6 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 295 2018 Delayed Retirements and the Youth Movement among ARL Library Professionals Stanley Wilder, Dean of Libraries, Louisiana State University Library professionals have never been older. The average age of library professionals in the most recent Association of Research Libraries (ARL) demographic data (2015) was 49, making this the oldest population in the 29-year history of this data series.1 More to the point, the 2015 ARL population had an unusual skew towards the oldest age cohorts: 24% were aged 60 and over, up from just 9% in 1986. Figure 1 Over 9% of ARL professionals in 2015 were aged 65 and over, nearly three times the number in the population just 10 years earlier. The aging of librarian populations in the US is a long-standing phenomenon, so much so that we might be tempted to conclude that
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