Dances With Books

ALA-APA once again released their Librarian Salary Survey (press release here; can't give you the full study since they want you to pay for it, and not all of us are swimming in moolah). I have been pondering this for a while because I honestly want to know where the hell their sampling of "more than 17,018" individual salaries of ALA MLS librarians work. Here are the very basic numbers: 

• Mean: ". . .decreased less than 1 percent from 2008, down $100 to $58,860." Wow. $100 whole bucks decrease. I am nowhere close that mean. By the way, the mean is the average (add all salaries and divide by the number of salaries).
• Median: ". . .$54,500, 2 percent higher than in 2008." Again, I am nowhere close to the middle range. The median is middle number in the line of values. Either way, this has got to be administrators because I don't see this kind of salary in the average librarian job (i.e. front line) anywhere. 
• A bit more: ". . .salaries ranged from $22,000 to $256,800." Mine would be leaning to the lower end, and I am sure some of the people who read this journal probably range in the lower part. 

Just some food for thought. And by the way, here at Backwater Rural Branch (BRB) U., for the new hires, we are nowhere near the mean or the median either. Hell, for them at least, they are being paid more than I am. Yes, we do have some equity issues here, but that is another post. Anyhow, I just want to know where those librarians surveyed worked, and are they hiring?