Academic Librarianship: Professional Strivings and Political Realities

Sparks, David G. E.

doi:10.5860/crl_41_05_408

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…67 And äs he comments further: "... tenure is the protection extended to a university teacher when bis Professional goals and responsibilities are in conflict with institutional goals...One can question whether the Professional goals and responsibilities of academic librarians would ever be in conflict with institutional goals, so identified have they been with bureaucratic structures of Academia." 68 Sparks is not convincing.…”

Section: Thoughts On the Futurementioning

confidence: 97%

Academic Librarians and Academic Freedom in the United States: A history and analysis

DeVinney¹

1986

Libri

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Section: Thoughts On the Futurementioning

confidence: 97%

Academic Librarians and Academic Freedom in the United States: A history and analysis

DeVinney¹

1986

Libri

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References

1984

ASHE‐ERIC High. Edu. Rept.

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Deconstructing faculty status: research and assumptions

Applegate¹

1993

The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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Arguments for faculty status have traditionally been based upon a comparative model: librarians want their roles to be compared to those of faculty, not administrators. The author of this article, however, finds almost no empirical research on the status, roles, and benefits of faculty, librarians, and administrators to support this model. She posits several alternative approaches to the faculty status issue.Approximately half of all librarians currently employed by U.S. colleges and universities possess "faculty status." 1 Such librarians have been accorded a status equivalent to teaching faculty in terms of rights (notably tenure and participation in governance) and responsibilities (notably research and publishing). The advantages and disadvantages of faculty status have been debated in academic librarianship for years. Indeed, the issue is almost a professional obsession. College & Research Libraries published two nearly identical reviews of the literature on the subject in consecutive issues in 1987. 2 Taken together, these writings reveal a concept or model of faculty status that is built on a series of logically connected assumptions. The basic assumptions are (1) that teaching faculty have certain roles and benefits, (2) that administrators or other college staff do not have these roles and benefits, and (3) that librarians who are not considered faculty will be considered administrators or staff and thus will not have these roles or benefits. For example, a librarian without faculty status will not be viewed as having an educational role and will not possess tenure.The validity of these assumptions could be tested by comparing librarians with and librarians without faculty status: if those with faculty status had the specified roles and benefits and those without did not, then the assumed model is supported.Research on faculty status in general is relatively sparse compared with the volume of opinion pieces (what should be done) and personal narratives (how we do it where I work). Moreover, research has not explicitly addressed this underlying model; neither has it considered questions lying outside the model.The purpose of this review of research in librarianship and higher education is to critically examine each of the component role and benefit elements of the faculty status model to determine if its assumptions and logical connections are supported by empirical findings. A conclusion outlines the implications of the research results---and lack of results--and suggests alternative approaches to the faculty status issue.

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Academic Librarianship: Professional Strivings and Political Realities

Cited by 6 publications

References 20 publications

Academic Librarians and Academic Freedom in the United States: A history and analysis

Academic Librarians and Academic Freedom in the United States: A history and analysis

References

Deconstructing faculty status: research and assumptions

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