College and Research Libraries


F A Y M. B L A K E 

Tenure for the Academic Librarian 
This paper outlines the purposes and history of academic freedom 
and tenure for teaching faculty and observes their value to the aca-
demic enterprise. It points further to the similar and growing need 
for such freedom and tenure for college and university librarians 
and cites examples of the ways in which their absence can affect 
institutions in deleterious ways. The paper envisions the increasing 
extension of tenure to academic librarians. 

T H E R E IS substantial evidence of a 
strong trend among academic librarians 
in the United States to gain full aca-
demic status within their institutions. 
The recent reclassification of librarians 
at the City University of New York, 
the organization of a Librarians' Associ-
ation at the University of California, the 
endorsement of a statement on librar-
ians' status by the Academic Senate of 
the California state colleges, and the 
sudden increase in the number of arti-
cles on the status of librarians in several 
of the library journals are all indications 
of a movement in this direction by many 
academic librarians. 

Along with the demands for equal 
salaries, for sabbatical leaves, and for a 
voice in the academic structure of the 
colleges and universities they serve, li-
brarians have also initiated discussions 
on their need for tenure if they are to 
perform as equals in the academic com-
munity. Historically, the development of 
the principle of tenure for faculty mem-
bers dates back to the early years of 
this century when educators began to 
recognize that the dual role of institutions 
of higher learning could not be realized 
without guarantees of academic freedom 
for officers of instruction. That dual 
function has been described succinctly 
by Thomas I. Emerson, Professor of Law 
at Yale University, and David Ha-

Mrs. Blake is Gifts and Exchange Librar-
ian at UCLA. 

5 0 2 / 

ber, Professor of Law at Rutgers Uni-
versity, in their article "Academic Free-
dom of the Faculty Member as Citizen": 

The university is generally conceived as 
performing two main functions in a demo-
cratic society. One is the transmission of 
existing knowledge and values to the on-
coming generation. The other is the critical 
re-examination of such knowledge and 
values, with a view to facilitating orderly 
change in the society.1 

To ensure the ability of the faculty 
member to carry out his obligations, the 
principle of academic freedom has grad-
ually come to be widely accepted within 
the academic community and outside it. 
The principle of tenure is inseparable 
from that of academic freedom. Without 
employment security the freedom to seek 
out and proclaim the truth is merely 
a pretty sentiment. Justice Felix Frank-
furter, in his decision in the case of Mc-
Nabb vs. United States in 1943, stated 
that "the history of liberty has largely 
been the history of observance of pro-
cedural safeguards."2 

Probably the most authoritative state-
ment in this field is the Statement of 
Principles on Academic Freedom and 
Tenure adopted by the American As-

1 Thomas I. Emerson and David Haber, "Academic 
Freedom of the Faculty Member as Citizen," Law and 
Contemporary Problems, X X V I I I (Summer 1 9 6 3 ) , 5 4 7 . 

2 McNabb vs. United States, 3 1 8 U.S. 3 3 2 , 3 4 7 
( 1 9 4 3 ) , quoted in William P. Murphy, "Academic 
Freedom—an Emerging Constitutional Right," Law 
and Contemporary Problems, X X V I I I (Summer 1 9 6 3 ) , 
4 6 9 - 7 0 . 



Tenure for the Academic Librarian / 503 

sociation of University Professors in 1940. 
It states: 
Institutions of higher education are con-
ducted for the common good and not to 
further the interest of either the individual 
teacher or the institution as a whole. The 
common good depends upon the free search 
for truth and its free exposition. 

Academic freedom is essential to these 
purposes and applies to both teaching and 
research. Freedom in research is fundamen-
tal to the advancement of truth. Academic 
freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamen-
tal for the protection of the rights of the 
teacher in teaching and of the student to 
freedom in learning. It carries with it duties 
correlative with rights. 

Tenure is a means to certain ends; spe-
cifically: (1) freedom of teaching and re-
search and of extramural activities and 
(2) a sufficient degree of economic security 
to make the profession attractive to men 
and women of ability. Freedom and eco-
nomic security, hence, tenure, are indispen-
sable to the success of an institution in ful-
filling its obligations to its students and to 
society.3 

Since 1940 the Statement of Principles 
has been officially endorsed by some 
fifty prestigious scholarly associations, in-
cluding the American Library Associ-
ation, which endorsed the statement, 
adapted for librarians, in 1946. The en-
dorsement has not yet been translated 
into practice for academic librarians, 
however. More than twenty years after 
the American Library Association en-
dorsement, the academic librarian with 
tenure remains the exception rather than 
the rule. 

How applicable are the protections 
implicit in tenure for the academic li-
brarian? By most academic institutions 
the librarian is regarded as a member 
of the academic community—either for-
mally in the personnel classification of 
the institution or informally by such to-
kens as admission to membership in 
faculty clubs, participation in faculty 
committees, or access to other faculty 

3 " 1 9 4 0 Statement of Principles on Academic F r e e -
dom and T e n u r e , " AAUP Bulletin, L I I I ( J u n e 1 9 6 7 ) , 
246. 

perquisites. The college or university li-
brarian plays two kinds of roles in the 
academic community. He functions in an 
ancillary capacity when he helps to de-
velop the library as a functioning tool 
for the curriculum of his institution, in 
a primary capacity when he helps to 
determine the policies within the library 
itself and the policies governing the 
whole institution within which the li-
brary functions. And always, along with 
all other members of the total academic 
community, he is a citizen of the world 
outside the academic institution. Uncer-
tainties about his status and employment 
security cannot help but affect his stance 
within and without the library since no 
one expects the librarian to be more 
courageous than his academic col-
leagues. Sometimes, surprisingly, even 
without protection, he is. 

Because the academic librarian is rare-
ly exposed to public censure in the same 
way as the public librarian for the kinds 
of materials he acquires—or fails to ac-
quire—there is an unfortunate tendency 
to blur over the situations in which the 
librarian is censored or censors himself 
to avoid a possible confrontation. Cases 
in point could include: a copy of an 
order form signed by a librarian for an 
avant-garde journal with a somewhat 
earthy title was widely circulated in a 
conservative community as part of an 
effort to discredit the librarian. How 
many librarians failed to order the 
journal at all regardless of its possible 
value to a research collection? Another 
instance: a university librarian responsi-
ble for the extensive exchange program 
of her library was roundly belabored by 
telephone and in letters by a publisher 
for sending materials to China, Cuba, 
and the Soviet Union. How many li-
brarians avoid such exchange arrange-
ments altogether although the materials 
obtained may be invaluable additions to 
the collection? Or how many college 
and university librarians hesitate to so-
licit or buy publications from organiza-
tions of the far right and far left be-



504 / College <Lr Research Libraries • November 1968 

cause they are not sure of their posi-
tions if trouble should arise? 

Within his professional associations the 
insecure position of the librarian can si-
lently but quite effectively limit his 
willingness or ability to contribute new 
ideas, to espouse possibly unpopular po-
sitions, or to press effectively for the 
constant re-evaluation in which any re-
sponsible academic must participate. 
Often he finds himself faced with main-
taining a position publicly either direct-
ly under the gaze of his own adminis-
trator or, at times, directly in opposition 
to that administrator. How many times 
has he remained silent to the detriment 
of the college or university library and 
ultimately of the college or university 
itself? 

Academic librarians have not notably 
participated vigorously and publicly in 
the broad citizen movements of our time 
in contrast to the often very effective 
efforts by their colleagues on the facul-
ty. The opposition to the repressive 
measures of the late unlamented Mc-
Carthy era, the contributions, such as 
they are, by intellectuals to the civil 
rights movement of the last decade, the 
responsible scholarship around the prob-
lems of peace have not come for the 
most part from academic librarians. The 
academic librarian's freedom to investi-
gate and publicize positions on matters 
of public interest is seriously eroded by 
his unprotected employment status. 
Henry Wriston has written: 

T h e source of t e n u r e is its relationship to 
a c a d e m i c f r e e d o m . T e n u r e is r e g a r d e d as a 
major g u a r a n t e e of f r e e d o m b e c a u s e it puts 
the instructor b e y o n d t h e easy r e a c h of ad-

ministrative t y r a n n y or t h e quixotism of 
g o v e r n i n g b o a r d s . . . . I f f r e e d o m is t h e 
m a r k of s t r e n g t h , tenure is its symbol. F o r 
t e n u r e is t h e g u a r a n t e e t o the individual 
t h a t his f r e e d o m is real a n d not a s h a d o w . 4 

One of the problems in the extension 
of tenure to the academic librarian lies 
in the reluctance of both faculty mem-
bers and librarians themselves to accept 
the need for the responsibilities and the 
rights implicit in the concept of tenure. 
Faculty members tend to guard tenure 
jealously—as they should—but they often 
fail to recognize the fact that academic 
librarians have become their colleagues 
in the world of scholarship. Today's 
academic librarian deals with a complex 
and demanding book world. He finds 
his way—and the student's and profes-
sor's—through a publication explosion 
which has quintupled in less than a dec-
ade; he is adapting a whole new area of 
technological advances to library uses; 
he has specialized in depth by both ad-
vanced education and close collabora-
tion with the faculty in innumerable sub-
ject specializations; he handles publi-
cations in several languages. Not all aca-
demic librarians value themselves sound-
ly. Some, drilled in an earlier school, 
see themselves only as subservient to 
faculty and administrators. Some, out of 
timidity, fear all change. But there are 
also a sizable and increasing number who 
recognize the fact that tenure for them-
selves and for future academic librarians 
will improve the educational process and 
who are determined to explore the means 
for attaining it. •• 

4 Henry M. Wriston, " A c a d e m i c T e n u r e , " The 
American Scholar, I X ( S u m m e r 1 9 4 0 ) , 3 3 9 , 3 4 4 .