of librarians. Some speculation is because the job is underpaid for the complexity of the work done.

Librarians are budget analysts, public relations managers, childhood enrichment specialists, information experts, systems administrators, web page developers, grant writers, fundraisers, data analysts, personnel managers and most of all, community leaders.

The staff at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries needed concrete, impartial data to test the existing intuitive and anecdotal evidence that librarians are underpaid.

This data would be used not only in comparing unaffiliated libraries to system libraries but also in comparing public library jobs with similar municipal jobs.

This salary survey is unique to Oklahoma in that no other state has done such a comprehensive survey. The survey gathered Oklahoma public library salary data for 13 select library positions and 29 select municipal positions. This data was gathered to assist in determining fair market value by comparing similar jobs.

Since no one municipal position does everything a one-person library director does, we selected police and fire positions as the main municipal jobs for comparison since every town, no matter how small, has those positions.

The library survey was conducted by outside consultant Edward Jenss of Jenss & Associates in November/December 2002. The municipal data was collected from the annual Oklahoma Municipal League Salaries and Benefits Survey conducted in the fall of 2001. (you can order the latest hard copy of the Municipal League data).

206 libraries responded to the library survey for an 88% response rate - 77 unaffiliated libraries and 7 systems; 124 cities with public libraries responded to the OK Municipal League survey.

There are 3 parts to the online area providing the survey data to you - Download a Report, Query the Database and Survey Administration.

Download a Report

... is the complete text in pdf format of the salary survey executive summary and analysis.

Query the Database

... allows you to compare your library jobs to other library jobs, your library job to a municipal job, as well as find job descriptions for a variety of library positions.

• Job Rates by Library Type, lets you find the lowest, highest and average salary paid to an Oklahoma public library clerk, reference librarian, pc technician, etc.
  
• Job Rates by Experience will allow you to discover how much a librarian (or other library job) with 9 years of experience makes. Then you can find out how much a librarian with 3 years of experience makes and come to your own conclusions about pay and experience.
  
• Report by City gives you the OK Municipal League data by city for any or all of the 29 positions that ODL determined may be comparable.
  
• Report by Municipal Job tells you the lowest, highest and average salary paid each municipal position; for example, firefighters.

Survey Administration

... is the actual survey sent to all the public libraries in Oklahoma as well as a password-protected area containing the actual data submitted. Each library has a unique password and can only view their own data.

ODL has administrative rights to view all the data and can assist you if necessary. Contact Cathy Van Hoy (405.522.3321) with any questions or requests.

The salary survey is a work-in-progress. Since this is the first selective public library salary survey done by ODL, we are learning many things and will continue to “make sense” of the data. ODL intends to continue to update this data as funds allow.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit their salary information and job descriptions. The wealth of information will help all Oklahoma librarians.