Librarian / Library Media Specialist
Also known as: Library Media Specialist, School Librarian, Reference Librarian
Curate information resources, help people research, and manage knowledge systems in the digital age.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for librarian / library media specialists.
About 1 in 1,000 reaches this level
Of ~142,300 librarians (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 25-4022, 2025), only ~140 are Deans of Libraries at major research universities earning ~$200K — about 0.1%.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a master's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
An ALA-accredited MLIS is 36-43 credits and costs about $25,600 at a public university — San José State, the largest ALA-accredited programme in the country, charges $596 a unit for 43 units — and about $52,000 at a private one, with Simmons at $1,445 a credit for 36 credits. Public vs. private is by far the biggest price driver here, more than which specific school you pick.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
A big part of a librarian's traditional work is helping people find and judge information, and AI search and chat tools now do a version of that for anyone. Two studies of how AI fits different jobs put librarians in the upper range. Anthropic's March 2026 study, which tracks how much of each job's tasks people already use its Claude AI for at work, puts librarians at about 20%, in the top 16% of the 756 jobs it measured, and Microsoft's 2025 study ranks them 148th of 785. There is also new demand: a 2025 paper in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly notes a growing number of 'AI librarian' job postings, mostly at universities, supporting AI tools for research.
The government's outlook is steady. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects librarian jobs to grow 3% from 2025 to 2035, about the same as the average for all jobs, with about 12,600 openings a year, because libraries keep running programs such as children's activities and job-search help. The support layer below librarians is shrinking: BLS projects library technician and assistant jobs to fall 6%, but it blames falling library use and tight budgets, not AI.
We keep this at 3 (Moderate). The information-finding part of the job is highly exposed, the rungs below the librarian job are shrinking, and new AI roles are real but few. What holds it up is that much of today's library work is programs and in-person help, which BLS expects to keep demand steady.
What would change the score: a BLS projection cut that names AI, or evidence that schools and public libraries are replacing librarian posts with AI tools, would move this to 4. Strong growth in AI-related library jobs, or evidence that AI is bringing more people into libraries, would move it to 2.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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