14 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 295 2018 Where is that particular trend likely to go? Even research library directors can’t work indefinitely, but the assumptions underlying the estimate of departures in Table 1 clearly do not apply either. And what explains the abrupt change of behavior beginning in 2005? It could be the recession. Or maybe directors are facing increased pressure to remain in place from their administrations. It could be that the increasing gap between average compensation as reflected in the ARL Salary Survey and the compensation of directors drives that group to make different choices as to retirement. Or is there some other reason underlying delayed retirements for US ARL directors? How far might this phenomenon go in its present direction? Will it quickly reverse course such that the director age profile once again comes to resemble that of the population as a whole? A Delayed but Significant Youth Movement At this writing in early 2017, the age of the population of ARL professionals echoes that of US librarians generally, and points to a period of high demand for library expertise. The net effect of the recruitments to come will be a large and important youth movement, so large that it will have only one predecessor in our recent history, the mass recruitment of young baby boomers that accompanied the extraordinary growth of higher education in the 1960s. New librarians in the 1960s were adding significantly to the size of research library professional staffing, and it is hard to imagine that the 2015–2020 recruits will do anything but fill existing vacancies. The new recruits are thus not likely to reach those heights of decades-long dominance that the 1960s hires enjoyed, but they will be disproportionately important, injecting new experience, attitudes, and aspirations into our libraries, keeping them relevant in a climate of fundamental change and uncertainty. to come will be a large and important youth movement… net effect of the recruitments The
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