Publish Or Perish: a Dilemma for Academic Librarians?
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232 College & Research Libraries May 1999 Publish or Perish: A Dilemma For Academic Librarians? W. Bede Mitchell and Mary Reichel This study examines the influence of scholarly requirements on librar ians’ ability to earn tenure or continuous employment. After a literature review, the authors present the results of a survey of research, doctoral, and master’s-level institutions. Of the 690 responding institutions, 54.3 percent employ tenure-track librarians. Of these, more than 60 percent require some scholarship and 34.6 percent encourage it. At these 374 institutions, 92.2 percent of librarians who underwent tenure review dur ing a three-year period were approved. The authors summarize survey information on librarians not granted tenure as well as those believed by directors to have resigned to avoid tenure review. persistent concern in the fac- culties inherent in meeting tenure-track ulty status movement has been requirements. More specifically, many whether tenure-track librar- writers have expected that, for better or ians will be able to establish worse, librarians with faculty status typi- records of research and publication that cally will be required to meet the tradi- meet their institutions’ overall promotion tional faculty criterion of research and and tenure criteria. Many contend that re- publication.1 Support for this belief was quiring academic librarians to divert their strengthened when a committee of rep- energies from their daily duties to meet resentatives from the Association of Col- research expectations is inappropriate. lege and Research Libraries, the Associa- This article does not examine this debate tion of American Colleges, and the Ameri- except as it affects consideration of the fol- can Association of University Professors lowing question: Is there evidence that li- drafted the “Joint Statement on Faculty brarians with faculty status will be less Status for College and University Librar- likely to meet tenure requirements than ians.”2 This statement stipulated that li- other faculty? brarians should be held to the same evalu- One of the most common objections to ation standards as other faculty. faculty status for librarians has been that The idea that librarians might be re- the benefits are outweighed by the diffi- quired to meet faculty research require- W. Bede Mitchell and Mary Reichel are, respectively, Associate University and University Librarian in Belk Library; and Professors at Appalachian State University; e-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]. 232 Publish or Perish? 233 ments has been viewed positively by nonlibrary faculty members have much some and with alarm by others. Accord- more time to pursue research because li- ing to Dale S. Montanelli and Patricia F. brarians are usually tied to forty-hour Stenstrom, research offers many benefits workweeks and full-year contracts.7 Thus, to librarians and the institutions they the difference in the amount of available serve.3 For example, the complexities of research time would make it difficult for managing efficient and effective library librarians to match the quantitative pro- service are likely to be better addressed duction standards of other faculty, to say through discoveries made from system- nothing of the qualitative standards. Un- atic, well-designed research. Research also fortunately, as many writers have pointed promotes advancement and recognition out, academic-year contracts for librarians for librarians. In addition, librarians who are usually out of the question because the regularly do research are thought to be work of a library continues during the more receptive to change and have more summer months.8 effective relationships with other faculty To compensate for the problem that than do those who do not do research. full-year contracts and rigid weekly schedules might create for librarians at- The idea that librarians might be tempting to do research, a number of in- required to meet faculty research stitutions have allowed released time requirements has been viewed (some prefer the term “reassigned time”) positively by some and with alarm for graduate classwork and research by others. projects, and some have appointed staff development committees that review and On the other hand, surveys and opin- advise on research projects.9 At least one ion pieces published in library journals university has implemented a system for have demonstrated that many inside and providing scheduling equity with outside the library profession believe that nonlibrarian faculty based on Credit Unit applying faculty performance standards Equivalencies.10 However, Shelley Arlen to librarians (especially a research require- and Nedria Santizo found that arrange- ment) is inappropriate and dangerous.4 ments to create reassigned time for re- One reason given for thinking that librar- search were the exception rather than the ians should not be judged by faculty per- rule.11 formance criteria is that librarians tend to Even if research reassignments for librar- lack the education and the opportunities ians were common, many would still con- to perform research that would meet stan- tend that librarians do not have the train- dards acceptable to institutional tenure ing necessary to meet research require- committees. The result would be a “forced ments for promotion and tenure. If this is mobility” among librarians, which in turn true, one would expect there to be empiri- would have a devastating effect on the cal evidence that large numbers of librar- morale of the academic library profes- ians are failing to meet promotion and ten- sion.5 Therefore, many librarians would ure requirements. A number of previous find it unreasonable to be expected to per- studies address this issue, at least in part. form day-to-day duties while also doing research and meeting service expecta- Previous Studies tions.6 A number of researchers have examined If it is true that librarians tend to be un- librarians’ publication productivity. Virgil able to perform high-level research, why F. Massman offered a comparison of pub- should this be so? The two reasons most lishing productivity by librarians and in- commonly offered are that (1) most structional faculty after surveying 224 li- graduate library degree programs do not brarians and 205 faculty members in three teach students to perform the kind of re- midwestern states.12 The faculty members search tenure committees expect and (2) proved to be more productive, publish- 234 College & Research Libraries May 1999 ing an average of 1.7 articles per person attempted to obtain a more direct com- over a two-year period as compared to the parison between the tenure approval .7 articles per librarian over the same rates of library and nonlibrary faculty by two-year period. Because Massman did conducting a survey of library directors not address the issue of whether the li- and academic affairs administrators at brarians’ publication records had harmed universities classified by the Carnegie their tenure applications, the data are only Foundation for the Advancement of suggestive of a potential problem. Simi- Teaching as Doctorate-Granting Institu- larly, Paula De Simone Watson looked at tions I and II.19 The survey identified the publication activity of librarians at ten thirty-five institutions where librarians large research universities and concluded, had tenure-track status, and the responses as did Massman, that librarians tended from those institutions were sorted ac- not to publish as much as instructional fac- cording to the independent variables to ulty.13 Of particular concern to Watson be studied for their possible association was the low productivity of librarians with with tenure approval rates of academic five or fewer years of professional experi- librarians. The independent variables ence. Because probationary periods for were academic-year contract versus tenure are commonly five to seven years, full-year contract, and whether librarians the low productivity among newcomers had to show evidence of research and to the field suggested that they might publication to earn tenure. The academic have difficulty gaining tenure, resulting administrators at the institutions where in the “forced mobility” feared by some. librarians had tenure-track status were The same concern was echoed by a ma- asked how many instructional faculty and jority of academic administrators sur- librarians were formally reviewed for ten- veyed by Thomas G. English, whereas ure and how many were granted tenure John Campbell provided personal insight in the three years prior to the survey into his own termination due to lack of (1985–1986, 1986–1987, 1987–1988). publications.14–15 Seventeen universities reported having On the other hand, four studies seem librarians reviewed for tenure during the to indicate that low publishing productiv- three years in question. An analysis of the ity has not been a substantial barrier to tenure data tested the theory that librar- librarians seeking tenure. First, Karen F. ians were more likely to be turned down Smith and Gemma DeVinney found that for tenure than were instructional faculty, of 526 tenured librarians at thirty-three especially where librarians have full-year major research libraries, 248 (47.1%) had contracts and must meet publication re- not published anything as of the date they quirements. Unfortunately, no tenure data had been granted tenure.16 Second, al- were available from the few universities though the W. Bede Mitchell and L. where the librarians held academic-year Stanislava Swieszkowski survey of Center contracts. However, the rest of the data did for Research Libraries member institutions prove to be very revealing and may have discovered that the most frequent cause of made the lack of data concerning librarians librarians being rejected for tenure was re- on academic-year contracts moot. ported to be an inadequate publication Table 1 shows that at the responding record, it also was the case that 81.5 per- universities, the librarians achieved ten- cent of the 329 librarians who applied for ure at almost identical rates as the instruc- tenure between 1980 and 1984 were suc- tional faculty.