Do Special Collections Have Enough Staff?

p strongSpecial collections are often operating with very small teams, and the chief consequence is delayed work rather than high turnover./strong/p p Primary Research Group found that half of surveyed units had only zero to three full-time-equivalent staff supporting special-collections operations. Among institutions with fewer than 8,300 students, every respondent fell into that range. Only 7.69% of the full sample reported 16 or more FTE./p p Satisfaction was correspondingly low: 61.54% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with staffing, while only 23.07% were satisfied or very satisfied. Shortages frequently delayed major projects for 30.77% and occasionally did so for another 46.15%. Digital preservation was the most commonly named understaffed skill area, followed by accessioning and conservation./p p The encouraging finding is retention. A total of 73.08% were satisfied or very satisfied with staff retention, suggesting that many departments have committed people but too few funded positions. Student workers provide important supplementary capacity&mdashthe median was three&mdashbut students and volunteers cannot replace professional continuity in appraisal, rights, preservation and donor relations./p p Leaders should connect staffing requests to a visible service queue: unprocessed accessions, classes declined, preservation work deferred, reproduction requests delayed or digital files at risk. A workload benchmark makes the trade-off explicit and helps distinguish a need for permanent expertise from work suited to temporary project support./p p  /p