wearing our own clothes: librarians as faculty

Wearing Our Own Clothes: Librarians as Faculty

by Janet Swan Hill

The debate over faculty status for librarians continues, but for

librarians already on the tenure track, philosophy

matters less than the practical matter of achieving tenure.

librarians need to understand the functions and

circumstances of non-librarian faculty so that librarianship and

individual accomplishments can be described in terms that

teaching faculty understand.

Janet Swan Hill is Associate Director for Technical Services, University of Colorado at

Boulder Libraries, Campus Box 184, Boulder, CO 80309-0184.

T he appropriateness of faculty sta- tus for librarians in academic insti- tutions is continuously debated.

Such is the extent of the debate that it is from time to time the topic of “year’s work” articles and bibliographies.r-2 Although the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has promul- gated standards for faculty status for aca- demic librarians3 the standards are far from uniformly adhered to, and discus- sion and uncertainty persist.4 Despite the lack of consensus within the profession, many librarians are, nevertheless, employed in institutions where librarians have faculty status, and where they are subject to promotion and tenure proce- dures similar to those in force for other faculty at the same institutions.5 For many of these librarians, philosophy matters less than the practical matter of achieving tenure.

“A discourse on the validity of faculty status for librarians,

while useful for the profession, will not help the individual faculty member’s chance of

achieving tenure in the system in which she/he is currently working, and, in fact, any ambivalence evident in a

dossier forwarded to a review committee may be damaging.”

Many Factors Affect Librarians’ Ability to Achieve Tenure. These include local promotion and tenure standards and the availability of support for pursuit of activities considered in the tenure pro- cess.6 Regardless of particular expecta-

tions and what kind of support is given to librarians attempting to meet them, in some cases the most important practical matter may be whether the non-librarians as well as the librarians who review tenure and promotion recommendations for library faculty have an appropriate under- standing of librarianship, coupled with a sufftcient appreciation of the analogs and dissimilarities between teaching and librarianship. Without such understand- ing, librarians may find or fear that attain- ing tenure depends on “disguising” librarianship as teaching: using the termi- nology of teaching, touting only those activities that are most easily equated with teaching, discounting activities not highly valued among teaching faculty (such as professional service), and deemphasizing functions without easy analogs (such as most technical services functions).

To calm the fears and reduce the impulse for disguise, it is necessary for librarians to understand enough of the functions and circumstances of non- librarian faculty so that librarianship and the accomplishments of individual librari- ans can be described in terms that teaching faculty will understand, that draw appro- priate parallels, and that treat differences clearly but without apology.7

Tenure in Library Faculty. These matters are of current and commanding interest at the University of Colorado Libraries at Boulder, where after a six- year hiatus, the tenure and promotion pro- cess for Libraries faculty was reactivated in 1988, but with substantive differences from earlier practice. Whereas under prior standards, 80 percent of a Libraries’ ten- ure decision was based on the “practice of librarianship” (acknowledged as the librarians’ equivalent to teaching), from 1988 on, tenure and promotion is granted to Libraries faculty on the basis of practice of librarianship8 (40%); research, creative, and scholarly work (40%); and service

May 1994 71

(20%).9 These weights are identical to those in force for other University faculty.

During the hiatus in tenure activity, new hires were made off the tenure track. Following reinstatement of the process, new hires entered on the tenure track at the rank of Assistant Professor. Six years of no tenure activity had a substantial impact on the profile of the Libraries faculty. Although faculty in place before the hiatus began retained their previous rank, by 1994, turnover and retirements had reduced the number of tenured librarians to 6 (14% of the full-time regular faculty). Of the remaining full-time regular faculty, 21 (48% of the whole faculty) were ten- ure-track Assistant Professors, and the other 17 (39%) were untenured at various ranks and not on the tenure track. The first of the librarians hired as tenure-track Assistant Professors went through pre-ten- ure Comprehensive Review in 1993. The first tenure decision is due in 1995.

Review Process. As is the case for many academic libraries, at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB), tenure rec- ommendations are subject to substantive review outside the library. External review is exercised by the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and his Vice Chancel- lor’s Advisory Committee (VCAC), which is composed of senior faculty from across the Campus. The University Presi- dent and the Board of Regents also have an interest that is far from pro forma. Dur- ing the suspension of tenure activity in the Libraries, exposure of these bodies and individuals to what a librarian’s record looks like was minimal, so in 1990, as the first promotion recommendations follow- ing reactivation of the process were for- warded, the Dean and representatives from the Libraries Tenure Committee met with the VCAC to discuss salient charac- teristics of librarianship and their impact on Libraries faculty dossiers. It was clear from the discussion that while there was good will on both sides, there was also a great deal of confusion. A joint task force was formed to discuss what might be done to increase understanding, and to assure Libraries faculty of the fairest possible hearing. The primary products of these meetings were a revised version of the Libraries’ Standards for Promotion and Tenure,‘O plus a heightened awareness of the dissimilarities between librarianship and teaching and the ways in which they are formally evaluated, and the need to express matters in a way that will be understood and appreciated by teaching faculty as they judge librarians’ records.

As an officer of the Tenure Committee, Chair of the joint VCAC/Libraries Tenure Committee task force, and engineer of the revised Standards document, I spent con- siderable time trying to identify and artic- ulate those characteristics of librarianship that seem most important to clarify in con- nection with the tenure process. As a tech- nical services librarian, I was especially sensitive to evidence that to non-librari- ans, technical services activities are per- haps the least understood aspects of librarianship and that they do not lend themselves easily to the teaching-oriented phraseology common in tenure discus- sions and documents. The result of these considerations is reflected in the “infor- mation document” presented in the next section. That document has begun to be used in conjunction with the document packages being forwarded on behalf of Libraries faculty who are being consid- ered for tenure-related personnel actions, and it may eventually be incorporated into the Libraries Faculty Handbook. Although the document is influenced by particular tenure practices and standards at one insti- tution, and although some of the circum- stances reflected (such as numbers 9 and 10) are not true of some libraries, most have wide applicability.

Characteristics of Librarianship as They Relate to the Faculty Model: An Information Document Every discipline has a characteristic

topography that determines its practice and influences how the field is advanced. In a university setting, excellence in a dis- cipline is judged against standards for that discipline. Because librarianship-its organization, how it is practiced, its con- text, its standards, its norms, and its char- acteristics-are likely to be unfamiliar to those whose primary experience is of other academic departments, it is useful to articulate the special features of the land- scape of librarianship that must be taken into account in assessing the worth of a library faculty member’s accomplish- ments. The following characteristics of librarianship are among those most impor- tant to consider.

1. Librarianship is an academic discipline in its own right. Librarianship has its own foundation of theory and prac- tice, its own ethical constructs, its own lit- erature, and its own type of academic preparation. Because many librarians’ assignments involve them in service to another discipline (e.g., “music librarian” or “medical librarian”), non-librarians

may be deceived into believing that the librarianship portion of the job is the adjunct rather than the disciplinary spe- cialty. It may be easy to slip into thinking of these “[modifier]-librarians” in terms of what they are not (e.g., not really musicol- ogists) instead of what they are (librari- ans), but such interpretation is both incorrect and inappropriate.

2. The basis of librarianship is organization, evaluation, and provision of access to information.

Organization includes: Analyzing and describing information resources physi- cally and intellectually, incorporating descriptive surrogates for such entities into local and national databases, impos- ing and maintaining coherence and syn- detic relationships within a database so that information can be retrieved, and organizing actual items for physical retrieval.

Evaluation includes: Assessing rele- vance, reliability, availability, etc., of information resources with reference to the curricular and research needs of a par- ticular constituency, in light of economic and technological considerations; assess- ing relevance, reliability, availability, etc., of given information resources with refer- ence to needs of a particular information seeker.

“In line with this service orientation, librarians’ careers are largely advanced within an institutional or organizational

context, and their research and scholarly activities are often determined by the particular

current organizational needs of the institution for which they

work.”

Provision of Access includes: Provid- ing, through direct aid, instruction, system design, cataloging, and other activities, guidance sufficient to enable seekers of information to obtain the information they need; obtaining, through ownership, loan, etc., information resources needed by an institution or any of its users; providing, through loan, information resources needed by information seekers outside the primary service constituency; providing physical access to information resources owned; providing for continued availabil-

72 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

ity of materials through preservation activities

3. Librarianship is a service profes- sion. The ethical basis and values of librarianship are derived from its inherent service orientation. Librarians serve users of their own and other libraries, their par- ent institutions, and the discipline.

A faculty member from classics or psy- chology serves the users of her/his college or university and performs teaching within an institutional context, but although s/he may join purposely or remain with an institution that has a strong commitment to her/his specialty, her/his research and scholarly interests are often not institu- tion-dependent. By contrast, a library fac- ulty member commonly adopts the emphasis of the institution s/he joins, and focuses her/his scholarly activities on the particular problems of that institution.

4. Librarianship is an applied field. Its laboratory is the library itself. Librarianship has theoretical underpin- nings derived from fields such as cogni- tive science and taxonomy, but like engineering, librarianship is an applied field. Testing, experimentation, and appli- cation are native to librarianship, but the number and nature of variables and the nature of the laboratory determine the sort of inquiry that is possible and pertinent. Librarianship’s variables include people, both individually and in groups (e.g., by ethnicity, level of education, and location), information resources (e.g., pamphlets, books, computer files, and manuscripts), type of library (academic, public, corpo- rate, etc.), technology, and monetary resources (for personnel, equipment, facil- ities, and collections).

Librarianship’s laboratories are librar- ies themselves. Experimentation is carried on constantly, but laboratory conditions are far from pure. Because of the number and nature of variables, reliability of tests conducted outside a full live environment is limited. Because of the nature of library faculty schedules (see 9 below), and the absence of support mechanisms such as graduate student assistants, etc. (see 10 below), development and conduct of experiments outside a full live environ- ment is difficult. Because of the size of the laboratory, the expense of tests can be tre- mendous, the results potentially disas- trous, and the cost of restoring pretest conditions insupportable. Works of applied research and descriptions of indi- vidual circumstances and experiments, therefore, form a significant and valuable

portion of scholarly work within librarian- ship.

5. Librarianship is characterized by cooperative practice and joint schol- arship, often carried out in the context of organizations. Librarianship is an almost archtypically cooperative disci- pline. This characteristic manifests itself locally, where it determines how individ- ual work is performed and viewed, and externally, where it determines how the discipline is advanced.

Internal interdependence. In most aca- demic departments faculty cooperate to cover all parts of a coherent curriculum, all facets of student advising, etc. The work of a faculty member who teaches Thucydides or petrology, however, is dis- cernible as hers/his alone. In librarianship, some activities may be individually attrib- utable, but most are not. For instance, a cataloger may prepare a bibliographic record for an item, but the individual work must be absorbed successfully into the cat- alog, and the highest quality work stands out least. Even activities that seem to be individually attributable may not be. For example, a reference librarian who is unable to find a useful information resource may owe that inability to a bibli- ographer who did not request it, an acqui- sitions librarian who could not identify it, a cataloger who did not analyze it fully, or a system vendor who failed to resolve a programming bug.

External cooperative endeavors. Libraries are able to serve their constituen- cies only through the existence and activi- ties of a variety of cooperative entities, such as bibliographic networks, authority control cooperatives, interlibrary loan consortia, library automation groups, and professional associations. Work per- formed within such contexts often has substantive impact on libraries and their constituencies. Work performed for and under the auspices of cooperative entities varies in how it is most fairly character- ized. Some conforms to the general aca- demic understanding of “service as citizenship.” Much, however, constitutes joint research, or joint standards-setting for the discipline, and is, thus, most aptly considered scholarly work.” Leadership positions in automation consortia, collec- tion development cooperatives, etc., have direct bearing on development of policy and practice for the field and direct impact on availability and usability of informa- tion by the academic community, and can also be regarded as falling into the realm of the “scholarship of service.”

6. Librarianship depends on coop- erative development of and adherence to standards. In today’s environment, libraries would be unable to function with- out willing adherence by all to a wide vari- ety of standards for formulating, encoding, and communicating informa- tion. Development of such standards is generally a cooperative venture performed for and under the auspices of some organi- zation, or group of organizations in alli- ance. Participation leading to development of standards that determine libraries’ ability to satisfy information needs locally, nationally, or internation- ally, is appropriately considered scholarly work, and is also an indicator of an indi- vidual’s expertise and reputation.

7. Librarianship is carried on pri- marily in and through libraries. Librar- ians may or may not participate in classroom teaching. Most faculty in non- library departments define their “practice of profession” in terms of classroom teaching and related activities such as advising. For Libraries faculty, the “prac- tice of profession” is the practice of librar- ianship, which may involve cataloging, reference service, collection development, policy development, managing, etc. Only for some librarians will it include any classroom teaching.

8. Libraries, especially academic libraries, are hierarchical. Most library faculty hold positions that include man- agerial or administrative assignments, whose performance may constitute all or part of their “practice of profession”. As is true in other academic departments, library faculty relate to each other colle- gially, as members of a faculty, and they advance through professorial ranks as do other faculty. Unlike other departments, however, the staffing profile of a library (26% faculty, 5 1% support staff, and 23% student workers at the 120 member librar- ies of the Association for Research Librar- ies)‘* the diversity of functions encompassed, and the complexity of oper- ations is not easily handled with a flat or loose organizational structure. Libraries, especially large ones, demand some degree of hierarchical structure for effec- tive operation. In general, the larger the library, the more complex its hierarchy.

Many library faculty positions carry administrative and managerial functions (supervision, oversight, and evaluation) as a permanent and inextricable part of their duties.13 Librarians are recruited for and appointed specifically to such positions based on the particular experience and

May 1994 73

abilities required for management. It is unusual for librarians to be elected to administrative positions as is sometimes done in other departments, and it is rare for library faculty to rotate in and out of administrative positions. For librarians with managerial responsibilities, manage- ment constitutes all or part of their “prac- tice of profession.” This is so widely recognized within the profession that librarians’ administrative titles are well- understood indicators of status and career advancement, while, because of the wide variation among libraries of academic sta- tus and standards for promotion and ten- ure, professorial titles have meaning mainly in relationship to a particular aca- demic institution. For example, librarians understand that the titles “Assistant (or Associate) University Librarian,” and “Associate Director (or Dean)” connote a level of authority just under the Library Dean/Director, and encompass adminis- trative responsibilities over a variety of activities and levels of faculty and staff, while “Department Head” indicates mana- gerial authority over a smaller scope of activities and personnel. By contrast, depending on the situation at a given insti- tution, any librarian, ranging from one with no supervisory responsibilities at all to a Director may have a faculty rank rang- ing from no rank to full Professor.

9. Library faculty work a twelve month year. Most have a relatively inflexible daily schedule that may be considered analogous to a “heavy class load”. Most library faculty (78.38%) work a twelve month year.i4 Most func- tions encompassed in library faculty’s “practice of profession” do not depend on the academic calendar, and, in fact, must be carried on year-round. In addition, because most of the functions performed depend on the presence of the staff, avail- ability of the building, the collection, the equipment, and the automated systems, and because a library’s function is to serve the remainder of the campus whenever service is needed, most library faculty work a relatively inflexible daily schedule. Using the terms of faculty in other depart- ments, this might be stated as “Library faculty carry a heavy class and advising load every term, including summers.”

10. Library faculty generally prac- tice their profession in institutions where there is no corresponding course of graduate or undergraduate study. As of September 1993, there were only 58 institutions hosting a graduate program in library and information science (LIS) that

was accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). Of these, only 24 also offered doctoral programs in LIS. Although some library schools offer a few library science courses at the undergradu- ate level, few four-year institutions offer more than a minor undergraduate concen- tration in LIS. This is in distinct contrast to almost every other department in which faculty may be located, where the faculty have available to them students at all lev- els to serve as teaching or research assis- tants. This lack of an available pool of knowledgeable assistants has a significant impact on the speed with which a library faculty member may be able to carry out research, and on the scope of projects that may be feasible to consider.

11. Library faculty are not inter- changeable. Subdisciplines are substan- tially different in knowledge and skills base. Librarianship consists of a number of distinct subdisciplines. Although all library faculty share a common theoretical and ethical grounding in their discipline and profession, specialization during and after formal academic preparation is the norm. Specializations involve different training, experience, and “bent.” Catalog- ing is as different from collection develop- ment as statistical analysis of language use is from writing poetry. Thus, just as is the case with other faculty, achievements of Libraries faculty cannot be judged against a single broad standard.

12. The terminal degree for librar- ianship is a Master’s degree in librari- anship. The terminal degree appropriate to the discipline, as defined by the ALA and the ACRL, is a Master’s degree from a program accredited by the ALA.i5 Fac- ulty in other disciplines generally enter academe after some years of post-graduate study and research in their discipline; libraries faculty may enter academe with as little as three terms of post-graduate study. Faculty in other disciplines gener- ally enter academe with a dissertation and/ or a body of research from which to begin fashioning publications. Library faculty, because of the difference in the terminal degree, because librarianship is an applied field, and because of the extent to which librarians’ research agendas are formed by the institutions with which they ally them- selves, may take some time to settle on a research focus and begin building a record in it.

13. Librarianship must be evalu- ated by means and against a standard appropriate to the discipline. The major indices by which non-library faculty are

evaluated often include: the curriculum vitae and the work represented on it, testi- mony from outside experts (solicited let- ters), formal peer review within the unit (tenure committee and “classroom visi- tors”), review by the Dean, and the opin- ion of students (as determined through a formal questionnaire). Library faculty have nearly exact analogs for most of these indices, although their content is influenced by the structure of the profes- sion and the conditions and context of employment as described above, but two of the evaluation tools for the “practice of the profession”-student opinion, and review by “classroom visitors”-are gen- erally absent. For most librarians, they would be meaningless, and if the purpose of these evaluations is to be served, it must be accomplished through alternative means.

Student opinion. Evaluation of a librar- ian’s “practice of profession” via student questionnaires or any other solicitation of student opinion is not a reasonable mea- sure of a librarian’s competence or perfor- mance. Many librarians, especially those in technical services areas, rarely come in contact with students. Even those that reg- ularly deal with students generally have contacts that are individualized according each student’s particular need at a particu- lar time. In order to provide a reasonable analog for formalized collection of student opinion, it is necessary to understand that what is being sought is not student opinion per se, but an analysis and evaluation of a faculty member’s competence in perform- ing her/his “practice of profession.” In most libraries, such analysis and evalua- tion are provided through detailed peri- odic supervisory review. In many ways, such review is superior to review available to most other faculty.r6 It is because fac- ulty in other departments generally do not have a supervisor who is well acquainted, through informed and continual observa- tion of their work, that they must fall back on soliciting student opinion to help mea- sure it.

Classroom visitors. Partly in recogni- tion of the shortcomings of student opin- ion as a means of evaluating teaching, departments may also solicit the directed opinion of senior faculty within their own departments. Such faculty visit class ses- sions of courses being taught by a candi- date for reappointment, promotion, or tenure, and they may also interview indi- vidual students. Their detailed report of observations and their assessment of a candidate’s performance provides another

74 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

index upon which to base a decision. An argument can be made that supervisors’ evaluations of library faculty are a more than adequate substitute for the reports of classroom visitors, but despite the validity of the argument, a dossier that does not include a recognized analog for each eval- uative tool that a review committee is used to seeing may be viewed, however unfairly, as incomplete, and the perceived incompleteness may have an unfortunate effect on a candidate’s chances for a posi- tive decision.

Options for a substitute for classroom visitors might include a “shadow,” in which a senior faculty member follows a candidate for a period of time. Disadvan- tages of this approach include the fact that it is hard for a librarian’s shadow to be assured of being present during a typical activity period, whereas teachers at least have scheduled class times. In addition, all teachers teach and, therefore, have some means of judging the performance of other teachers, while because librarians perform such a wide variety of specialized func- tions as their primary “practice of profes- sion,” not all librarians can give a useful assessment of the performance of others. An acquisitions librarian, for instance, might be at a loss to provide a suitable evaluation of work in interlibrary loan; a reference librarian might provide an incomplete assessment of cataloging. As in the case of providing an analog to stu- dent opinion, it is necessary to determine what the purpose of the evaluation is. If the purpose is to provide an additional informed assessment of a candidate’s work, then a suitable substitute for a class- room visitor may be having senior faculty who already have some reason to be famil- iar with a candidate’s work to focus care- fully on that work, and provide a detailed analytic evaluation, supplemented by whatever additional observation or inter- views s/he deems necessary. Because librarians so often work for a cooperative agency in conjunction with working for their library (see 5 above), a supplemen- tary source of evaluations of the “practice of profession” may be available from those agencies. Contributions to NACO (Name Authority Cooperative), for instance, are subjected to rigorous outside review. The evaluation of another member or participant in the cooperative group may, therefore, be both pertinent and valu- able to the tenure process.

The Tenure Decision A positive tenure decision is sometimes

referred to as a “million dollar commit-

ment” in reference to the cumulative sal- ary that a faculty member may draw from the tenuring institution between tenure and retirement. The consequences to the institution, however, go far beyond salary.

“By occupying a position, each tenured faculty member reduces an institution’s

options for hiring additional or different faculty, both because they are in the positions, and because as senior faculty they

generally receive higher salaries than more junior

faculty would.”

Lack of maneuverability in hiring lim- its possibilities for altering curricular or research direction, and it limits an institu- tion’s ability to enhance its reputation through enhancing its faculty. Tenured faculty are prime contributors to the suc- cess and reputation of academic programs, which are important factors in attracting students and faculty and help determine the health of the institution. In addition to institutional considerations, individual faculty members benefit from association with a distinguished group.

Considering the stakes, it is under- standable that tenure and promotion deci- sions are taken seriously, and that evaluation of faculty performance is com- plex and rigorous. The consequences of tenuring unwisely and accumulating a fac- ulty of limited capability and imagination are the same for libraries as they are for other academic departments, so records of library faculty seeking tenure should be no less carefully scrutinized than records of other faculty, but both the records and the scrutiny must recognize and accommodate the necessary and legitimate differences among their pursuits.

Conclusion A common complaint about a system

of faculty status for librarians is that because the jobs of librarians and other faculty are so different, and because librar- ians are by far the “minority model” for faculty, librarians believe they must dress themselves in the clothing of another pro- fession--that of teaching. In the long run, however, a masquerade will not succeed, and it should not be necessary. Hockey players wear baggy pants for a purpose;

baseball players do not feel an urge to wear shoulder pads just to increase their credibility. Those who play hockey and baseball wear what is appropriate for their work. Librarians too need to understand that instead of dressing themselves in oth- ers’ clothing, they should don their own professional raiment, but they do need to understand and be prepared to explain the purpose of the garments.

Notes and References 1. Kee DeBoer and Wendy Culotta, “The Academic Librarian and Faculty Status in the 1980s: A Survey of the Literature,” College & Research Libraries 48 (May 1987): 215223. 2. Emily Werrell and Laura Sullivan, Faculty Status for Academic Librarians: Annotated Bibliography (Washington, DC: Department of Education, 1985) (ERIC: ED 274364). 3. Standards were first published in 1971, and they were most recently revised in 1992. See “Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Librarians,” College & Research Libraries News 53 (May 1992): 317. 318. 4. A selection of recent work includes: Irene Hoadley, “Faculty Status 2001,” College & Research Libraries News 54 (June 1993): 338. 340; Rachel Applegate, “Deconstructing Faculty Status: Research and Assumptions,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 19 (July 1993): 158-164; Charles B. Lowry, “The Status of Faculty Status for Academic Librarians: A Twenty-Year Perspective,” College & Research Libraries 54 (March 1993): 163-172. 5. Betsy Park and Robert Riggs, “Tenure and Promotion: A Study of Practices by Institutional Type,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 19 (May 1993): 76. 6. In addition to more traditional types of support for library faculty such as travel funding and release time for scholarly activities, a kind of support that is receiving increased attention is that of acculturation, including “mentoring,” see W. Bede Mitchell and Bruce Morton, “On Becoming Faculty Librarians: Acculturation Problems and Remedies,” College & Research Libraries 53 (September 1992): 379-392; Joanne Colley and Connie Capers Thorson, “Mentoring along the Tenure Track,” College & Research Libraries News 5 1 (April 1990): 297-300. 7. A good place to start in achieving this understanding is Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990). In addition to the background Boyer provides for the status quo, his discussions of four types of scholarship: discovery, integration, application, and service have special relevance for librarianship (pp. 16-23). 8. University of Colorado Faculty Handbook (Boulder: University of Colorado, 1988), p. III- 16. The University Faculty Handbook contains an explicit statement that for librarians, the “practice of librarianship” is the equivalent of

May 1994 75

“teaching” for reappointment, tenure, and promotion purposes. 9. Ibid., p. 111-15. “Tenure may be awarded only to faculty members with demonstrated meritorious performance in each of the three areas of [practice of the profession], research or creative work, and service, and demonstrated excellence in either [practice of the profession], or research or creative work.” 10. Although the substance of tenure criteria was largely unchanged, a major effort was made to remove language that was regarded as apologetic and defensive, to cite disciplinary norms where necessary, and to use terminology as similar to teaching faculty terminology as possible. 11. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered, p. 22. This is the “scholarship of service,” as opposed to “citizenship” activities. 12. This is the median reported for 1991- 1992. See ARL Statistics 1991-92 (Washington, DC: ARL, 1993), p. 34. 13. At UCB, 25 of the 44 full-time regular faculty (56.8%) carry formal supervisory or managerial responsibility over faculty or staff. 14. Lowry, “The Status of Faculty Status for Academic Librarians,” p. 168. 15. ALA Handbook of Organization, 1992. 1993 (Chicago: American Library Association, 1992) p. 147. ALA policies 54.2 and 54.2.1 and “Education for Professional Academic Librarianship,” College & Research Libraries News 53 (October 1992): 590-591.

16. Many colleges and universities solicit student opinion of teachers’ abilities through questionnaires. The UCB version is called the Faculty Course Questionnaire (FCQ). Data are collected on a wide variety of teaching-related matters, such as knowledge of the topic, ability to communicate, fairness, sensitivity to diversity issues, and availability. Results of FCQs are distributed to the teachers themselves, their Deans, students, and the press. Drawbacks of such an approach to evaluation are well recognized: Response is voluntary, so responders are self-selected; the larger the class, the lower the teacher’s ratings; the harder the grader, the lower the rating; etc. In addition, students may know their own preferences for course presentation and content, but they are not necessarily expert in what is needed in a particular course. Students also see only a small part of an individual’s total teaching effort, and have no way to judge improvement.

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76 The Journal of Academic Librarianship