ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


61 0  /  C&RL News ■ July/August 2000

ing toward special projects. At some institu­
tions, the salary savings could be used for 
other purposes, such as pay raises.

A less obvious advantage is morale. These 
new schedules are certainly a boost for those 
who got them, but there is also much less 
pressure on the other faculty to work during 
the summer months.

D isa d v a n ta g e s o f th e  n ew  sch ed u le
Coverage is the biggest disadvantage. If your 
spring and fall coverage would suffer or if 
the loads on remaining faculty would be too 
heavy, then this schedule cannot be a t­
tempted. By staggering the new schedules, 
we are only down one person in fall and 
spring. Faculty will be working more refer­
ence desk hours during those semesters, al­
though this increase is relatively small com­
pared to the increase in reference desk hours 
the summer employees will work. On an 
annual basis, they will be working many more 
reference hours than their traditionally sched­
uled colleagues. However, these hours tradi­
tionally receive fewer questions than fall and 
spring reference hours.

Another disadvantage is missing commit­
tee meetings and having fewer opportunities 
to interact with colleagues. Membership on 
campus and statewide committees is expected 
of faculty, and a good solution to this situa­
tion has not been worked out. but commit­
tee sharing may be a possibility for some 
committees.

For those faculty on the traditional sched­
ule, there may be a perception of fewer over­
load opportunities (thus less salary), due to 
the lack of need for summer reference desk 
coverage. In the past, a faculty member could 
combine a special project with reference work. 
Since reference coverage was always needed, 
this approach to summer projects was typical. 
Now, with coverage no longer the issue, the 
project is paramount. This shift may move more 
of the overload to departments that are project- 
oriented, like cataloging.

C o n c lu s io n
Overall, we believe this program will be 
beneficial to our library. It gives us consis­
tent coverage at the reference desk for all 
future summers. Originally, only one posi­
tion was going to have the shifted schedule, 
but a second employee lobbied the admin­

istration on the benefits of two employees. 
One faculty member could not work all of 
the hours on the reference desk, so recruit­
ing as in past years would have had to con­
tinue, but two faculty members could handle 
all of the hours.

P e rfe ct tim in g
The timing of our decision seems fortuitous. 
With our schedules and contracts in place 
for the upcoming year, we learned that the 
university is changing the way overload is 
distributed.

Departments will no longer have their own 
pool of money. Instead, the university will 
pool all the overload, and each faculty mem­
ber in each department will have to compete 
for that money. This would have been disas­
trous for the library, but by changing our 
schedules now to ensure necessary cover­
age of the reference desk in the summer, we 
headed off being forced into making essen­
tially the same changes next year.

While the outcome of a forced change may 
have been the same, it would not have been 
as happy as our voluntary program. ■

L e tte r to  th e  e d ito r

Orchids to C&RL News for publishing 
Scott R. Di Marco's piece “I know that’s 
what it said, but it’s not what we want” 
(June 2000), and orchids to Scott for men­
tioning my particular pet peeve as tip 1 
A perfectly appalling percentage of ads in 
our profession do n ’t give any hint about 
the salary range proposed. It’s very frus­
trating for job-hunters, and it probably pre­
vents some good matches from finding 
each other without waste of time.

Onions to the copy editor who passed 
“Awareness of current academic trends that 
effect library operations” (p. 504). That 
should be “affect.” “Effect” for completive, 
“affect” for incremental. Usages are slip­
ping all around us, but let’s hold the line 
on that one for a bit longer, if we can.

Great piece, though. I hope FIR offic­
e rs re a d  it, an d  m e n d  th e ir  w ays. 
— Christopher H. Walker, Indiana Univer­
sity, e-mail: chwalker@indiana.edu

mailto:chwalk.er@indiana.edu