College and Research Libraries
JEAN M. PERREAULT
What Is ''Academic Status''?
Much of the discussion of academic status within the library profession
has proceeded from an emotional rather than a rational base. The
author proposes that clarity may be gained by analyzing the ~~formal
environment" of academic status. He then attempts to do so and con-
cludes that a librarian "is in a sense the academic environment him-
self, and is accordingly pre-eminently academic."
THE QUESTION of academic status for
librarians in academic institutions is
widely discussed, both in the profes-
sionaJl literature and in conversation
among affected persons. But the ra-
tionale that could truly justify such
status has not been touched upon by
such discussion-at least in part because
the attempt has been to try to analyze
"academic-status-for-librarians" before
"academic-status-as-such" has been made
sufficiently transparent. Much of what
has been said and written ignores the
basic phenomena of the situation as a
situation; accordingly, caught in a situa-
tion but unable to see it as such, the
protagonist (here, the embattled librar-
ian) cannot hope to render it transparent
to himself. In a word, his reaction to the
· problem is an emotional one.2
To see the situation phenomenologi-
cally then is to step outside it, to reduce
it to its essential characteristics rather
1 The problem "what is professional status?" is
one that likewise deserves attention ; but not just
here.
2 Such a state of mind is evinced in arguments like
"In the university where I worked last, there was
no question but that librarians • • ."; or, on the
other side, "How can librarians talk of academic
status when they do not do the same work as do
faculty members?" Such propositions simply serve
to render the situation entirely opaque to ( phe-
nomeno-) logical examination, by setting it up as
self-justifying.
Mr. Perreault is Head, Information Re-
trieval Division, and Associate Professor of
Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University,
Boca Raton.
than to try to ":6ght the problem." And,
as a problem thus reduced to a situation,
several features are easily discemable:
1. If we do indeed, as librarians, have
professional status, gaining academic
status must mean assuming a new one;
· 2. If academic status, just as much
as professional status, is a problem to
librarians, it must likewise be one for
other professionals, including the profes-
sional teachers; ·
3. Status implies role; rank, faculty or
otherwise, is not the same-though it is
not immediately clear what relevance it
does have to status.
WHAT Is AN AcADEMIC QUEsTioN?
If, instead of attempting at the outset
to give an answer to -the question "What
is academic status?", an attempt is made
to analyze its formal environment, a sort
of "neighborhood" of ideas can be built
up into which we can place our prin-
cipal problem. A circuitous rather than
a frontal assault, as it were.
What then is meant by saying "that
was only meant as an academic question"
or "after all, that question is no more
than academic"? Clearly, the proposi-
tion that unites academic and question
does so at the expense of the existential
value of the content implied as belong-
ing to the question. Its essential content
may be of the highest value, but its
place in the real world is taken as being
/207
208 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1966
less rightful and solid than that of a
"practical question." Academic can be
seen to be at least in part synonymous
with leading to a foregone conclusion,
visionary, impractical, and the like. It is
that which is set aside from actuality
(but not from reality, which includes
the possible as well as the actual) by
virtue of its speculativeness.
Again: an academic question is per-
sonal where a practical one is imper-
sonal, impersonal where a practical one
is personal. To be academic then does
NOT mean to be abstract (as against
the "concreteness" of the practical ques-
tion), but rather it means a reversal of
whatever attitude would characterize the
same question asked as a practical one.
Thus the locating of the academic
person in an ivory tower is at least a
natural reaction to his tendency to view
the problems and mysteries of the world
in a manner antithetical to that char-
acteristic of the man in the street.
HISTORY oF "THE AcADEMY"
Historically, it is only accidental that
Plato's academy (a wooded park in
which he conversed with his followers),
rather than Aristotle's lyceum (the pre-
cinct of Apollo Lyceus in which he and
his followers walked about-peripateti-
cally), or the stoa (porch) where the
Stoics sat in discussion, should have been
chosen as the typical environment of
"the academic." Note though that it was
not always thus: up until the end of
classical antiquity (as embodied in the
Roman Empire) "the Academy" implied
the Platonists and the neo-Platonists as
united into a "school." The Peripatetics,
followers of Aristotle, were not so for-
tunate in perpetuation of their doctrines;
indeed, even those philosophers who
can be called Peripatetic were strongly
influenced by Platonic and neo-Platonic
doctrines-so much so that the anony-
mous and evidently neo-Platonic Liber
de Causis was long regarded as written
by Aristotle himself. During this whole
period, "Academy," "Lyceum," and
"Stoa" were each looked upon as antag-
onistic to the others, none being assumed
to be able to absorb the others entirely.
There was not just one renascence
during the period (the Middle Ages)
from the end of classical antiquity to
the emergence of modern times. One of
these was the rediscovery, through
Arabic channels, and through such
Christian writers as Boethius, of Aris-
totle. 3 This rediscovery was the origin
of the Scholasticism that dominated the
central part of this whole "Middle" peri-
od. And it was this allegedly narrow and
sterile Aristotelian culture that was the
specific target of the next renascence,
that which is called the Renaissance, bas-
ing itself on the supposedly antithetical
doctrines of Plato.4 And, in honor of him
whom they most highly honored (and
perhaps in recognition of the originative-
ness and persistence of his school), the
groups which were set up for discussion
of the problem of the revitalization on in-
tellectual life through the revival of clas-
sical antiquity were· called academies. In
these earliest examples of what we can
recognize as academic status, the Italian
Renaissance princes are seen supporting
literati from Greece in assisting the in-
cipient Western scholars to absorb the
heritage of classical antiquity. A double
goal can be seen: discussion, and, for its
sake: instruction, all at the expense of
the prince-patron.
The book was of course central to all
this, even though it was regarded, prior
to the rise of printing, as an intellectual
entity rather than a physical one. 5 Aside
8 Cf. for instance F. van Steenberghen, Aristotle
in the West {Lou vain, N auwelaerts, 1955) .
4 Still, notice the constant concern of the greatest
of Renaissance scholars, like Fieino, the guiding spirit
of the Platonic Academy at Florence, to reconcile
Plato with Aristotle-as had Arabie philosophers
like Alfarabi.
5 Note the usual employment of "book," in the
pre-Gutenberg era, as equivalent to what we now
normally call a "chapter" ; cf. in general M. Mae-
Luhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (University of Toronto
Press, 1962).
from the hope for reinvigoration and ele-
vation of vernaculars (present through-
out and even from the very beginnings
of the Renaissance: Petrarch, Boccaccio,
etc.) a considerable part of the effort of
the Renaissance was devoted to the mak-
ing available of the book-heritage of
classical antiquity through such men as
Erasmus and Aldus; nor were bibliogra-
phers such as Gesner and N aude outside
the central purpose and approval of
other Renaissance scholars and patrons.
Renascence is a constant need, and
when the Renaissance had begun to run
down, just as had that renascence which
had given rise to Scholasticism, a new
~nascence once again crystalized around
a new kind of academy, founded, rather
than upon theology and philosophy (as
in the universities of the Scholastic pe-
riod), or upon classical literature and
thought (as in the Italian Platonic acad-
emies), upon the modern ideal of sci-
entific experimentation and verification.
Simultaneously, the older universities
were declining further and further from
the glowing pre-eminence of the time of
Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Thomas
Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus.6 These
new academies arose often without the
degree of official basis seen in the Scho-
lastic universities or the Italian acad-
emies; but there was a more important
difference: they were not institutions
but societies. To be academic at that
time would not have implied being a
professional teacher-which in any case
would not have been a high recom-
mendation-but rather being a poser of
academic questions, an experimenter
willing to try anything, a speculator free
of rigid dogmatism.7 (Academic free-
8 "In the course of the {18th] century, old founda-
tions like Paris and Oxford sank to depths un-
known in their long history, and even the younger
universities were in the majority of cases so feeble
and inert that men of outstanding ability, like
Leibnitz, were reluctant to associate themselves with
them."-W. Boyd, The History of Western Educa-
tion (London ; Black, 1959), p. 281.
7 Not necessarily religious ; indeed, through the
authority of the clerics so often in control of the
What Is "Academic Statui? I 209
dom, arising out of this historical back-
ground, could provide another environ-
ing idea for the placement of the aca-
demic.)
The situational phenomenon to em-
phasize here is that academics may well
have been professionals (at least as we
have since developed that idea), but
assuredly were NOT professional teach-
ers. If anything, their predominant pro-
fessionality was that of producers of
ideas-writers, broadly taken, or book-
men (as against the mediaeval school-
men). The connection to the classroom
was not so strong as the connection to
the world of books. But, since books are
communication-by-inscription and teach-
ing is communication-by-event, the acad-
emies can be seen as attempts to re-
unite these types of communication: the
producers of books are being helped and
urged to teach each other by event rath-
er than by inscription. To be academic
then did not mean merely to write well,
or to teach well, but to have such ideas
as could stimulate others ( on the level
of the communicator, not below it, as
students necessarily are) . The rise of
the learned journal as a means to such
communication, originally viewed as a
sort of open-letter, semi-event, semi-in-
scription distribution of ideas for the
scholarly.community itself, can be drawn
into the same environment of ideas.
Looking back over this development,
new formalities can be added to the
gradually crystalizing idea of academic:
while "the academic" implies freedom
from practicality, it is the basis for the
generosity of princes and for mutual co-
operation between scholars; this gener-
osity and cooperation comes about as a
result of accomplishments of the recipi-
ents; these accomplishments are of a
creative order, either artistic or intellec-
tual; and these creations are the overt
declining universities, the attitude of dogmatism
(accepted by all at the time, in religion) was al-
lowed to spill over into many other fields : astronomy
and the case of Galileo is the most familiar ex ample.
210 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1966
signs of the internal operations of the
member-recipient-creators.
"AcADEMIC STATUs" PROVISIONALLY
DEFINED
A provisional definition of the aca-
demic person then, in terms of his situa-
tion would read somewhat like this: He
is a~ademic whose personal, unofficial,
subjective activities are judged to be of
such public, objective value that official
sanction is given him, in two forms-
support and freedom. That upon which
this sanction is based is his overt works
(events or inscriptions), at the aca-
demic rather than the merely profes-
sional level.
TEACHERS AND LmRARIANS
Teaching is raising students from a
lower status to a higher, whether this
effect is credited to the student himself
as possessor of innate ideas (anamnesis),
to the teacher as imposer of new ideas
(tabula rasa), or to the Holy Spirit as
indwelling generator ( ideae seminales ).
It is not of itself academic by my defi-
nition, yet the example of Abelard (who,
when he was cast out of the University
of Paris, drew a whole school along
with him, as he had even before he
came to teach at Notre Dame) clearly
demonstrates that intellectual/ artistic
creativity as personal or interpersonal
(academic) communing almost inevi-
tably draws forth interlevel communica-
tion (teaching). To teach and yet to
conform fully to the above description
of academic could then be described as
"overt communing." It is an activity
radically different from teaching seen as
the processing of students.
Librarians, assuming that their pro-
fessional status is justified, do not auto-
matically gain status as academics, any
more than do members of the teaching
profession. Academic status does not
flow from possession of degrees (though
professional status may, and this last
may be a precondition-an overt sign-
to the official sanction of academic sta-
tus), nor from performance of quasi-
teaching functions. 8
The overt value of the librarian's func-
tion in the academic environment flows
from the value of the body of inscrip-
tions which he makes available (by se-
lection, cataloging and classification, cir-
culation, etc.), and upon this value de-
pends the value of the public (teaching)
as well as the personal ( academic) ac-
tivities of the academy-university. Such
a body of inscriptions is in fact the li-
brary, and is thus the environment of
the academic activity itself-as any aca-
demic person knows when in his own
library. But, though ideally the collec-
tion itself is the library, in practice the
librarian is the library, insofar as he se-
lects, catalogs, and services the entities
that constitute it. The librarian, thus, is
in a sense the academic environment
himself, and is accordingly pre-eminent-
ly academic.
FACULTY RANK
One final point is to be made, about
the variant statement of academic status
in the phrase faculty rank. 9 "Faculty" is
basically a constitutive virtue of an or-
ganism. An animal has faculties, with-
out which it would not be an animal.
No faculty is the whole animal. Like-
wise, no faculty is the whole university;
the university is constituted (we could
here substitute "instituted") of several
faculties. That is indeed what gives it
its universalitas. Faculty rank is accord-
ingly equivalent to rank within a facul-
ty, and, by analogy, between faculties.
(Continued on page 2 9 2 )
8 As a corollary of the arguments that librarians
assist in the function of teaching and are thus on
a level with the teaching faculty; this argument
is valid but not necessarily of probative weight,
since it ignores the situation for the sake of an
emotional response to an emotional problem.
9 There could of course be two other combinations
of these two terms: academic rank, faculty status.
They are not considered as alternative formulations
because what is sought is a clear dichotomy, the
implications of which will make it clear that the
latter two combinations are inappropriate or even
self-contradictory.
232 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1966
formation retrieval will come to the jun-
ior college library as it will eventually
come to all kinds of libraries. It is al-
ready being used experimentally in all
kinds of libraries. In many cases, the
information system will use the college
computer. The fact that automation .
seems expensive should not retard its
use. If library services are improved
by automation, then the expense is
worthwhile. Librarians have not always
sought improved services as forcefully
as they should. Of course, the sophisti-
cation to use such devices successfully
must be developed, but the trend among
junior college librarians to adopt audio-
visual aids suggests a readiness to con-
sider other devices also.
It seems clear that strong medicine is
needed for these libraries. Perhaps this
means strong federal support. Perhaps
it means strong ACRL lobbying with
college presidents. Perhaps it means a
stronger breed of junior college librari-
ans. At any rate, the future should be
exciting. • •
ACADEMIC STATUS
(Continued from page !210)
But .. faculty," as understood by the
great German universities that arose
concomitant to and following the rise ·of
the last, Leibnizian, type of academy,
was Fach, .. a discipline." To be a Fach-
mann was not regarded as anything oth-
er than to be a profess-or of a subject, a
specialist. To what Fach then would the
librarian belong except that of library
science? But the librarian need not teach
to be academic; indeed, to teach puts
the librarian in a less secure academic
position than to select or catalog books,
etc. The library science faculty is no
more proof against the charge of mere
processing of students than any other
teacher-less, in fact, due to the voca-
tionalism of many such faculties.
Thus, within the faculty (Fach) are
found ranks, the ordinary means of self-
preservation of the alienated. The F ach
is alienated within the universitas except
by academic communing, which places
the Fachmann on a new level, outside
his narrow specialistic professionalism:
the status of academician.
EPILOGUE
Academic status then, as viewed in
the transparency of the situation, is a
qualification added to that (for teach-
ers) of faculty rank or to that (for li-
brarians ) of professional standing. It is
not automatically predicated on either
of these types of professional persons,
but rather is a feature of the institution
to which they belong. Like .. standing,"
status implies a level, but not the dis-
crete ''I'm higher in rank than you,"
characteristic of faculty rank, but rather
implies one level, the single plane of
overt communing as determined by the
nature and orientation of the institution.
Such overt communing can take place
only within the book environment which
the librarian in a sense is. Without
teaching, without even ever coming into
personal contact with his fellow acade-
micians, in an overt communing that can
remain quite impersonal, the librarian-
as selector, cataloger, and servicer of
the library-is the typical academic. • •
BOOK SELECTION ...
(Continued /11om page 224)
of graduate facilities and resources.
They are less reliable, however, when
it comes to agreeing on the basic works
in their field. You can get as many state-
ments of what is essential and con-
sidered .. standard" in each discipline as
individuals you might wish to consult.
Under these circumstances, it becomes
the librarian's responsibility to acquaint
the faculty with sound principles of
book selection and a clear understand-
ing of his acquisition problems and
budgetary limitations. Only then is real
cooperation possible. • •