ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


584 / C&RL News

The education o f academic 
librarians: How many degrees are 
enough?

B y  William G. Jo n e s

Assistant University Librarian, Collection Development and Inform ation Services 
University o f  Illinois at Chicago

Credentialing— a call fo r  action.

I n the July/August 1991 C &RL News Jeanne- Pierre V. M. Herubel again raises the ques­tion of what kind of training (and credentiali
required for academic librarians.
Herubel addresses the issue from the standpoint of 
academic credibility, opining that without advanced 
training in a subject discipline librarians cannot gain 
respect from teaching and research faculties. Ad­
ditional subject training “sensitizes the academic 
librarian to the fields of research and the sociology 
of knowledge within that discipline.” Even though 
librarians will continue to be “different,” they must 
undergo this “rite of passage,” this period of “guided 
intellectual effort,” to achieve equality with their 
faculty counteηparts. Herubel’s is not a new argu­
ment, and just a year ago Deanna Marcum, dean of 
the School of Library and Information Science at 
Catholic University, made the point somewhat dif­
ferently in the C hronicle o f  H igher Education, 
August 1, 1990. Marcum developed her argument 
from the supposition advanced by Francis Miksa 
that a fundamental shift has occurred in contempo­
rary information-seeking behaviors, behaviors that 
are sharply different from the information-gather­
ing methods practiced in the 19th century. In order 
for library school students to be effective in this new 
environment, Marcum maintains that students must 
now “learn how to make the transition from the 
current focus on the resources of a single institution 
to the more cooperative, interdependent setting of 
the future.” To make this transition and to become 
“real partners” in the “research process,” another

n

advanced degree in a subject specialty will be 
required.

g) isW hatever the merit of Herubel’s opinions about 
credibility and Marcum’s predictions about the 
cooperative and interdependent information envi­
ronment of the future, few will question that access 
to scholarly information has been broadened, even 
“democratized," to a degree that would have been

There is little evidence that 
librarians …  have ever been 
much a part o f the “scholarly 
research process” or that schol­
ars have relied on them f o r  more 
than the most basic assistance.

undreamt of even a decade ago. Now the materials 
of scholarship are brought with sometimes aston­
ishing celerity into the hands of scholars, often at 
sites far removed from the great archival collections 
where these materials are housed and to which, in 
other times, travel would have been obligatory. The 
relative ease and moderate cost of obtaining search 
materials in microformat, the development of high- 
quality reprography (including availability of hand­
held machines at low cost), and the publication of



October 1991 /  585

textual sources like the Thesaurus Linguae Grecae 
in CD/ROM format is revolutionizing the ways that 
scholars conduct research. Institutional subsidiza­
tion of the sharing of library resources, sometimes 
with tax dollars, has also enhanced scholars’ access 
to research materials.

What has not changed in the environment of 
academic information-seeking (and Herubel and 
Marcum acknowledge this implicitly if not explic­
itly) because it may never have been there to be 
changed, is the degree of involvement of librarians 
with scholars in the research process. While librar­
ians may be credited with creating an array of 
resources that enables scholars to locate materials 
in libraries, there is little evidence that librarians, 
well-trained or poorly trained, have ever been much 
a part of the “scholarly research process” or that 
scholars have relied on them for more than the most 
basic assistance in the conduct of their inquiries. 
For librarians who staff reference or information 
service departments in academic libraries, the pos-

The fact is that changes in both 
training of librarians and in the 
organization of services to 
scholars are in order.

session of advanced degrees in the humanities and 
social sciences (or even the sciences) will not help 
them achieve the equality desired by Herubel or to 
play the significant role in the research process that 
Marcum believes possible and perhaps necessary.

Librarians in academic communities can and do 
aid scholars, but studies of information-seeking 
behavior among humanists, conducted by Jones 
and Wiberley at the University of Illinois at Chi­
cago, reveal that librarians are not the first people 
to whom scholars turn in their “information-seek- 
ing” among humanists. Scholars find librarians help­
ful, for example, at those times when they begin to 
extend their investigations into areas where they are 
no longer unquestionably expert. Archivists and 
librarians in special collections are consulted be­
cause they are knowledgeable about collections for 
which mechanisms of access are often poorly devel­
oped. Generalist librarians who have broad knowl­
edge of collections and bibliographic sources can 
often locate materials for scholars that provide the 
framework within which a particular line of inquiry 
can be extended. They can also help with unscram­
bling garbled and incomplete citations. But refer­
ence librarians are usually among that last re­
sources to whom scholars turn.

As in any personal relationship, scholars’ con­
tacts with librarians are aided by quality of response, 
knowledgeability, and reliability. However, schol­
ars are usually able to locate materials in general 
library collections without the detailed knowledge 
of library systems that librarians advocate. Scholars 
also are capable of identifying these materials in 
other institutions when electronic and paper cata­
logs are available. We might well reflect on how the 
tremendous growth in interinstitutional loan of 
library materials has come about, and whether it is 
attributable in any part to the reliance of scholars 
upon librarians, or whether it has occurred because 
scholars have had direct access to OCLC-like sys­
tems and have learned how to use them.

More needs to be known about information- 
seeking behaviors of scholars before anyone can 
argue with confidence that there has been a signifi­
cant shift in those behaviors. Present reconstruc­
tions of information-seeking among humanists are 
inadequate in explaining how imagination, intu­
ition, and apparent luck contribute to the creation 
of scholarly works. There is evidence, however, that 
information-seeking is continuing in much the way 
it has for some time, with scholars investing their 
greatest effort in tracing citations found in books 
and journals, scanning professional association pub­
lications, and referring to sources suggested by 
colleagues. The inclination of some scholars to 
defer using libraries until after they have learned 
about publications of potential use from collegial or 
non-library sources was succinctly outlined by Yale 
sociologist Charles Perrow in a recent paper called 
“On Not Using Libraries,” one of a number of 
papers read at a 1988 conference—“Humanists at 
Work”—held at the University of Illinois at Chicago 
that provide insights into the ways that scholars 
carry out their research.

Indeed librarians must still understand how schol­
ars do research, how their inquiries relate to the 
printed record of our culture, where that record is 
maintained, and, most importantly, when and how 
scholars are most apt to draw on the specialized 
skills of the librarian. We fail to teach these aspects 
of scholarly inquiry in library schools today because 
our knowledge of them is still slight and, for what­
ever reason, the profession has ignored its own 
literature. Intelligence, discrimination, persever­
ance, and knowledge of bibliography and the biblio­
graphic principles on which libraries are organized 
appear to be characteristics possessed by successful 
academic librarians. But there is no evidence that 
another advanced degree in a subject specialty 
would help library school students acquire these 
characteristics. Another advanced degree would, 
however, assure that librarians who provide ser­
vices to scholars understand the intellectual norms 
of disciplines recognized within the scholarly com­
munity and the importance of primary and second-



586 /  & RL News

ary sources in them. The greater significance of 
another advanced degree is that it would strengthen 
the credibility o f the librarian within the scholarly 
community and lead to adjunct and joint appoint­
ments in teaching departments, routine member­
ships on dissertation committees, participation in 
departmental research seminars, and to the teach­
ing of courses on bibliography in these depart­
ments.

The sad history of recent and continuing closings 
of library schools informs us that not only have 
librarians failed to become a part of the scholarly 
process, they have become marginal in the eyes of 
campus administrations as well. More training 
through acquisition of advanced degrees will not by 
itself save librarians or library schools from the 
endangerment of the species or give them the 
credibility that they may deserve. The situation is 
graver and the problem deeper than that.

Where are we then to look for leadership, and 
why have our leaders failed to respond? Deans of 
library schools (when they are not struggling with 
provosts intent on closing their doors) have until 
recently had considerable success in placing their 
graduates, and the training of academic librarians is 
only a small component of their programs. In short, 
academic librarians have not appeared to require 
assistance from them. The directors of large re­
search libraries might have helped direct attention 
to the marginality of librarians in their campus

communities, but directors are increasingly limited 
to short terms o f service, and are more disposed to 
ally themselves to campus administrations than 
with campus research faculties. In any case, few 
have close ties to their teaching faculties and the 
forming of alliances with campus deans, whether 
they be in the library school or a discipline, must not 
rank very high among the many pressing issues that 
they confront daily. The agendas of the library 
associations, although influenced by academic li­
brarians, have of late shown little concern with 
issues of professional credentialing.

The fact is that changes in both training of li­
brarians and in the organization of services to 
scholars are in order, and it is still not too late for li­
brary schools, associations, and directors to begin 
reviewing curriculum requirements for students 
who choose careers in academic libraries, to inves­
tigate models that will promote library/faculty in­
teraction, and to set a research agenda that will ad­
vance our understanding of scholarly information- 
seeking. In the meantime, academic librarians 
need to obtain as much formal training as possible, 
to acquire second master’s and Ph.D.s and to begin 
to find ways of putting that training to work in the 
institutions in which they are employed. The 
marginalization o f librarians will not be reduced at 
once, but it will be reduced over time. That reduc­
tion will derive not from the holding of the advanced 
degree, but from performing solidly with it. ■  ■