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.