Time Machine

Library assistants

Name: Library Assistants, Clerical: employment and wages since 1920
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Official title Library Assistants, Clerical (SOC 43-4121)

Also called Library clerk, Circulation clerk, Circulation assistant, Library aide, Stacks assistant

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 85,520 US library assistants, with median pay of $36,910 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 115,310, in May 2009. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 15,000 from 1920, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for library assistants: Cloud ILS and discovery layers, 2012 to 2023.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to decline 6.4% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

44% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Library assistants: jobs and pay since 1920 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-4121

Chicago

Future History. "Library assistants: jobs and pay since 1920." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-4121.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_43_4121, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Library assistants: jobs and pay since 1920}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-4121}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

19001925195019752000now

Country

2026

Known then as Library Assistant / Library Clerk (early professional era)

Known then as Library Clerk / Library Non-Professional (Williamson Report era)

Known then as Library Clerk / Library Aide / Library Technical Assistant (COLT era)

Known then as Library Clerk / Library Assistant / Circulation Clerk

Known then as Library Assistants, Clerical (BLS SOC 43-4121)

Known today as Library Assistants, Clerical (BLS SOC 43-4121)

Projected to still be called Library Assistants, Clerical (BLS SOC 43-4121)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

86K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$36,910

≈ $35,964 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1876

Melvil Dewey publishes the first edition of his decimal classification system and Charles Ammi Cutter publishes Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog. Both works establish the intellectual infrastructure that will define clerical library work for the next century: Dewey's numbers go on the spines of books and on the catalog cards that library clerks will file; Cutter's rules govern how those cards are organized. The same year, the American Library Association is founded at a conference in Philadelphia.

Beat · 1887

Melvil Dewey opens the School of Library Economy at Columbia College on January 5, 1887, admitting seventeen women in the first class of twenty over the objection of the college's Regents. Dewey believed librarianship was appropriate work for educated women and actively recruited female students. The school established the formal professional/clerical division in American library staffing: professional librarians trained at graduate level, clerical assistants trained in shorter vocational programs or on the job. Two years later Dewey transfers the school to the New York State Library in Albany, where it runs for 37 more years.

Beat · 1901

The Library of Congress begins selling standardized printed catalog cards to subscribing libraries. Before this date, every library's clerical staff hand-wrote or individually typed all catalog entries. The LC card distribution system, which continues until 1997, standardizes the catalog card format nationwide and reduces the card-creation burden on library clerical workers, though filing and maintenance remain labor-intensive manual tasks.

Beat · 1923

Charles Williamson publishes Training for Library Service, known as the Williamson Report, commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation. The report formally proposes dividing library personnel into "professional" and "clerical or non-professional" categories with separate training programs. This codifies a two-tier structure that had been informal since the 1880s. The professional tier (librarians) would require graduate-level education; the clerical tier would be trained in shorter programs at community colleges and on the job. The report's framework governs library staffing until the present day.

Beat · 1967

The Council on Library/Media Technicians (COLT) organizes, formally representing the para-professional tier of library workers in the United States. By this date there are over 90 library technician training programs at community colleges. The U.S. Civil Service Commission has officially recognized the Library Technician position (GS-1411) in the mid-1960s. Library assistants finally have a formal occupational identity separate from both the professional librarian and the general clerical worker categories.

Beat · 1970

3M introduces the Tattle-Tape electromagnetic security strip at Saint Paul Public Library in Minnesota, the first technology designed specifically to protect library collections from theft while keeping stacks open to patrons. Clerks must now desensitize strips at checkout and resensitize at return on every item handled. The system reduces losses significantly but adds a physical step to every circulation transaction that would remain in the workflow until RFID replaced it decades later.

Beat · 1992

3M launches its Model 5210 self-checkout kiosk commercially, piloting at the University of Western Sydney. It reaches Los Angeles Public Library by 1996. The kiosk is the first library technology that directly replaces a desk clerk's primary transaction: borrowing. Within a decade, self-checkout handles the majority of checkouts at adopting libraries. Garland County Library in Arkansas later documented reducing circulation desk clerks from six per shift to two after RFID self-checkout adoption, while reallocating the remaining staff to programming and patron services.

Beat · 2001

The Lied Library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) implements the first RFID system integrated with library security and automation in a US academic setting, in January 2001. RFID chips embedded in each item allow simultaneous reading of multiple items, enabling the automated materials handling (AMH) sorters that will reshape returns processing in libraries throughout the 2000s. AMH sorters check items in automatically, print routing slips, and sort returns into destination bins. The task of manually processing a cartload of returned items one at a time at a keyboard begins its exit from the library assistant's workday.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1887

On January 5, 1887, Melvil Dewey opened the doors of the School of Library Economy at Columbia College in New York City, the first formal library school in the United States. Seventeen of the twenty students in that first class were women, admitted over the objections of Columbia's Regents at Dewey's insistence. Dewey believed that librarianship was "a profession for women," and the school's founding crystallized a division of labor in American libraries that would define the clerical assistant role for the next century: a professional librarian at the top, trained in cataloging theory, reference service, and collection management, and a supporting clerical layer below, handling the physical transactions that kept the collection moving. That clerical layer had existed informally before 1887, in the form of library attendants who fetched books from closed stacks at institutions like the Boston Public Library (opened 1854) and the New York Public Library (consolidated 1895). But Dewey's school, and the Williamson Report of 1923 that followed it, gave the two-tier structure intellectual scaffolding. The Williamson Report formally segmented library work into "professional" and "clerical or non-professional" activities and proposed separate training for each. Los Angeles City College created the first clerical library training course in 1937; the U.S. Department of Agriculture began the oldest continuous program in 1948. By 1961 there were 31 library technician programs; by 1969 there were over 90. When the U.S. Civil Service Commission formally recognized the Library Technician position (GS-1411) in the mid-1960s and the Council on Library/Media Technicians (COLT) organized in 1967, the clerical assistant had a recognized occupational identity for the first time. The people in that role had been doing the same work for eighty years. They just finally had a name.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace library assistants? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

-6.4%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 43-4121 (Library assistants, clerical): 89.5 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 83.8 thousand in 2035, a change of -5.7 thousand (-6.4%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers. The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

44%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 43-4121.00 Library Assistants, Clerical. Shown: human-rated β = 0.44, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.241 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.638; GPT-4-rated β 0.534. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for library assistants

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is taking this onSort and shelve returned materials according to Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification

Sort and shelve returned materials according to Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification; process items flagged by automated materials handling (AMH) sorters that could not route themselves to a destination bin.^[6],[7]

Tools picking this up

Bibliotheca selfCheck and AMH ↗

Where your edge is

Focus on accuracy in handling edge cases the AMH system rejects: damaged items, multi-piece kits, and oversize materials. These judgment calls remain human work.

AI is sitting alongside you hereOperate the ILS circulation module (Koha, WorldShare, or Alma) to check materials in and out, process holds, and manage inter-library loan requests

Operate the ILS circulation module (Koha, WorldShare, or Alma) to check materials in and out, process holds, and manage inter-library loan requests; verify RFID tag integrity on flagged items before re-shelving.^[1],[8]

Tools picking this up

Koha ILS ↗OCLC WorldShare Management Services ↗

Where your edge is

Build fluency in your library's ILS beyond basic check-in/check-out: learn holds management, patron account maintenance, and report generation so you can support the technician layer.

AI is sitting alongside you hereEnter and maintain accurate patron and item records in the ILS

Enter and maintain accurate patron and item records in the ILS; flag damaged barcodes or items requiring recataloging for review by library technicians, who can now use OCLC's AI-assisted record manager to auto-suggest call numbers and subject headings.^[9],[4]

Tools picking this up

OCLC WorldCat AI Record Manager ↗

Where your edge is

Develop working knowledge of MARC record structure so you can judge which AI-suggested subject headings and classification numbers are correct and which need technician review; this closes the gap to the Library Technician role.

Where library assistants go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Librarians and Media Collections Specialists
US median pay
$68,270 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+2.6%
Library Technicians
US median pay
$44,580 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
-6.4%
Customer Service Representatives
US median pay
$44,770 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
-5.3%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Librarians and Media Collections Specialists

Librarians and Media Collections Specialists require an ALA-accredited MLIS degree in most institutions. For a library assistant with patron-service experience, the graduate degree is the primary barrier; the work environment, user-service orientation, and collection knowledge transfer well.

What you'd add

· ALA-accredited Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree
· Reference interview technique and in-depth database searching (EBSCO, ProQuest, legal/medical databases)
· Collection development policy writing and budget management
· Instruction and information-literacy workshop facilitation

What it takesA real upskill, but a natural one

Tools of the era

How has the work of library assistants changed since 1876?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Handwritten card catalog (Cutter's rules, 1876)
Charles Ammi Cutter published his Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog in 1876, establishing the intellectual framework for organized library catalogs. Until the Library of Congress began distributing standardized printed cards in 1901, every catalog card in every American library was written by hand or typed individually by library clerical staff. Each new acquisition required a staff member to hand-write multiple cards (author, title, subject) and file them alphabetically in wooden cabinet drawers. This was the core clerical task of library work in the late 19th century, requiring legible handwriting, consistent formatting, and careful alphabetical filing. A mid-sized library might have tens of thousands of cards to maintain.
Library of Congress printed card distribution (standardized catalog era)
In 1901, the Library of Congress began selling pre-printed catalog cards to subscribing libraries nationwide, relieving clerical staff of the most laborious part of catalog maintenance for newly acquired titles. By 1925 the standardized card-and-cabinet system was firmly established across American libraries. The clerical role in catalog maintenance shifted from creation to filing and maintenance: pulling superseded cards, updating location information, inserting new cards in precise alphabetical sequence, and keeping cabinets organized. A large research library could have millions of cards requiring daily maintenance by teams of clerks. The Dewey decimal call number, printed on each card, also became the primary shelving guide, and correct re-shelving to exact Dewey sequence was a central clerical task.
Tattle-Tape magnetic security strips and barcode circulation systems
3M's Tattle-Tape electromagnetic security strip, introduced at Saint Paul Public Library in 1970, was the first technology to change the physical handling of library materials at the circulation desk: clerks now had to desensitize strips on checkout and resensitize on return, adding a step to every transaction but reducing losses. Barcode-based circulation followed: the Plessey Library Pen (1972, UK) and U.S. equivalents linked individual items to patron records for the first time via computer, replacing the paper-card pocket-and-slip system that libraries had used since the 19th century. The CLSI (Computer Library Systems Inc.) system was adopted by the Illinois State Library in 1974, and by the 1980s automated circulation systems were standard in public and academic libraries. Clerks learned to work with terminals rather than paper charge cards, and item records moved from physical files to databases.
Effect on the work
Barcode-based ILS systems reduced the clerical labor of tracking borrowed items, sending overdue notices, and maintaining patron records from a paper-intensive manual process to a screen-based transaction workflow.
Integrated Library Systems (ILS): Sirsi, Dynix, Innovative Interfaces
By the mid-1980s, fully integrated library systems had arrived: a single database tracked acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, and serials together. Sirsi Corporation (founded 1979, first installed at Georgia Tech) and Dynix (founded 1983) became the dominant public library platforms, with Innovative Interfaces serving academic libraries. For the circulation clerk, the ILS consolidated what had been a set of separate manual processes (charging slips, overdue files, patron registration cards) into a unified terminal workflow. Patron records, item barcodes, holds queues, and overdue notices were all managed from the same interface. The ILS also introduced the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog), which began to let patrons look up their own holds and accounts, previewing the self-service model that would accelerate in the 2000s.
3M self-checkout kiosks (first commercial model 1992, Los Angeles Public Library 1996)
3M launched its Model 5210 self-checkout kiosk commercially in 1992, piloting at the University of Western Sydney. By 1996, Los Angeles Public Library had adopted the system. Self-checkout shifted the most repetitive circulation desk task, checking out materials, from a staff-assisted transaction to a patron-driven one. At libraries that adopted self-checkout broadly, patrons began handling a large share of checkouts without staff involvement. Garland County Library in Arkansas, after adopting RFID self-checkout, reduced its circulation clerks from six to two per shift. The remaining desk staff shifted toward patron assistance, account problem resolution, and intake of returned materials.
Effect on the work
At well-documented installations, RFID self-checkout adoption reduced desk staff needs for the checkout function specifically. Total transaction volume did not fall proportionally because returns processing, holds management, and patron technology support grew.
RFID item-level tagging and automated materials handling (AMH) sorters
The National Library Board of Singapore pioneered large-scale RFID adoption in 1998; in the United States, the Lied Library at UNLV implemented the first US academic RFID system in January 2001. RFID tags embedded in each item allowed self-checkout of multiple items simultaneously and enabled automated sorting machines (AMH sorters) to read returned items, check them in, print hold-routing slips, and sort them into bins by branch destination without staff handling. Spanish Fork Public Library transitioned after RFID adoption. The AMH sorter replaced the most physically repetitive part of a circulation clerk's job: manually processing a bin of returned items one at a time at a keyboard.
Effect on the work
AMH sorters and RFID self-checkout together handled the bulk-processing portion of circulation desk work. Residual clerk work concentrated on edge cases the machine could not resolve: multi-piece kits, damaged items, RFID tag failures, and patron account exceptions.
Cloud ILS and discovery layers (Koha, WorldShare, BiblioCommons)
The 2010s brought a shift from locally-hosted ILS software to cloud-hosted library services platforms: OCLC WorldShare Management Services (launched 2012) and open-source Koha (widely adopted from 2010 onward) allowed smaller libraries to afford modern catalog and circulation management without on-site servers. Discovery layers like BiblioCommons and Aspen Discovery gave patrons richer self-service catalog interfaces, pulling together physical holdings, e-books, and streaming content. Patrons could now manage holds, renewals, account notifications, and reading history entirely through the online portal. The remaining desk-facing tasks for the clerical assistant shifted toward patron technology support (helping patrons use the digital portal and e-reader platforms), physical collection maintenance, and community programs support.
AI-assisted catalog discovery and OCLC AI Record Manager
In December 2025, OCLC released AI-assisted features in its Record Manager and Connexion cataloging tools, automatically suggesting Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification numbers and subject headings during record editing. BiblioCommons and Aspen Discovery began integrating AI-enhanced natural-language search that surfaces relevant results without requiring exact subject heading knowledge. For the library assistant, these tools further reduce the data-entry and lookup dimensions of catalog-adjacent work. The role increasingly concentrates on patron-facing judgment: helping a patron whose digital hold failed, managing a situation where a patron is in distress, or connecting a community member to a service the library offers that they did not know existed.

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Library Assistants, Clerical employment and pay by year

On record since1887

Latest US employment85,520 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$36,910 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook-6.4% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

Canada (NOC 14300)
Employment, 2020
14,120, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 14300 Library assistants and clerks, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Median pay, 2020
C$48,800, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 14300 Library assistants and clerks, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.

View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1920	15,000	n/a	Est., ALA Researched context	Report
1945	28,000	n/a	Est., ALA Researched context	Report
1989	42,000	n/a	Est., ALA Researched context	Report
2002	120,000	$19,450	Est., AFL-CIO DPE (employment) Researched contextBLS OEWS 2002 (pay) Official statistic	Report
2003	109,900	$19,930	BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic	Report
2004	102,310	$20,720	BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic	Report
2005	104,650	$21,140	BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic	Report
2006	109,090	$21,640	BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic	Report
2007	112,300	$22,270	BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic	Report
2008	114,740	$22,630	BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic	Report
2009	115,310	$22,980	BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic	Report
2010	110,210	$23,120	BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic	Report
2011	109,440	$23,440	BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic	Report
2012	104,030	$23,440	BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic	Report
2013	101,990	$23,660	BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic	Report
2014	100,800	$23,910	BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic	Report
2015	100,090	$24,480	BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic	Report
2016	98,560	$25,220	BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic	Report
2017	94,140	$25,810	BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic	Report
2018	88,970	$26,500	BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic	Report
2019	85,910	$27,490	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	84,560	$28,730	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	78,470	$29,450	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	77,660	$31,150	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	83,680	$34,020	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	80,070	$36,010	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	85,520	$36,910	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where library assistants go next

Librarians and Media Collections Specialists

Handwritten card catalog (Cutter's rules, 1876)Handwritten card catalog1876–1901

Library of Congress printed card distribution (standardized catalog era)Library of Congress printed card distri…1901–1970

Tattle-Tape magnetic security strips and barcode circulation systemsTattle-Tape magnetic security strips1970–1985

Integrated Library Systems (ILS): Sirsi, Dynix, Innovative InterfacesIntegrated Library Systems1985–2000

3M self-checkout kiosks (first commercial model 1992, Los Angeles Public Library 1996)3M self-checkout kiosks1992–2010

RFID item-level tagging and automated materials handling (AMH) sortersRFID item-level tagging1998–2015

Cloud ILS and discovery layers (Koha, WorldShare, BiblioCommons)Cloud ILS2012–2023

AI-assisted catalog discovery and OCLC AI Record ManagerAI-assisted catalog discovery2023–present

Library Assistants, Clerical employment and pay by year

In other countries

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