Run collections, help people find what is true, and keep a public space open to everyone. Needs a master's degree.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $86,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $48,000 at the lower end to about $141,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
6 to 7 years after high school, on the usual route.
$39,000 to $70,500 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$86,000
Lower end
$48,000
Upper end
$141,000
Job Bank's national median is $41.21 an hour, about $86,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($23.08) and upper end ($67.90) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group. Many new graduates start in casual, contract or part-time postings.
$45.64 an hour
The median in Quebec, about $95,000 a year
Ontario is close behind at $44.24. Saskatchewan has the lowest median, $31.32.
Roughly, all in
$39,000 to $70,500
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Two degrees are required, a bachelor's in any subject and then a master's in library and information studies, so the total is the two tuitions added together. The low end is a three year bachelor's and a cheaper master's program. The high end is a four year bachelor's, a higher tuition master's and optional association membership. There is no licensing exam at all, and paid student work shelving books or staffing a service desk is common and takes a real bite out of the total.
Roughly $39,000 to $70,000 for both degrees, before living costs. Paid student jobs shelving or working a service desk are common and help a lot.
Public sector pension
Most librarians work for a city, a school board, a university or a government.
Union membership
Common in public and academic libraries, which keeps pay steps predictable.
Set hours
35 to 37.5 hour weeks are standard, with an evening or weekend rotation.
Money for conferences and courses
Professional development budgets are normal in this field.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Any bachelor's degree, then a specific master's degree. Six to seven years in total.
High school
Grade 12
Reading, writing and research habits matter more than any single course.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any subject. History, English, science and computing all work. Your subject becomes your specialty later.
Work in a library while you study
During your degree
Shelving, circulation desk, student assistant. This is the single best thing you can do for your application and your first job.
Master's degree in library and information studies
About 2 years
The professional degree. It must come from a program accredited by the ALA (American Library Association), which accredits Canadian schools as well as American ones.
First posting
Months to 2 years
Often casual or term work first, then a permanent job. Being willing to move to a smaller city speeds this up a lot.
English
Reading widely and writing clearly is the base skill.
History or social science
Research, sources, and judging what is reliable.
Computer science
Modern libraries run on databases and search systems.
French
Bilingual librarians are wanted in federal libraries and much of the east.
Outside Quebec no province licenses librarians and the title is not protected by law. In Quebec the title professional librarian (bibliothécaire professionnel) is reserved by law for members of the CBPQ (Corporation des bibliothécaires professionnels du Québec). In practice, professional postings ask for a master's degree from a program accredited by the American Library Association, and hiring committees will not bend on it. School librarians are the exception: teacher-librarians in most provinces need a teaching certificate too, sometimes instead of the library master's.
Only a small number of Canadian universities run an accredited program. Check the current accredited list before applying.
British Columbia
University of British Columbia, in Vancouver.
Alberta
University of Alberta, in Edmonton.
Ontario
University of Toronto, Western University in London, and the University of Ottawa.
Quebec and the east
McGill University and Université de Montréal in Montreal, Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Quebec adds 2 years of CEGEP (public college) before the bachelor's, and a Quebec law reserves the title professional librarian for members of the librarians' corporation.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Any stream gets you into CEGEP (public college). Reading, writing and computer skills matter most.
Pre-university DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
A 2 year program at a CEGEP (public college), with no tuition for full-time Quebec residents.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any subject. Quebec bachelor's degrees take 3 to 4 years.
Accredited master's
About 2 years
Two ALA (American Library Association) accredited programs: McGill's Master of Information Studies, 48 credits over about 2 years, or Université de Montréal's master's in information science, 51 credits with a 36 day placement, in French.
Join the corporation (CBPQ), for the title
After the master's
The Corporation des bibliothécaires professionnels du Québec (the Quebec corporation of professional librarians). Only its members can call themselves bibliothécaire professionnel (professional librarian).
Things you don't need, but that help.
Law librarian
Law firms, courts and law schools.
Health sciences librarian
Hospitals and medical schools. Often needs a science background.
Data and metadata work
Organizing research data and digital collections. Technical and in demand.
Archives
Rare books, records and historical collections, usually with extra archival training.
A library job of any kind first
Page, clerk, shelver. It tells you whether you like the actual work.
Basic coding
A little scripting goes a long way with catalogues and reports.
A subject degree with depth
Chemistry, law or music makes you the obvious hire for that collection.
Comfort with the public
A public branch serves everyone, including people in crisis.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Hours on the reference desk helping people find things, from a school project to a legal form to a job application. Between shifts: choosing what to buy, running programs like story time or job clubs, teaching a class how to search properly, and committee work. In an academic library you meet students and researchers by appointment. Less shushing than the movies suggest, more helping.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Canadian Federation of Library Associations counted 512 challenges to library materials and programs in 2025, up from 172 in 2024. Alberta's ministerial orders on school library books caused 360 of them.
Canadian library schools are accredited by the American Library Association, not by a Canadian body. McGill's program has held that accreditation since 1927.
Job Bank counted about 10,400 librarians working in Canada in 2023, and 32% of them were 50 or older.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Guidance and libraries first, then the rest of the field. See every career in education.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.