Career progression of academic medical library directors.

While females are still underrepresented as directors overall, the results of our survey indicate that in the past ten years female library directors have been hired in numbers nearly matching their overall percentage of the medical library profession. When the personal characteristics of medical library directors are compared by gender, male directors are more likely to be married, have children, and be somewhat younger upon attaining their first directorship. When the professional characteristics are compared, the only notable difference is that a greater portion of males hold a second master's degree. Despite the changing numbers of female library directors in the past ten years, these differences all held constant before and after 1977. Only the number of internal successions to directorship changed over time. The succession patterns of medical library directors now match more closely those of other academic library directors.