---
title: "Orchestra Librarian"
description: "Prepares, marks and manages the sheet music an orchestra, opera or ballet company plays, making sure every musician has the right parts."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/orchestra-librarian"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Orchestra Librarian

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-4022 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-4022.00

Prepares, marks and manages the sheet music an orchestra, opera or ballet company plays, making sure every musician has the right parts.

Also advertised as: Performance Librarian; Principal Librarian; Symphony Librarian; Music Librarian (Orchestra).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $68,270 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $32.82/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $43,660 to $103,990, with the middle half between $56,310 and $84,480
- **Total US employment:** 133,790
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.6% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 12,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 29/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 133,790 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $43,660 |
| 25th | $56,310 |
| 50th (median) | $68,270 |
| 75th | $84,480 |
| 90th | $103,990 |
| Mean (average) | $72,840 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $100,030 | $93,475 | 2,750 |
| DC | $96,550 | $87,852 | 960 |
| CA | $89,790 | $81,096 | 10,180 |
| MD | $88,570 | $84,385 | 3,220 |
| NV | $84,540 | $84,558 | 610 |
| CT | $79,210 | $76,450 | 2,550 |
| AK | $78,810 | $76,994 | 350 |
| NY | $78,590 | $72,822 | 11,870 |
| MA | $78,540 | $74,265 | 4,980 |
| NJ | $78,380 | $72,037 | 4,100 |
| OR | $78,070 | $75,531 | 1,690 |
| DE | $77,700 | $77,849 | 370 |
| MN | $77,650 | $78,736 | 2,220 |
| VA | $77,430 | $76,585 | 4,590 |
| GA | $76,750 | $79,705 | 3,330 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/orchestra-librarian/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/orchestra-librarian.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 142,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 145,900 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 3,600 jobs, or +2.6%. About as fast as average: 2.6% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 12,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

## What the work involves

- Acquire, rent and license scores and parts for each concert
- Mark bowings, cuts and conductor instructions into parts
- Correct errors in published parts
- Distribute music to musicians before rehearsals
- Maintain and catalog the orchestra's music collection
- Prepare music for tours, recordings and broadcasts
- Track performance rights and copyright requirements

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Social (S), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.88 |
| S — Social | 4.04 |
| I — Investigative | 3.98 |
| A — Artistic | 3.48 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.75 |
| R — Realistic | 2.32 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISFJ | 71.0 |
| INFJ | 61.7 |
| ESFJ | 61.3 |
| ISTJ | 60.6 |
| ESTJ | 56.7 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Librarian](https://nuecareer.com/careers/librarian) — median $68,270
- [Library Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/library-technician) — median $44,580
- [Library Assistant, Clerical](https://nuecareer.com/careers/library-assistant-clerical) — median $36,910
- [Archivist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/archivist) — median $64,550
- [Library Science Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/library-science-teacher-postsecondary) — median $80,340
- [Instructional Coordinator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/instructional-coordinator) — median $77,440
- [Social Science Research Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-science-research-assistant) — median $61,990
- [Document Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/document-management-specialist) — median $116,580
- [Web Administrator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/web-administrator) — median $116,580
- [Computer User Support Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-user-support-specialist) — median $61,860

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/orchestra-librarian