A Typology and Discourse Analysis of the Status and Appointments of Librarians at Land Grant Universities
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Public Access Theses and Dissertations from Education and Human Sciences, College of the College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) 8-21-2007 A Typology and Discourse Analysis of the Status and Appointments of Librarians at Land Grant Universities Mary K. Bolin University of Nebraska--Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cehsdiss Part of the Education Commons Bolin, Mary K., "A Typology and Discourse Analysis of the Status and Appointments of Librarians at Land Grant Universities" (2007). Public Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of Education and Human Sciences. 19. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cehsdiss/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Education and Human Sciences, College of (CEHS) at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Public Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of Education and Human Sciences by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. A TYPOLOGY AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE STATUS AND APPOINTMENTS OF LIBRARIANS AT LAND GRANT UNIVERSITIES By Mary K. Bolin A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: Educational Studies (Educational Leadership and Higher Education) Under the Supervision of Professor Brent D. Cejda Lincoln, Nebraska August 2007 A TYPOLOGY AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE STATUS AND APPOINTMENTS OF LIBRARIANS AT LAND GRANT UNIVERSITIES Mary K. Bolin University of Nebraska, 2007 Adviser: Brent D. Cejda This study examined the status of librarians at land grant universities in each state (n=50). University websites were the source of data on librarians’ employee group (faculty/staff), administrator title, rank system, tenure eligibility, and faculty senate representation. The data were analyzed to find frequencies and cross tabulations. The findings indicate four status types in the population: Professorial (n=21); Other ranks with tenure (n=14); Other ranks without tenure (n=5); Academic or professional staff (n=10). Eighty percent of the institutions in the population have librarians who are faculty (n=40), and 85% of those (n=34) are on tenure-track. The second part of the study analyzed the discourse of appointment documents, which contain criteria for appointment, promotion, and tenure of librarians. The documents were analyzed using the concepts Field (ideational content, what the text is about), Tenor (the participants and their relationships), and Mode (cohesion, patterning, and organization of texts) (Halliday 1978, 1985a, 1985b). The results of that analysis were used to determine the documents’ genre (text type) (Swales 1990, 2004) and register (language variety, whose variables are Field, Tenor, and Mode) (Halliday 1978). The findings indicate that the texts are an identifiable genre, “university appointment document.” Register characteristics include frequent expressions of obligation and certainty, passive constructions, few pronouns, and the “overwording” that is common in official discourse. The vocabulary is a mixture of the language of librarianship, higher education, and human resources (HR). Recommendations include further research to extend the typology to other populations; exploration of models of academic staff status; examining what status is actually best for librarians in fulfilling the university mission; further discourse analysis to discover how the appointment documents reflect status types; and analysis of particular register characteristics. Recommendations for librarians include strengthening the status they have achieved by creating an environment that is conducive to research and reducing the emphasis on “job performance.” Keywords: academic librarians; university libraries; faculty status, land grant universities; Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL); genre; register (linguistics) Copyright 2007 Mary K. Bolin Acknowledgements My very sincere thanks go to my advisor and all the members of my committee. Brent Cejda has made the process very easy, and his comments and suggestions have done a great deal to improve this dissertation and make it clear and coherent. I appreciate the willingness of Miles Bryant, Sheldon Stick, and Nancy Busch to serve on the committee. Their ideas, questions, and suggestions have been extremely valuable and helpful. The constructive and collegial atmosphere of this program is exemplified by the dissertation process. Special thanks to Dr. Felix Chu, of Western Illinois University, who did member- checking on the typology data. I would like to express my appreciation and admiration for all the faculty members whose courses were a part of this PhD program. That begins with the Department of English at the University of Idaho. The MA coursework, thesis, and further work in linguistics that I completed at Idaho are a foundation for this dissertation and have shaped its direction and outcome. Courses in typology and universals, historical linguistics, language variation, semantic analysis, and contrastive analysis that were taught by Doug Adams, as well as his direction of my MA thesis, have had a continuing influence on my scholarly interests and have informed this dissertation in a number of important ways. Likewise, courses in English grammar and syntax that were taught by Kurt Queller introduced me to Systemic-Functional Linguistics and linguists such as Halliday, and have also been very important in writing this dissertation. Hao Sun, now a faculty member at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, taught courses in discourse analysis and in sociolinguistics that were very important and influential for me. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to study with such outstanding scholars who are also such gifted teachers. While I was still at Idaho, I began to take courses toward a PhD in Education. The first course I took was Foundations of Workforce and Human Resource Education. The course was an exhilarating experience that was the beginning of the process of integrating the study of librarianship, linguistics, and higher education. I was fortunate once again to learn from an outstanding scholar and teacher, Jim Gregson. That initial HRD course, and subsequent discussions with Jim, have had a lasting influence and have informed the approach taken in this dissertation. In 2004, my family and I had the unexpected opportunity to move from Idaho back to my home state of Nebraska and my alma mater, UNL. It was a wonderful opportunity, and one of the many reasons was that I was able to complete my PhD studies in the UNL Department of Educational Administration, in the Educational Leadership and Higher Education program. In this excellent program, I was able to learn about a spectrum of issues and topics that allowed me to further integrate my areas of interest. My sincere thanks and appreciation go to the faculty in the program, who are not only excellent scholars and teachers, but are on the forefront of the use of educational technology, and who have created an online delivery environment that is rigorous and which goes beyond the classroom in demanding engagement from every student. The courses taught by committee members Sheldon Stick and Miles Bryant were demanding and thought-provoking, and I learned a great deal from them, as I did from courses taught by Rich Torraco, Rich Hoover, Ron Joekel, Alan Seagren, and Barbara LaCost. My colleagues in the UNL University Libraries are an outstanding example of the scholarly and collegial environment of library faculty. They exemplify the Scholar-Practitioner model and the values of the Learning Organization, and their integration of librarianship, research, and service embodies the “programmatic responsibility” of academic librarians that is described by Allen Veaner. Special thanks to Dean Joan Giesecke and Associate Deans Beth McNeil and Nancy Busch, who have helped create the supportive and scholarly environment in the Libraries, and who have been very encouraging and helpful to me as I have worked on this degree and dissertation. i Table of Contents Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................................v Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................1 Problem Statement ......................................................................................................................1 Purpose of the Study ...................................................................................................................4 Conceptual Framework ...............................................................................................................9 Theoretical Lenses for Discourse Analysis...............................................................................10 Research Questions ...................................................................................................................14 Definition of Terms...................................................................................................................14 Significance and Limitations.....................................................................................................16 Chapter 2: Literature