College and Research Libraries Status of Academic Librarians in New York State Marjorie A. Benedict, Jacquelyn A. Gavryck, and Hanan C. Selvin A suroey of 188 head librarians in all types of college and university libraries in New York ·' found that all or most of the librarians in 90 percent of the responding libraries are said to have · faculty status. Public institutions and two-year colleges had the highest rates. The ACRL Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Librarians tend to define fac- ulty status in the responding libraries, but librarians have acquired more of the responsibilities of faculty status than the traditional rewards. acuity status for academic li- brarians is as controversial and ambiguous in 1982 as it has been for more than a century. In 1971 the Association of College and Re- search Libraries (ACRL) adopted its Stan- dards for Faculty Status for College and Uni- versity Librarians 1 (hereafter the ACRL Standards). Since then, these standards have become the most widely accepted criteria for defining faculty status for li- brarians. Some evidence of how closely the realities of librarians' status in libraries across the nation correspond to the ACRL Standards has been collected and pub- lished by researchers. 2 Although the find- ings from the various surveys are valu- able, they are sometimes contradictory. This is partially because of a lack of stan- dardization of survey methodology and analysis of data. What many of the sur- veys conducted since 1971 have in com- mon, and this one is not an exception, are questions on the criteria outlined in the ACRL Standards. SURVEY TECHNIQUES New York makes a particularly useful subject for a study of librarians' status be- cause it is a major state that has many in- stitutions of postsecondary education. Moreover, almost every conceivable type of institution can be found in New York. This study reflects that diversity. By means of a postal questionnaire, we queried the head librarians of 264 accred- ited institutions of higher education in New York, selecting from a directory pro- duced by the New Yo'rk State Education Departmene all libraries that employ at least one full-time librarian. We received usable replies from 188, or 71 percent. The sample includes four principal types of in- stitutions, representing both the public and private sectors: • Two-year colleges (57 respondents) • Four-year colleges, some of which offer master's programs (83 respondents) • Universities, offering bachelor's, mas- ter's, and doctoral programs (24 respon- dents) • Graduate/professional schools (24 re- spondents) For each case, we collected data on the institution, its library, and the status, in- cluding the rights and responsibilities, of Marjorie A. Benedict is senior assistant librarian, State University of New York at Albany; Jacquelyn A. Gavryck is associate librarian, State University ofNe:w York at Albany; and Hanan C. Selvin is professor of sociol- ogy, State University of New York at Stony Brook. 12 librarians . Our survey, therefore, covers the formal characteristics of the status of li- brarians in all types of academic libraries in New York as perceived by head librari- 4 ans. PAITERNSOF FACULTY STATUS As a first step toward conceptualizing the attainment of faculty status, we asked each head librarian the following direct question: "According to the definition used in your institution, do librarians have faculty status?" Table 1 summarizes their replies. The variation in these replies-from 18 percent reporting that no librarians have faculty status to 65 percent reporting that all librarians have faculty status~ probably reflects both the ambiguity of. the concept of faculty status and the heterogeneity of the libraries studied. Sources of Variation between Institutions Our analysis suggests that there is con- siderable variation in the patterns of fac- TABLE 1 REPORTED STATUS OF LIBRARIANS IN ALL RESPONDING INSTITUTIONS None have faculty status Very few have faculty status About half have faculty status Most have faculty status All have faculty status Totals N= *Does not equ al 100 percent because of rounding. Percent 18 8 0.5 7 65 98 .5* (188) Status of Academic Librarians 13 ulty status from one institution to another. This variation, however, does not occur at random, but is socially patterned. As an example of such patterning, we shall dis- cuss the ways in which the rate of faculty status is related to (1) the type of institu- tion (two-year colleges, four-year ,col- leges, universities, or graduate/profes- sional schools), and (2) the nature of the institutions' sponsorship or control (pub- lic, private church-related, or private inde- pendent). Table 2 shows the status of librarians by type of institution. A pattern clearly emerges. As the academic level in these institutions rises, the incidence of faculty status falls: 79 percent of the two-year col- leges, 64 percent of the four-year colleges, 54 percent of the universities, and 50 per- cent of the graduate/professional schools have indicated that all of their librarians have faculty status. When we combine the two highest positive responses into a sin- gle category, "all or most librarians have faculty status," this pattern persists with an even wider gap between the graduate/ professional schools and the other three types of institutions. (See figure 1.) One possible explanation for this find- ing rests on the putative prestige of the classroom faculty in these different types of institutions and on the tendency of in- stitutions to be more generous in assign- ing the responsibilities of faculty status to librarians than they are in granting the re- wards. 5 Because people would probably attribute higher prestige to classroom fac- ulty at graduate-level institutions than to faculty at two-year colleges, according fac- ulty status to librarians in the graduate/ professional institutions would amount to TABLE 2 STATUS OF LIBRARIANS BY TYPE OF INSTITUTION Gradu ate/ Two-year Four-year Professional Colleges Colleges Universities Schools Status of Libraria ns (Percent) (Perce nt) (Pe rcent) (Percent) None have faculty status 16 18 17 25 Very few have facult~ status 0 6 21 25 About half have facu ty status 0 1 0 0 Most have faculty status 5 11 8 0 All have faculty status 79 64 54 50 Totals 100 100 100 100 N= (57) (83) (24) (24) 14 College & Research Libraries January 1983 Percent 100 80 60 40 20 Two-year Colleges Four-year Colleges Universities Graduate/ Professional Schools Percent reporting that all or most librarians have faculty status FIGURE 1 Incidence of Faculty Status by Type of Institution giving a reward of relatively high value, whereas in the two-year colleges the re- ward would be of lower value. Other things being equal, high rewards are given less frequently. Another reason may be that the librarians employed in two-year colleges have attained a level of formal education more nearly comparable to that of their classroom colleagues th~n have the librarians employed in graduate I professional schools. In any event, these two possible explanations would account only in part for this pattern. We have identified three categories of control or sponsorship of the institutions in this survey: public, private church- related, and private independent. Table 3 shows the reported status of librarians for each category. Again combining the two highest responses, public institutions have the highest rate of faculty status, 93 percent, and private independent institu- tions have the lowest rate, 49 percent. (See figure 2.) Perhaps this is because many of the public institutions have been estab- lished in more recent times and have had to conform with newer standards; while in the older, private institutions such evo- lution is coming about more slowly. Type of institution and institutional con- trol cannot be studied independently. What appear to be the effects of type of in- stitution are in part the effects of control and vice versa. For example, in table 4 the TABLE 3 STATUS OF LffiRARIANS BY INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL Institutional Control Private Private Public Church-Related Independent Status of Librarians (Percent) (Percent) (Percent) None have faculty status 7 19 31 . Very few have facul% status 0 6 20 About half have facu ty status 0 2 0 Most have faculty status 5 9 9 All have faculty status 88 64 40 Totals 100 100 100 N= (76) (47) (65) Public Status of Academic Librarians 15 Private Church related Private Independent Percent reporting that all or most librarians have faculty status FIGURE 2 Incidence of Faculty Status by Institutional Control proportion of respondents from public in- stitutions ranges from 70 percent for two- year colleges to 17 percent for graduate/ professional schools. This strong associa- tion between institutional type and con- trol makes it necessary to look at the ef- fects of type of institution on faculty status within each category of control and at the effects of control within each type of insti- tution. (See table 5.) Because of the small number of cases in several cells of table 5, we have based the following analysis on only those cells hav- ing more than six cases. The effects of type on faculty status appear in the columns. In the first column one can observe that there is little difference in the proportion grant- ing faculty status to all or most librarians among the four types of public institu- tions; the highest percentage, 100, is for universities and the lowest percentage, 93, is for two-year colleges, a difference of only 7 percentage points. The effect is greater within the private independent in- stitutions with a difference of 13 percent- age points between the highest, four-year colleges (55 percent), and the lowest, graduate/professional schools (42 per- cent). The effect of type of institution is the greatest in the private church-related· in- stitutions, with 27 percentage points dif- ference between the four-year colleges (77 percent) and the graduate/professional schools (50 percent). TABLE4 PUBLIC CONTROL BY TYPE OF INSTITUTION Percent Type of Public Institution Institutions Two-~ear Colleges 70 Four- ear Colleges 29 Universities 33 Graduate/Professional Schools 17 TABLE 5 (Number of Cases) (57) (83) (24) (24) FACULTY STATUS BY INSTITUTIONAL TYPE AND CONTROL* Percent Reporting All or Most Librarians Have Facul?; Status Private rivate Church- In de- Public Related pendent Two-Year Colleges 93 (40) 100 (6) 45 (11) Four-year Colleges 96 (24) 77 (30) 55 (29) Universities 100 (8) 33 (3) 46 (13) Graduate/ Professional Schools 75 (4) 50 (8) 42 (12) *Numbers of cases are in parentheses. ~------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- 16 College & Research Libraries January 1983 The effects of control on status appear in the rows of table 5. Because of the small numbers of cases among the other types of institutions, it is only in the four-year col- leges that a meaningful comparison is pos- sible. In this group, 96 percent of the pub- lic colleges report that all or most librarians have faculty status, compared with 55 percent among the private inde- pendent colleges, a difference of 41 per- centage points, the strongest effect in this table. THEACRLSTANDARDS ANDNEWYORK ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS The ACRL Standards outline nine areas of rights and responsibilities for academic librarians. We studied criteria drawn from several of these areas, concentrating on those we judged to be most appropriate for a self-administered questionnaire to be completed by concerned, but busy, library administrators. The questions based on these criteria appear in appendix A. Rights and Responsibilities Most of the ACRL criteria used for this survey can be considered to be rights, al- though only three of them represent un- equivocal rights: academic-year appoint- ment, professorial titles, and tenure. (We did not include another unequivocal right, equality of compensation, in this survey.) Table 6 shows the incidence of favorable replies to questions on the criteria that we perceive as rights. In the 188 responding libraries, eligibility to serve on the campus governance body has the highest fre- quency, 76 percent, and academic-year appointment has the lowest frequency, 16 percent. We recognize only two of the surveyed criteria as pure responsibilities: the expec- tations that librarians hold graduate de- grees apart from the MLS or its equiva- lent, and that they show a record of publishable scholarship. (Neither of these is explicitly stated in the ACRL Standards.) Although all or most of the librarians have faculty status in 72 percent of the respond- ing libraries, academic-year appointment is enjoyed by the librarians in only 16 per- cent of these libraries. In the category of added responsibilities, on the other hand, the percentages are considerably higher. When it comes to promotion and tenure ~ecisions, 48 percent of the responding in- stitutions attach more than a little impor- tance to librarians' holding a graduate de- gree in addition to a master's degree in library science, and 41 percent attach more than a little importance to the librarians' having a record of publishable scholar- ship. Looking at just the 137 libraries in which faculty status was reported for all or most of the librarians, we found that 22 percent reported academic-year appoint- ments, an increase of only 6 percentage points over the entire sample. At the same time, among these 137 institutions the percentages that affirm the importance of more than one graduate degree, 66 per- cent, and publishing activity, 56 percent, for promotion and tenure, rise 18 and 15 percentage points, respectively. Our anal- ysis shows a general pattern: librarians in the responding institutions are more TABLE 6 Short Title FAVORABLE RESPONSES REGARDING LIBRARIANS' ACADEMIC RIGHTS IN ALL RESPONDING INSTITUTIONS* Eligible to serve on campus governance body Eligible for released time for professional activities Eligible for sabbatical and otl:i.er professional leaves · Eligible for tenure Eligible for research funds Peer review for promotion Eligible for campus-wide promotion and tenure review body Professorial titles Released time for research Acade!:Wc-year appointment *lnclude,s only unequivocal responses . Percent 76 68 64 58 55 46 46 30 20 16 likely to have the added responsibilities associated with faculty status than the rights traditionally accorded to the class- room faculty. Effects of Negatively Integrated Norms Associated with Faculty Status The ACRL Standards are a set of norms that may be adopted in whole or in part by libraries. Two or more norms are posi- tively integrated if conforming to one makes it easier for most people to conform to the other(s). Similarly, norms are nega- tively integrated if conforming to one makes it more difficult to conform to the other(s). For example, being active in re- search is more difficult for librarians than for classroom faculty because norms relat- ing to faculty status are likely to be nega- tively integrated in libraries. Eight months of scheduled classroom teaching are gen- erally required of instructional faculty, while librarians are usually expected to engage in scheduled activities such as cat- aloging or reference work for eleven months of the year. Additionally, many li- brarians may find themselves in situations where tenured peers had become used to a system that did not concern itself with the complexities of faculty status. Under these circumstances, peer review by li- brarians makes it difficult for librarians to obtain recognition from peers for schol- arly activity. Moreover, the problem be- comes acute when nominations for pro- motion and tenure are reviewed by the campus-wide promotion and tenure body, which may interpret standards dif- ferently in making its recommendations than do the librarians who review the can- didates. Discrepancies such as these can lead to a considerable amount of role strain among librarians having faculty status. Because positively integrated norms tend to persist and negatively integrated norms do not, evasive behavior appears in situations where norms are negatively integrated. Increased rates of absenteeism and turn- over in personnel may result as librarians attempt to cope with the often conflicting requirements imposed on them by faculty status. In situations where strain is pro- Status of Academic Librarians 17 duced by the negative integration of insti- tutionalized norms, the affected individ- uals and groups have been known to make efforts to relieve the pressures by what Robert K. Merton calls institutional- ized evasions of institutional norms. 6 In the present case, one such conceivable evasion by librarians and campus-wide re- view committees might be a redefinition of what constitutes scholarly research for librarians, in effect, a separate set of stan- dards. The inconsistencies and resulting strain for librarian faculty members who have to meet stringent requirements for retention, promotion, and tenure without the con- comitant rewards enjoyed by classroom faculty members will continue to provide the ingredients for dissatisfaction with the realities of faculty status among academic librarians. Librarians appear to be divided in their opinions about how to ameliorate the situation. Some prefer to renounce faculty status; others favor continuing to strive for full recognition as faculty mem- bers. Intercorre lation of the ACRL Standards By means of a factor analysis, a statisti- cal procedure, we have discovered that a majority of the ACRL criteria used in our survey tend to occur together in the re- sponding libraries. That is, there is a ten- dency for institutions that accord faculty status, in general terms, to all or most of their librarians, to meet a good number of the specific criteria of the ACRL Standards as well. For the factor analysis, we selected from the ACRL Standards the eight criteria that had the highest rate of response. Five of these criteria showed high intercorrela- tion. The criterion having the highest cor- relation with the others was the incidence of reported faculty status; the other four were: eligibility for the campus gover- nance body, released time for professional activities, eligibility for sabbatical and other (long-term) professional leaves, and eligibility for released time for research. The three variables that were not highly correlated with the. other five were: eligi- bility for tenure, professorial titles, and 18 College & Research Libraries January 1983 academic-year appointment. This statisti- cal relation can be interpreted as evidence that the ACRL Standards are important in empirically defining faculty status for li- brarians. Consistent with our earlier find- ings, it appears that the rewards of faculty status are slower in coming than are the responsibilities. One can predict that this tendency is likely to continue in this pe- riod of shrinking resources. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION This survey has shown that faculty sta- tus is the rule in a majority of college and university libraries in the state of New York, particularly in the public systems of the City University of New York and the State University of New York. Although some librarians are enjoying rights, such as academic-year appointment, tenure, and professorial titles, the scales are clearly tipped in the direction of librarians' having the increased responsibilities of faculty status. Not all of the benefits of faculty status accrue to librarians as individuals. Indeed, some things that represent costs borne by individual librarians, such as increased re- sponsibilities, should result in collective benefits to the profession over the long term. We have found that nearly all of the li- brarians employed in the responding li- braries hold a graduate degree in library science. More than a third hold an addi- tional graduate degree. Although we don't have comparable past figures on the formal education of New York's academic librarians with which to compare these percentages, our reading 7 and a 1975 SUNY survey8 suggest that today' s aca- demic librarians show a higher level of for- mal education than their predecessors did. "Scholarly activity should also contrib- ute to the upgrading of the profession and to bringing librarians closer to the faculty model. Librarians employed in libraries that require scholarly production will be- come more proficient in doing research and writing, and librarians who enjoy these activities will tend to seek employ- ment in academic libraries where librari- ans have faculty status. If the levels of both formal education and scholarly activ- ity continue to rise, academic librarianship should benefit in both tangible and intan- gible ways. REFERENCES 1. Association of College and Research Libraries, Committee on Academic Status, Faculty Status for Academic Librarians: A History and Policy Statements (Chicago: American Library Assn ., 1975), p.31-34. 2. Some studies that have been done during the past five years are: American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Academic Status Survey (Chicago: The Association, 1981); Greg W. Byerly, "The Faculty Status of Academic Librarians in Ohio," College & Research Libraries 41:422-29 (Sept . 1980); Russ Davidson and others, "Faculty Status for Librarians in the Rocky Mountain Region: A Review and Analysis," College & Research Libraries 42:203-13 (May 1981); Ronald F. Dow, "Academic Librarians: A Survey of Benefits and Responsibilities," College & Research Libraries 38:218-20 (May 1977); JoAnne Hawkins and others, The Status of Status : The Status of Librarians in Texas Academic Libraries (Austin: University of Texas at Austin Libraries, 1978), ED 178 042; Prabha Sharma, "A Survey of Academic Librarians and Their Opinions Related to Nine- Month Contracts and Academic Status Configurations in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi,'' Col- lege & Research Libraries 42:561-70 (Nov. 1981). 3. E. J. Josey and Alice L. Britenbaker, eds., A Directory of College and University Libraries in New York State (11th ed.; Albany, N .Y.: The University of the State of New York, State Education Depart- ment, 1977). 4. Although many survey researchers employ tests of statistical significance to indicate the findings that deserve the most attention, we believe that they cannot serve this function in research of this kind . See Hanan C. Selvin and Stephen R. Finch, "Methods of Survey Analysis," in William H. Kruskal and Judith M. Tanur, eds., International Encyclopedia of Statistics (New York: Free Press, 1978). Status of Academic Librarians 19 5. See Mary Biggs, "Sources of Tension and Conflict between Librarians and Faculty," Journal of Higher Education 52:182-201 (Mar.-Apr. 1981); R. Dean Galloway, "Status or Stasis: Academic Li- brarians 10 Years Later," American Libraries 10:349-52 (June 1979); Jacquelyn A. Gavryck, "The SUNY Librarians' Faculty Status Game," Journal of Academic Librarianship 1:11-13 (July 1975). 6. Robert K. Merton, Preface to Lawyers and Matrimonial Cases by Hubert O'Gorman (New York: Free Press, 1963), p.ix-xi. 7. Galloway, "Status or Stasis," p .349-50. 8. Gavryck, "The SUNY Librarians' Faculty Status Game," p.13. APPENDIX A: QUESTIONS BASED ON ACRL STANDARDS 1. According to the definition used in your institution, do librarians have "faculty status"? 2. What titles do the librarians have? 3. Are full-time librarians eligible for tenure? 4. When a librarian is being considered for tenure, is there a formal process of peer review by librari- ans? 5. When a librarian is being considered for promotion, is there a formal process of peer review by librarians? 6. In current promotion and tenure cases, how much importance is attached to librarians' holding a graduate degree in addition to the MLS? 7. When it comes to promotion and tenure, how important is it that librarians show a record of pub- lishable scholarship? 8. If your institution has a campus-wide promotion and tenure body, are librarians eligible to serve on it? 9. Are librarians eligible to serve on the campus "governance" body (e.g., faculty senate, faculty assembly) on the same basis as are other faculty members? 10. Are librarians eligible for sabbatical and other professional leaves on the same basis as are other faculty members? 11. Are research funds from your institution available to librarians on the same basis as to other faculty members? 12. Does your institution have a policy of granting time off with pay during working hours for librari- ans to conduct research? 13. Does your institution have a policy of granting time off with pay during working hours for librari- ans to engage in professional activities such as course work, workshops, conferences, and the like? 14. Please indicate the length of the work year.