7 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 295 2018 the 2015 population is just more of the same.2 But the 2015 data are surprising, for the simple reason that a professional population cannot age indefinitely. If the profession is to avoid outright extinction, it must at some point fill the vacancies created by retirements, refreshing its ranks with younger individuals. This is exactly what should have happened in ARL libraries between 2010 and 2015, according to the projections produced from the 2000 data set.3 Those projections described a population with an apex cohort (the largest age group within the population) that would age rapidly through 2010, when it would reach the 55–59 age cohort. Figure 2 The projections predicted, however, that the five years beginning in 2010 were to be an inflection point. Already by 2015, the apex would shift to the 35–39 cohort, the beginning of a youth movement that
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