ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


70

C urrent Comments
H. William Axf ord 

President, ACRL

The recent action of the state of Wisconsin 
in denying faculty status to librarians in the 
state system of higher education, and the 
wiping out of gains which had been made in 
this direction in the state colleges prior to the 
merger of the universities and colleges into a 
single system, should stand as a stark reminder 
of the difficulties still to be faced in achieving 
universal acceptance of the idea that academic 
librarians are entitled to unqualified member­
ship in the faculty club with all rights and 
privileges pertaining thereunto.

It is probable that many academic librarians 
will view this latest setback as another exam­
ple of a malicious conspiracy which stubbornly 
refuses to view objectively the library’s role in 
higher education and the true nature of the li­
brarian’s concomitant responsibilities within it 
—ergo, the “black ball” at individual institu­
tions and whole state systems such as Wiscon­
sin, Maryland, and California.

Disappointment, frustration, and anger are 
natural and predictable reactions under the cir­
cumstances. These emotions can have positive 
results if channeled in the right direction and 
not carried to an extreme. By this I mean that 
after the first emotional outburst has spent it­
self, the time for a cold, objective appraisal of 
what produced the ego jolting action in Wis­
consin and elsewhere is at hand.

As galling as it may seem, the fact which no 
amount of rationalization can obscure is that, 
when the chips were down, an image other 
than the one to which we aspire carried the 
day. Viewed in this light, the tragedy (in the 
classical Greek sense) of the Wisconsin affair 
and in every other instance where faculty status 
has been denied to academic librarians is the 
rejection of those librarians who, by dint of 
ego, ambition, and individual effort, did mea­
sure up to the standards demanded for admis­
sion to the club, but who were denied accept­
ance by the general image of academic librari­
ans in the minds of the ultimate decision mak­
ers and members of the teaching faculty who 
might otherwise have fought vigorously for ad­
mittance. The lesson which emerges with force 
from Wisconsin is that the burden of proof is 
on the supplicant, not on those who control the 
club.

In the struggle for full faculty status for aca­
demic librarians, it should be clearly recognized 
that our worst enemy is the self-limiting atti­
tude of the profession itself, not a conspiracy 
to deny us the privilege under any and all cir­
cumstances. I refer specifically to what might

be called the forty-hour week, eleven-month a 
year syndrome which plays a significant role in 
preventing the full exploitation of our intellec­
tual capabilities and our potential contribution 
to higher education, both individually and col­
lectively.

In almost any discussion of faculty status for 
librarians, the position will be vigorously ad­
vanced that, because of our peculiar working 
conditions, i.e., the forty-hour week and the 
eleven-month year, in matters related to promo­
tion and tenure., we cannot be measured against 
the same performance standards as the teaching 
faculty. It is enough, the argument goes, for a 
cataloger to be a good cataloger, and a refer­
ence librarian a good reference librarian, etc. 
Any additional requirements such as evidence 
of intellectual activity related to professional 
development through research, publication, 
work with professional organizations, and ser­
vice to the academic community are totally un­
realistic when applied to librarians.

This argument contains a kernel of truth in 
the sense that the working environment of far 
too many academic librarians does not provide 
either positive encouragement or adequate op­
portunities for professional development. On 
the other hand, the fact that a great many aca­
demic librarians have managed to measure up 
to the performance standards of the teaching 
faculty in spite of less than adequate working 
conditions is a clear indication of the basic 
weakness of this position. In essence, it reflects 
on the one hand a reluctance to develop the 
self-discipline necessary to establish a true pro­
fessional identity in spite of the obstacles and 
on the other a willingness to settle for a kind 
of secure mediocrity. It is this attitude which 
must be rooted out before we can expect deci­
sions such as the one in Wisconsin to become 
things of the past.

Crucial to the achievement of general ac­
ceptance of full faculty status for academic li­
brarians is the creation of a working environ­
ment where the opportunities for professional 
development are much closer in balance with 
the responsibilities than is presently the case for 
the profession as a whole. This goal should be 
a major thrust of any library faculty develop­
ment plan.

Here it should be noted that progress in this 
direction will inherently involve a fairly radical 
departure from many traditional approaches to 
library organization and administration for the 
simple reason that anything approaching a true 
professional environment cannot exist within



71

the traditional Weltanschauung of many aca­
demic library administrators, the self-limiting 
attitudes of many individual librarians as noted 
above, or the traditional library bureaucracy.

In  the spring of 1974, a library faculty devel­
opment plan was approved by the university 
administration at the University of Oregon 
whose early results seem very promising in 
terms of stimulating individual effort through 
the opportunities provided by a more profes­
sional working environment. Before presenting 
a brief description of the program, it should be 
noted that professional librarians at the Univer­
sity of Oregon have had full faculty status, in­
cluding professorial titles, since 1930. However, 
total salary parity, i.e., no member of the li­
brary faculty paid less than the minimum salary 
for his/her rank according to the faculty pay 
scale, has only been completely achieved within 
the past two years.

The proposal submitted to the university was 
quite simple, and its major selling point was 
probably the fact that no additional funding 
was required to put the program into opera­
tion. It simply asked that the nine-month con­
tract option be opened to library faculty upon 
request on an ad hoc basis, or as a permanent 
condition of employment. In all cases, the full 
twelve-month salary will remain in the library 
budget and be used to hire recent graduates of 
professional schools to replace those members 
of the faculty temporarily on leave. These indi­
viduals will be brought into the library as post­
graduate fellows. In addition to their profes­
sional assignments, they will be required to 
participate in four seminars involving current 
issues in academic librarianship along with oth­
er members of the library faculty.

Although the nine-month academic contract 
is an available option, the choice of all those 
participating in the program to date has been 
a quarter leave of absence without pay. There 
are several reasons for this. First of all, there 
are slight monetary advantages for the individ­
ual in going the route of a leave without pay. 
Secondly, the leave allows the individual to ac­
cumulate vacation which can be used to reduce 
the out-of-pocket costs of a quarter off. Finally, 
the leave of absence is much simpler to admin­
ister because of the differences in appointments 
and termination dates of fiscal and academic 
contracts.

The program went into effect on July 1, 
1974. To date, there have been five applicants. 
During summer session 1974, the head of Inter- 
library Loan worked as a volunteer in a univer­
sity library in Göttingen while engaged in an in­
tensive program to master the German lan­
guage. The head of the Map Collection has re­
quested leave for the spring quarter 1975 to 
begin editing for publication the manuscripts 
and field notebooks of several prominent, early 
Northwest botanists. The head of the Slide Col­

lection left on February 1, 1975, for a four- 
month stint as librarian on the Chapman Col­
lege Floating University of the World. The as­
sistant head of the science library will be 
spending summer session 1975 working on a 
biographical directory for a discipline where no 
such tool now exists. Finally, the Japanese cata- 
loger will be using the spring quarter of 1975 
to complete a master’s degree in linguistics. Of 
the five participants to date, three are tenured, 
two are not.

Whether or not this initial burst of enthusi­
asm has exhausted the reservoir of pent-up pro­
fessional energy still remains to be seen. How­
ever, this much can be said. The response to 
the program thus far by the library faculty has 
sent shivers of approval throughout the univer­
sity administration. In addition, its implications 
over the long run have not been lost on some 
of those members of the university faculty who 
have not been totally at ease with full faculty 
status for university librarians, in spite of the 
fact that this has been a reality at Oregon for 
over forty years. Nor have they been ignored 
by the library faculty itself who realize that the 
Committee on Promotion, Tenure and Achieve­
ment will not be very sympathetic to individ­
uals coming up for promotion and tenure who 
have not taken advantage of the opportunities 
for professional development which the pro­
gram offers. No claim is made that the program 
has or will, in and of itself, bring the responsi­
bilities of full faculty status and the opportuni­
ties to meet them closer together. However, it 
does appear to be a step in the right direction.

Midwinter
(Continued -from page 69)

ARL/ACRL Task Force on University Li­
brary Standards and reaffirms the need to 
continue the development of standards for 
university libraries in institutions which grant 
more than ten doctoral degrees per year.”

Supported the concept of public ownership of 
the public papers of major government offi­
cials, but voted to defer action on a policy 
statement on the subject, which had been 
presented by the Rare Books and Manu­
scripts Section Committee on Manuscripts 
Collections, in order to consider more ex­
tensively the specific language of the state­
ment.

Approved as a draft for publication in CirRL 
News the “Statement on the Reproduction 
of Manuscripts and Archives for Commercial 
Purposes,” prepared by the RBMS Commit­
tee on Manuscripts Collections and approved 
by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section. 
[Note: See p. 94 of this issue.]

Approved as policy the “Universal Gift Form