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Academic Assembly
Committee on the Economic Status of Librarians
Annual Administrative Report
August 2000
This year's
committee members are Yumin Jiang, Sara Filiz Miller, Cecilia Sercan and
Patrizia Sione. Due to the difficulty of recruiting members, the nominally
five-member Committee has had only four members in each of the past three years.
Miller and Sercan will continue to serve for the 2000-2001 academic year, while
three positions will need to be filled.
In 1999, the Committee spent most
of its time working on a survey to determine whether it should continue, and how
the mission of the Committee should be redefined. The results of this survey
will be made available on the staff web. The Committee will also present the
survey results and its recommendations to the Academic Assembly.
Meanwhile, conducting and analyzing this survey prevented the Committee
from issuing the usual two-part report. Instead, the Committee has produced a
condensed report, with a brief overview of the change in ARL statistics as they
relate to CUL. Due to a clear interest expressed by librarians and archivists in
our 1999 survey, the section comparing men's and women's salaries has been
reinstated. The report will also be available on the staff web.
In
addition, the Committee has prepared for the University Librarian an analysis of
average librarian salaries comparing CUL with more than 30 other research
libraries.
We are grateful for the continuing assistance of Susan
Markowitz and Deborah Shigley.
Summary of the Survey Results:
There were 60 respondents to this survey. There was a broad sample of both
rank and seniority. The majority skimmed the salary reports for useful data and
found the explanations clear. One third had used it for determining or
negotiating salaries. A majority thought that the report should be continued
with the same annual frequency. As to the benefits report, most think that a
5-10 year frequency is sufficient. Equal numbers of respondents believe that the
report should be issued only when significant changes occur, or not issued at
all, since benefits information is available elsewhere from Cornell
University.
Recommendations from the Committee:
- The Committee will continue producing part I of the salary reports.
- The salary reports will be posted on the Web CUL staff site. The
highlights of the report will also be printed and mailed to all Academic
Assembly members.
- The Committee will actively monitor University benefits programs that
affect librarians and will notify Academic Assembly members when changes
occur. The report will be issued whenever changes are made and will be posted
on the CUL staff site.
- The Committee will monitor the ARL annual statistics and renew its efforts
to find reliable cost-of-living data for Ithaca. It will inform the CUL
community of Cornell's relative position as appropriate.
Highlights of the Condensed Salary Report:
Both statutory and endowed units awarded salary increases higher than the
inflation rate of 1.7 percent during the 1998/99 academic year. The endowed
increase was nearly three times the inflation rate. The statutory increase
followed the pattern of periodic increases in statutory salaries which do not
keep up with overall inflation but exceed it temporarily when they are awarded.
Gender comparisons were omitted from last year's report, but have been
reinstated in this report. Salaries of women exceed those of men in three of the
five ranks for which we have sufficient data for comparison.
In the
1999/2000 fiscal year, Cornell's rank among ARL university libraries for average
librarian salary rose from 48th in 1998/99 to 40th. Cornell's median
professional librarian salary rank rose from 73rd in 98/99 to 45th in 99/00. The
beginning salaries rank declined from 60th in 1998/99 to 64th in 1999/2000.
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