CRD Membership Survey – Demographics

Thanks to all of you who responded to the CRD Membership Survey! In this post, I’ve compiled some demographics. Watch for future posts, which will summarize the responses to the open-ended questions.

Of those responding, 63% work at a university, 17% at a four year college, and 12% at a community college. Full-time student enrollment at those schools was almost evenly divided between 1,001-5,000 (30%) and 5,001-10,000 (28%) and more than 10,000 (30%).

The 270 responders held varied positions from MLIS student, to retiree, to support staff, to librarian, to department head, to director. The majority of those who took the survey (63%) said that they have been a librarian for over 11 years and 90% said that they have an MLS degree. Some of those who indicated that they were librarians said that they had faculty status (27% tenured, 11% tenure track, and 13% non-tenure track) and some did not (37% indicated that they were full-time staff).

Half of the responders (52%) are PaLA members, and half (48%) are not members. Reasons for not being a member included cost (44%), time constraint (26%), program content is irrelevant to my needs (15%), and other (29%). Those who said that they are members indicated that the reasons they initially joined were professional development (78%), networking (56%), and exposure to new ideas (32%).

Although 75% of responders said that their institution does not cover the cost of membership in professional organizations, 58% said that their institution does cover the cost of professional development such as conferences, workshops, and webinars.