faculty status for librarians

Thanks to Will Owen and Bill Drew for their posts to the LITA-L Listserv which prompted my post.

Will Owen wrote:
Bill,

I'd like to suggest that a love of scholarship and learning, or even working as a librarian with scholars, just isn't the same as doing scholarly research yourself. Maybe even go further and suggest that most library research (or at least publishing) is quite different from academic scholarship. It's a different process, different, tools, different patterns of thought and use of resources. So a librarian with
some hands-on, first-person experience with the academic research culture /might/ be preferable in certain positions. Certainly true for the collection development position Dartmouth was advertising. And not a bad idea for the IT position, given that we are now finding ourselves in the business of supporting digitized library collections, and perhaps even participating in the creation of them. Good digital collections may add intellectual value to the materials digitized in them, and
someone with an appreciation for the scholarly apparatus again /might/
be a preferable candidate. This is not to imply as you said in an earlier post, that "This clearly shows that our own profession does not put any significant value on the MLS. " Our faculty put significant faith in our librarians' ability to manage information resources, to provide access to scholarly material, to design complex systems that aid them in their research. But they sure as heck don't think of us as their colleagues in the research process, or as scholarly researchers, and frankly, I'm inclined to agree with them. That's one of the reasons that I think that "faculty status" for librarians is a load of bollocks, but that's a whole different flame.

Will Owen
Chapel Hill

> --On February 20, 2006 11:43:10 AM -0500 "Drew, Bill"
drewwe@MORRISVILLE.EDU> wrote:

So unless one has a second masters or a doctorate one does not have a love for learning or scholarship? How about a lack of time, money or support?

&Wilfred (Bill) Drew
AOL Instant Messenger:BillDrew4
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin)

Preach it Brother Will!
I say this as a librarian at a university where librarians have faculty status and have publishing requirements. A handful of people (I can count the number on one hand) have achieved tenure in the past 14 years, whereas there have been 5 or more times as many bright dynamic young librarians who have either left before they had to deal with research and writing requirements, or been discuouraged from even applying because of the requirements. It is tragic how many good people we have lost because there is no incentive to fulfill tenure requirements. And another thing? How is it that a major university in a desireable metropolitan area cannot fill mid-level positions for lack of qualified candidates? I say the faculty requirements have a great deal to do with
it. Especially since other institutions in the same area whom offer similar salaries and benefits have applicants breaking down their doors for a manager of electronic resources position.

Steve Brantley