My Opinion on Faculty Rank for Librarians

Certainly much has been written in the library literature over the years on the issue of faculty rank and status for librarians.  A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled As Their Roles Change, Some Librarians Lose Faculty Status, by Sydni Dunn prompts me to make comments on this issue.  The article states that at the University of Virginia future librarians will be classified as university staff while current employees will retain faculty status.

The advantage of faculty status is that after a librarian has attained tenure he/she has job security.  Those librarians feel “more professional” than their colleagues who are staff.  On the other hand going through the tenure process creates anxiety.  The tenure requirements vary at different universities.  At some colleges publications demonstrating empirical research are required for tenure. While at other universities publications are helpful but job performance and professional activities are used in the evaluation for tenure.

Since I have been exposed to both situations, I am commenting based on my experiences.  Here at NJIT we have professional status.  Our raises are determined though job performance.  Activity in professional organizations and publishing are encouraged, but are not absolute requirements for the job.  After six years we are granted “Contractual Expectation” which I define as “quasi tenure.”  We can only be terminated for documented misconduct or poor performance.

I prefer the “professional staff” status since I feel that the tenure process creates so much tension.  I have observed many tenure track librarians spending much time going to professional meetings.  This takes time away from helping library patrons.  Tenure track librarians are often allowed release time to do their research.  Thus less time is spent helping their students.  In my opinion much of the library literature is very self-serving.  I read many papers and feel that they just don’t prove anything.

The article in the Chronicle states that a survey done by Lisa Hinchliffe at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign states that nearly two-thirds of the 1600 institutions that responded have faculty status.  36% have tenure or on the tenure track while 28% have faculty status but are off the tenure track.  The remaining third don’t have faculty rank or status.

I guess this issue can be debated indefinitely.