College and Research Libraries Letters To the Editor: Donna Pontau and M. Cecilia Rothschild's ''Tis for Temporary'' in the March 1986 C&RL is an informative treatment of an important personnel issue in academic libraries. The au- thors consulted numerous sources for statistics on librarians employed in temporary posi- tions and found that'' the total number of working temporary librarians, past or present, is unknown." I suggest that they should have contacted staff at the American Association of University Professors headquarters or searched the AAUP journal Academe, which pub- lishes detailed statistics on academic personnel, including part-time and temporary posi- tions. To the Editor: JUDITH B. BARNETT University of Rhode Island Narragansett Bay Campus Fred Hill and Robert Hauptman's article on faculty status (March 1986) is another one written by a librarian (and a nonlibrarian) trying to use nonlibrarian standards to measure librarians. No wonder we don't measure up. The premise upon which the authors based their claim that librarians do not deserve faculty status is erroneous because it fails to see library faculty as any different from other faculty, teaching or nonteaching. Hill and Haupt- man wish to believe that all faculties are comparable and do not like the reality of the divi- sion between teaching and nonteaching. I doubt that they would agree to a further divi- sion, setting librarians in neither of those two categories. But the fact is that librarians as faculry perform different functions from those of ''real faculty.'' Instead of looking at library faculties, Hill and Hauptman may want to look at various "real" faculties and see whether exact comparisons can be made among departments. Does the production of a play by a theater department faculty member count as less of a professional achievement than a science faculty- member's coauthoring a scientific paper with students? If so, then how is administration to judge the merits of the faculties of differ- ent departments? This gets into the whole issue of what standards should be used to mea- sure faculty achievement for such rewards as tenure, promotion, etc. I think that many deans of arts and sciences faculties have confronted this dilemma often and appear to have used different standards to suit the different disciplines . (If this were not the case, and using only teaching, research, and publication as standards, there would certainly mean far fewer tenured humanities and social sciences faculty than those in the sciences). It would thus seem appropriate that library faculty be judged by (unreal?) library faculty standards where necessary, not by those used for ''real faculty.'' Perhaps teaching, research, and publication could be required in libraries where they are seen as true respon- sibilities of librarians, and libraries where they were not found necessary could stop being embarrassed by that fact. Do ''librarians often benefit from the privileges accorded to faculty without bearing the concomitant responsibilities"? Are teaching, research, and publication the only responsi- bilities of faculty? (I would like to leave the whole issue of teaching aside; at my library we do teaching that might be considered "real" by Hill and Haupman). I had understood col- l~ge and community service to be part and parcel of faculty responsibility and believe that 397 398 College & Research Libraries July 1986 librarians serving on college committees and being involved in library networks in their communities fulfill that requirement. Professional peer review is customary among fac- ulty, and many faculty librarians also use this evaluation technique, even though a supervi- sory review might be more expedient. The involvement in judging the performance of one's peers falls under the "responsibility" category, I think. I would argue also that a regular work week, i.e., required presence in the library, of thirty-five to forty hours might be substituted for the contact hours expected of teaching faculty and might be seen as a responsibility. I certainly would not call it a privilege. Nor does a twelve-month contract at a salary significantly smaller than ''real faculty'' appear to me to be a privilege I receive for being an "unreal faculty" member. One other question was raised by the article. Do other librarians doubt that "the holder of a B.S. in anthropology and anM.L.S. [is] the intellectual or political equal of a colleague whose credentials include a Ph.D. in physics?" I can't quibble with the political inequality; librarians historically have been less powerful than other faculty. There is a problem with the statement in that it sees physics, held in awe by many in our science-worshiping cul- ture, as analogous to library science and anthropology. Why not a Ph.D. in anthropology? Wouldn't that make Hill and Hauptman's argument even stronger? Regardless of the sub- ject fields used, I think the answer to their statement is that a doctorate degree makes the holder educationally superior to most librarians. But worse than that ploy is the implicit assumption that a Ph.D. in any field makes the holder of that degree a specialist not only in her/his field, but also more knowledgeable about libraries than a librarian, who "only" holds lesser degrees. Although we may not all have Ph.D.'s in library science, many of us are library specialists. The attainment of a doctorate does not by itself make a better librar- ian, faculty or not. Nor does a doctorate make a faculty subject specialist better than a librar- ian in the library. If I had wanted to be a ''real faculty'' member, I would have gone on for another degree, probably not in library science, and I would be teaching rather than working in a library. I wanted to be a librarian, however, someone who is very good at my field: retrieving infor- mation. I do research every day in bits and pieces, for patrons, degreed and otherwise, who are unable to do that research without my assistance. I have worked in both faculty-status and professional-status institutions. I prefer the latter. When librarians stop trying to make themselves apples and instead learn to be proud to be oranges, the faculty status matter , may be put the rest. CARLA LIST State University of New York at Plattsburgh To the Editor: Carla List's detailed letter raises five points that require response. 1. Despite the general tenor of the article, the authors do affirm the librarian's right to faculty status, under certain conditions, viz., those that obtain for all faculty at a given insti- tution. List's separation of "real faculty" from librarians is precisely the type of spurious distinction that the article addresses. 2. Lists scrambles for analogies from other departments in order to defend her claim that librarians are different but nevertheless equal. These theater professors she cites teach (li- brarians do not); they do direct or at times create dramas (what analogous tasks do librari- ans perform?); they serve (as do librarians); and they frequently publish scholarly articles and monographs (librarians frequently do not). Instead of struggling to bring librarians down to the lowest common denominator, List might attempt to discover ways in which librarians could be stimulated into doing those things that faculty members do, so that li- brarians could be considered equals by their colleagues in other departments, rather than unreal faculty judged by unreal standards, whatever such peculiar terms mean. 3. Teaching, service, and publication are indeed the traditional responsibilities of faculty members at institutions of higher learning. We regret the omission of the third member of the triumvirate. Letters 399 4. It is astonishing that List has managed to turn the detriment of a thirty-five to forty hour work week into a benefit. Time spent in the library is of no more value than an instruc- tor's ''contact hours'' uselessly spent with students. Academic accomplishments are mea- sured in terms of knowledge imparted not hours clocked. 5. We have no problem with physics, anthropology, history, Latin, or any other subject. The point is that someone who has earned a doctorate in any discipline is the master of a substantive body of knowledge in that field. We never implied that these people know more about librarianship than do librarians. ROBERT HAUPTMAN and FRED HILL St. Cloud University St. Cloud, Minnesota Midwest Library Service You won't find a wider selection .. . anywhere College and university librarians : Midwest Library Service has what you're looking for . With 24 years of experience in the field , Midwest can supply you with virtually any book you want-even one from the smallest, most obscure publisher. This includes nearly all U.S. and Canadian publishers, U.S. distributors of foreign published works, university presses , non-profit organizations, private associations, and societies, in addition to many reprint publishers and paperbacks . 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