College and Research Libraries RALEIGH DE PRIEST That Inordinate Passion For Status The author analyzes critically the work of several writers who believe, in varying degrees, that librarians exhibit an excessive, even droll, con- cern for faculty status. Disagreeing with these writers, the author dis- cusses economic and professional reasons why the desire for status is legitimate and serious, giving concrete examples of the need for a freedom the librarian must have that only faculty status can furnish. Conclusion: The concern for status is not frivolous. WHILE THE LAST DECADE has witnessed considerable articulation among li- brarians in favor of faculty status, there have been opponents as well: Ken- neth Kister, who describes what he sees as librarians' attempt to imitate the fac- ulty and their blurring of the distinc- tion between librarianship and teaching at a time when they ought to be earning their status .as librarians only; 1 Daniel Gore, who rates the idea as farcical; 2 Richard Thompson, who believes li- brarians need faculty status no more than do physicians, nurses, accountants, or policemen; 3 Lawrence Clark Powell, who evidently thinks the way to status is simply hewing away at the job in hand and keeping one's nose clean; 4 and Robert Blackburn, who marvels .at what he calls the librarian's "inordinate pas- sion for status."5 In this paper I should like first to comment on the positions taken by these writers and then to make some sugges- tions as to why I believe the librarian's concern for status is "inordinate" -if indeed such is the case. Mr. DePriest is humanities librarian at Mansfield State College, Pennslyvania. 150 I As I understand them, each of these writers either questions faculty status for librarians altogether or the method librarians use to accomplish it, but each in so doing raises one or more serious questions about his own position. As I understand Kister, teachers are educators; librarians .are not. Teachers deal with substance and are concerned with the why of a given matter; librari- ans deal with procedures, the how of the matter. Teachers make value judg- ments about subjects, but librarians are relatively neutral toward subjects. How- ever, if librarians claim they are educa- tors they thereby may have some lever- age in attaining faculty status, and this is why they attempt to ape the faculty. The spirit of Kister's piece suggests that only those who are habitual class- room teachers are involved intellectually with learners. He does admit that the staff members give "casual" instruction to readers and sometimes are invited to lecture in classes. But he never specifi- cally recognizes those whose everyday activities involve them in instructing, guiding, advising, encouraging, demon- strating, and interpreting in bibliogra- phy, grammar, logic, documentation, vo- cabulary, statistics, or simply the Ian- ~j .. j 1-j j J ·•· I I -) guage of the printed page in face-to- face relations with all seekers, even the faculty. Kister all but ignores the ref- erence librarian, readers' advisor, and subject specialist. In fact, however, if the librarian in this vortex of academic inquiry is merely concerned with proce- dures and the how, then he quite clear- ly does not belong there; nor does he belong there if he does not qualify, or is not working on his qualification, in a subject other than library science on the graduate level, since his business is not administrative but instructive. Not only is he involved in value judg- ments in advising readers and research- ers, but in his selection of general and special reference tools, as well as books of his specialty in the general collection, his quest necessarily ranges far. Thus Kister, who charges some with blurring the distinctions between teach- ing and librarianship, evidently does some blurring of his own. In his ardor to show how teachers and librarians are unlike, he fails to account for the dis- tinction between those positions that are administrative and those that are in- structive. One would also believe from Kister's piece that a library is a mysterious en- tity interpreted by skilled information specialists, who, however, are neither concerned with nor cognizant of the aims, purposes, and procedures of the very clientele they serve. Kister's stand in granting to the librarian a service function but prohibiting for him any kind of role as educator apparently in- dicates a radical disregard of the very nature of the academic library. He ap- pears not to recognize that here we are not dealing with any old library, but a significant unit of an institution of higher learning whose sole purpose is the support of that institution, whose every important move is to be made not simply for the sake of general service, no matter how clever or magical, but in terms of a college service-a specific Passion for Status I 151 kind of college with a specific kind of patron, specific curricula, course offer- ings, aims, methods of teaching, level of teaching, ratio of graduates to un- dergraduates, and a specific overall phi- losophy of education. If we can agree that the library is, or ought to be, at the vortex of academic inquiry-a learning tool for the student who does his most serious work investi- gating a specialized field-then how are we to furnish this kind of service unless we are concerned with and cognizant of the subjects that are studied, the educa- tional policies being observed, the meth- ods underlying our teaching, the plans of courses being taught, the general ac- ademic planning being done, and the very aims of higher education itself? In other words, the library generally, and the readers' service staff particularly, ap- pear to have no choice but to be closely involved with the educational process as special educators. Yet this seems to be the very role that both Powell and Kis- ter deny them. Again, Kister quoting Powell says "Unless librarians do what faculty do- teach, research, publish-they will not achieve true faculty status. If they do, then they are faculty, not librarians."6 While Kister evidently thinks there is something unusual about librarians teaching, researching, and writing, cer- tain evidence seems to point in a some- what different direction. Anita Schiller's study of 2,265 academic librarians indi- cated that 15 percent of her respondents taught courses for credit, and Perry D. Morrison showed in his study of 707 li- brarians, that one-third of the respon- dents had previous teaching experience. 7 None of this of course includes the noncredit informal teaching- wit_h which most reference librarians are involved, nor the day-to-day individual instruction in reference and research which they do regularly. Publishing? One only has to scan the literature of the field to see that con- 152 I College & Research Libraries • March 1973 siderable writing-much of it impor- tant-is being done, or to check the in- dex, Library Literature, to see the great number of periodicals devoted to li- brarianship alone, or to check Morri- son's study which shows that over 70 percent of respondents on the average among several categories had at least published something.8 Research? Both catalogers and refer- ence librarians do some research as a regular task, either in order to identify and verify the description of various elements of the materials being proc- essed, or to satisfy the degree of evi- dence needed in research questions. If we examine the character of articles and reports being published by librari- ans continually, we would see also that many of them could not have been pub- lished without extensive research. Thus it is not strange to say that many librarians teach, research, write, and publish, yet they are not teachers in the strict sense. What are we to call them? The truth is there are laggards in both occupations. Some librarians write, research, and publish; some do not. The same is true for teachers. There are poor librarians and able ones, poor teachers and able ones; but quite a few scholars emerge from both occupations. Why hold up teaching alone as a sacred standard of scholarship, especially when some of our most famous professors do little teaching? The universities honor them by actually relieving them of their teaching tasks so that they can do re- search, write, and publish. One trouble with Kister's and Powell's position seems to be its rigidity; the formula is much too pat. Richard C. Thompson asks in effect that, since physicians, accountants, ar- chitects, and policemen, connected with the university, are not designated as fac- ulty, then why should librarians be des- ignated as such?9 I can only say that while these worthy occupations could not be dispensed with by the university, they represent identities all their own and their functions are not even re- motely analogous to library work. How is the accountant, the architect, the phy- sician, or the policeman involved direct- ly and steadily in the development of the minds of students, a function as- sumed generally to be the raison d' etre of the institution, itself? If one is asked how librarians are so involved, then one can say simply and without exaggeration that they acquire and organize the very record of civilization and guide students and faculty in its use. A problem in Thompson's position apparently is that he is trying to com- pare occupations that are incommen- surable. To keep the business office abreast of its annual expenditures, deb- its, and credits, is one thing; to guide a student in English to the discovery that Ralph Waldo Emerson made his most significant contribution to world litera- ture by way of profound Oriental thought is quite another. Mr. Powell tells us that librarianship is "an opportunity to serve people, learn from them, and love them. And perhaps gain status thereby."10 The general spir- it of his piece indicates that devotion to one's task and relentless execution of work on the job is the way to win status. Precisely. Men have done the same for centuries in all endeavors. Let us hope that that opportunity will never die, be- cause it is a last vestige of desirable in- dividualism we have. What we have to do now is to protect that individuality and give it identity. Virtue may have its own reward, but it alone does not get bread for the belly nor provide a condi- tion of employment in which one can serve himself and his institution best. The message of that virtue must be said loud and clear enough that administra- tions will be caused to recognize it. The one way it can be protected is by official academic recognition from administra- tion, and the means of carrying the mes- sage in this brash world is through the f . I ; ~ .. • collective voice of teaching faculty and librarians together. They need each other. Since Powell however would have the librarian pay his price for status only by individual effort-each one pulling himself up by his own bootstraps-then how should the teachers earn theirs? If he would have the teachers possess their status by fiat but the librarians theirs by sheer individual struggle, perhaps with a measure of boot-licking, then a seri- ous question of academic principle and justice arises. Daniel Gore, now rather well-known for his sport of baiting librarians, may have been pecking at the wrong people. His ''Mismanagement of College Li- braries" and ''A Modest Proposal" are rather similar in that they both deal with the unprofessional aspect of li- brary work, the first scoring the librari- an for what Gore thinks is frittering away time in menial tasks while pre- tending his work is important academ- ically; the second proposing that the college do away with most librarians, hire clerks, and retain a skeleton-work of professionals to direct the clerks. 11 In short, what Gore has been concerned with is that a considerable part of li- brary work is clerical and the ratio of professionals to clericals is too high. His first assumption is true; the second too, but it seems to be improving. The record indicates however that li- brarians themselves have long been striv- ing to get a balance between clericals, semiprofessionals, and professionals. Some problems of personnel in universi- ties and colleges, for instance, may be beyond any remedy available to the lo- cal administration, and many times complements of personnel offered may be too few or imbalanced. The individual staff member, after spending some seventeen or eighteen years in preparation for his occupation, is not likely to allow idealistic notions of what is or is not professional stand Passion for Status I 153 between him and his employment; he is more likely to accept the situation with the hope that better times may lie ahead. So he performs a combination of professional and nonprofessional tasks, especially in public services, where the show must go on. In this context li- brarians are merely straw men set up by Mr. Gore, who fails to get at the real problem-that of top management in the matter of personnel. Gore, in his schoolboyish piece, "Fac- ulty Status for Librarians at Arbuth- not,'' continues to belabor the menial tasks done by librarians. 12 If we em- ployed a lawyer, physician, or account- ant yet gave him some subprofessional work to do, we could very well expect him nevertheless to demand a recogni- tion of all his time spent as profession- al time, it being up to us to furnish work appropriate to his level of prepa- ration. Why should librarians act differ- ently? Mr. Gore merely describes the symptoms; he never gets at the disease. Robert Blackburn is concerned with what he believes to be the inherent dif- ferences between teaching faculty and librarians, both professionally and psy- chologically; he sees a condition detri- mental to student use of learning ma- terials. In his thoughtful article he says that one of the characteristics of the li- brarian is "an inordinate passion for status. . . . Faculty rank seems to be a sought after goal, almost as an end in itsel£."13 There is some truth in what Black- burn says, but there are reasons for status other than its being an end in it- self. I suggest two basic reasons why I believe the concern for status has occu- pied the minds of librarians: ( 1 ) the need for a trade-union, bread-and-but- ter security, and ( 2) the need for full academic recognition in order to play a more effective role in the academic program. For the first I shall give some accounts of libraries in state-supported colleges 154 I College & Research Libraries • March 1973 in Pennsylvania. Here the personnel, ex- cept laborers, are divided into two groups: the academic group consisting of teaching staff, deans, librarians, and counselors on one side, and the civil- service group consisting generally of such personnel as those handling the business end of the institution-clerks, secretaries, bookkeepers, and business managers. Librarians in the public schools of Pennsylvania have for many years be- longed by public law in the category of teachers, and state college regulations mainly have followed the same pat- tern.14 At Mansfield State College, for example, the staff have not been aware that they were ever treated in any way different from the teaching staff. Staff enjoy tenure, take sabbaticals, serve on faculty councils, and have all the other advantages that faculty have. Their ranks range from that of instructor to associate professor and they are em- ployed on a nine-month basis, with op- tions for summer employment. How- ever, there can be cause for anxiety, for no matter how hard-won or desirable the condition of employment, it can prove not to be exactly safe from modi- fication. Recently the head librarian, along with counselors, was placed in the administrative category rather than the academic. This was not only an about- face in the traditional policy of status for the head librarian-often more likely to have faculty status than others on the staff-but it left the rest of the staff in an ambiguous position. There are other sources of concern, and librarians' reactions reflect it. Thus when a team of consultants made a year's study of state personnel in 1969, and recommended a separation of li- brarians and others from the teaching faculty, several papers from librarians of the state colleges and from Indiana University in Pennsylvania made their appearance, totally rejecting the pro- posal.15 In this they have been support- ed by the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties and help has been offered by AA UP, both of which have librarians in their membership. Further, since the entrance to profes- sional librarianship in Pennsylvania state-supported colleges has demanded a greater amount of preparation than the entrance to teaching in the same in- stitutions, librarians see any alternative to faculty identity impossible, especially since any alternative could mean civil service classification and removal from academic effectiveness.16 In short, affiliation with faculty, both in their work and in the faculty associa- tions, provides an umbrella of protec- tion in a very real and material sense for that comparatively tiny group of specially-prepared academic people in Pennsylvania. As they see it, remove that umbrella and anything can happen. The second factor in the concern for status involves identity and profession- alism, both of which are related to the librarian's educational background, his personal interest, his activity in the pro- fession, and the manner in which he views himself in the academic world. Morrison, studying 707 academic librar- ians, found a wide range of personal characteristics, but as .a group they were cultured and intelligent, with a high mean score of self assurance, from families of high social and educational status, but not necessarily economic, a lack of drive or anxiety over status more befitting the upper class than the middle class, a majority (59 percent) of them possessing more graduate credit than the first professional degree, about one-third having previous teaching ex- perience, over 70 percent having pub- lished, and much less likely to regret en- tering their occupation than others in other occupations.17 Anita Schiller's study of 2,265 aca- demic librarians showed that 85.5 per- cent had at least the first professional .> degree; that 25 percent, in addition to the first professional degree, held ad- vanced nonlibrary degrees as well. As noted before, about 15 percent of Schiller's subjects were teaching credit courses, and two-thirds belonged to na- tional, state, or regional associations. 18 Some data indicating how academic librarians see themselves in the academic community was recently given by Josey in his study of 101 academic librarians in the state of New York.l9 About 98 percent of these responded positively to the opening statement of the A CRL Standards, which says in effect that li- brarians should have all rights and bene- fits that teaching staff have, and 90 per- cent viewed themselves as faculty of their respective institutions. Thus there is some evidence that aca- demic librarians may believe-with con- siderable justification-that they have something worthwhile to offer. Believing in themselves, knowing that a solid aca- demic program cannot exist without them, they evidently feel that academic potential deserves academic recognition, if such potential is ever to realize its worth. However, this does not fully answer the question raised by Kister, Powell, and others, namely, why do librarians demand to be faculty the same as teach- ing staff, since relatively few of them spend a great proportion of their time in formal classroom teaching? I now wish to examine briefly the question of status concern as related to profession- alism. Carroll DeWeese has discussed a study that sought to distinguish between li- brary staff members of a low concern for status on the one hand and mem- bers of a high concern for status on the other among thirty-nine professionals in a large midwestern, land-grant univer- sity library.20 The librarian of high sta- tus aspiration tended to be more pro- fessionally oriented and more con- cerned with professionalization of li- Passion for Status I 155 brarianship; he desired more autonomy for his profession and greater recogni- tion for his work, and he more often mentioned work as a main satisfaction in life than did those of low status con- cern. His inability or unwillingness to leave his profession was linked with high status concern within that profes- sion. The librarian of high status concern was also more likely to see professional associations as important and he experi- enced more conflict with the faculty than those librarians of low status as- piration who reported relatively little difficulty. The last named characteristic appears especially significant, because it indicates a pattern which evidently links a felt need for status with the concom- itant conditions that cluster with or about it-professionalism, autonomy, authority, responsibility, and, as a re- lated issue, professional preparation. With professionalization the librarian becomes something of an <