Factors relating to the recruitment and retention of library directors in rural public libraries in the United States.

Abstract

This study explored factors relating to the recruitment and retention of rural public library (RPL) directors in the United States. The conceptual framework was based on research and literature from library and information studies, rural sociology, rural psychology, medicine, mental health, social work, education and personnel management. The National Survey was mailed to a sample of 577 RPL Directors across the United States, after pretesting in five states. The American Library Directory, 1988-89 served as the sampling frame, using a sampling fraction of one-tenth. Systematic random sampling was employed with two strata; (1) public libraries listed by individual town and (2) public libraries listed as members or branches of a system. Rural was defined as communities of 25,000 population or less not located in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Two follow-ups were done, resulting in an eighty-five percent (85%) response rate. Descriptive data on personal, job-related, and community-related characteristics, future career plans, and RPL Directors' reasons for staying in or leaving their current positions are discussed. A RPL Director composite provides a summary of the descriptive data. Testing of four hypotheses as linear, bivariate relationships, resulted in significant relationships between job satisfaction and retention and community satisfaction and retention. Results did not support significant relationships between size of work community and retention or size of community of origin and retention. However, Directors working in rural public libraries were more likely to have grown up in rural than urban communities. As the four independent variables separately and collectively accounted for a very small amount of the variance in retention, further analyses were conducted using stepwise and multiple regression techniques, adding other study variables related to retention. Key predictors emerging from the exploratory analyses were age, number of years lived in communities, and size of work communities, with age accounting for the greatest (about 30 percent) amount of the variance in retention. Conclusions and implications are discussed, including three typologies of RPL Directors drawn from the study data. Finally, recommendations for future research are offered.