This study examines personnel issues for academic library special collections. The study covers staffing levels, use of student workers and volunteer labor, staffing satisfaction, understaffed skill areas, recruitment, professional development, project delays, staff retention, and future staffing needs.
The report finds that special collections units are often very lightly staffed. 50.00% of respondents report only 0–3 FTE supporting special collections operations. Only 7.69% report 16+ FTE. Among institutions with fewer than 8,300 students, 100.00% report only 0–3 FTE.
Student labor is an important supplement. The mean number of student workers is 6.96, but the median is 3.00, showing that a few institutions employ many student workers while many rely on only a small number. Research universities report a mean of 10.00 student workers, compared with 2.10 among all other institutions.
Staffing satisfaction is very weak. Only 23.07% are satisfied or very satisfied with current staffing levels, while 61.54% are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Among institutions with more than 40,000 students, 50.00% are very dissatisfied and none are satisfied or very satisfied.
Volunteer labor is not a major substitute: only 11.54% use unpaid volunteer staff, while 88.46% do not. The most understaffed skill area is digital preservation, named by 26.92%, followed by accessioning at 19.23% and conservation at 15.38%.
Staffing shortages directly delay work. 30.77% say staffing shortages frequently delay key projects, and 46.15% say they occasionally do. Yet retention is comparatively strong: 73.08% are satisfied or very satisfied with staff retention, suggesting that the core problem is too few positions rather than excessive turnover.