ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


July/August 1991 / 437

To “degree” o r not to “d egree”: Academic librarians and 
subject expertise

B y  J e a n - P i e r r e  V. M. H e ru b e l

Bibliographer, Philosophy and. Political Science 
Purdue University

The qualifications that should define the profes­
sional librarian are often and vigorously debated. I f
the MLS is generally upheld as the sine qu a non for
academic, public, and special librarians, the value
of additional “paper” qualification is not. In acade­
mia, however, the attainment of a research-ori-
ented terminal degree is a given; it is vitally impor­
tant, if not essential, for college and university
faculty. Wherever librarians have faculty status,
they are likely to find their portfolios being evalu­
ated as if they were teaching faculty. Academic
librarians who do not have faculty status may find it
even more difficult to win professional respect
from teaching and research faculty. O f course, a
librarian does not need a subject master’s, much
less a doctorate, in order to make a major contribu­
tion to an academic community, but lack of aca­
demic credentials may make it veiy hard to be
perceived as making a significant contribution and
impossible to be perceived as an equal partner in
the educational enterprise.

Some will say that the academic librarian has to
play various roles and meet various expectations, 
often with little institutional support. This is not
unusual. Teaching faculty complain of inadequate
support. However, the fact is, an academic librar­
ian will never recoup in salary the financial and
emotional investment that graduate degrees re­
quire. Moreover, timing graduate study is uniquely
difficult for librarians. I f they enter library school
with graduate degree(s) in hand, they have to
struggle with cognitive dissonance or “unlearn” 
their previous graduate acculturation and later
reintegrate it into their librarianship.1 I f  they try to
pursue graduate education after they become li­
brarians, they may encounter various constraints. 
Some colleges and universities do not permit fac­
ulty or professional ranks to pursue “in-house” 
degrees, and the logistics (not to mention the costs) 
of attending another institution may be daunting. 
In any case, pursuing graduate education is diffi­
cult; doing it while holding down a full-time job is 
much more difficult. The bifurcation of roles as 
librarian and embryonic scholar has to be stressful, 
and the stress can be exacerbated by the demands

 
 
 

 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 

 
 

 

 
 
 

 
 

of disciplinary acculturation, which the librarian 
must balance with the professional acculturation of 
librarianship. This process o f reconciliation can be 
especially challenging if a doctorate is pursued.2

Yet, despite the clear costs attached to graduate 
degrees, academic librarians need them in order to 
be credible. Nor is credibility the only reward they 
offer. In-depth acquaintance with the intellectual 
agenda of a discipline sensitizes the academic li­
brarian to the fields of research and the sociology of 
knowledge within that discipline. An informed 
appreciation of a discipline’s mission and growth is 
especially critical to collection development that 
supports an institution’s or a department’s research 
and instructional vision. Subject expertise can only 
enhance a librarian’s ability to interpret the collec­
tions to students and scholars. Public services can 
make a rich contribution to the educative process 
when they are performed by librarians who have a 
solid grounding in a subject discipline.

While it is debatable what formal qualifications 
an academic librarian should ideally possess, a 
requirement of certain knowledge bases and a 
sound appreciation for the mission of higher edu­
cation should be accepted. Graduate education in 
a subject provides useful tools— they may be lan­
guages, statistics, methodologies— and instills a 
scholarly ethos. It is indicative of an intellectual 
commitment to the goals of scholarship that the 
teaching faculty has a right to expect of academic 
librarians. A period of guided intellectual effort in 
a subject indelibly affects those who experience it. 
The benefits translate into social and intellectual 
cachet in a community which implicitly maintains 
that to be equal though different, academic librari­
ans should undergo this rite of passage. ■  ■

Jeffrey  Cooper, Janet Gertz, and Mark Sandler, 
“From Ph.D. to MLS: Retraining in librarianship,” 
L ibrary Jou rn al 112 (May 1, 1987): 41— 2.

2B. M. Clark and T. M. Gaughan, “Socialization 
o f library school students: A framework for analysis 
o f a current problem,” Jou rn al o f  E ducation f o r  
Librarian ship 19 (Spring 1979): 283-93.



438 / C&RL News

Cornell math faculty donate funds for endowment
Cornell University math professors have begun 

teaching extra classes and donating those earnings 
toward a half-million-dollar endowment fund to 
buy books and periodicals for their library.

Cornell’s library system has been increasing its 
acquisition budget at double the rate of inflation for 
years. The university, in its $1.25 billion capital 
campaign announced last October, is planning to 
provide $30 million for the university library’s 
acquisition endowment. However, the added reve­
nue won’t arrive for some time, and the math 
faculty does not wish to risk a decline in the quality 
of the library that is so vital to their research.

“Mathematics is a contemplative science,” says 
department chair Keith Dennis. “In mathematics 
the research laboratory is the library. There are not 
many machines that will help you do math— unlike 
physics or chemistry. There is no multimillion- 
dollar equipment for doing math—with the excep­
tion of computers.”

Three years ago, Dennis hit upon the idea of 
teaching a course— the department chair is a non­
teaching position— and donating the funds to the 
library. When his dean approved the idea, Dennis 
began speaking with his faculty, one-on-one, about 
raising money for their library. He asked them to 
teach one extra course over the next five years and

donate the funds to the library, provided he could 
raise matching funds. Dennis reports that about 90 
percent of his department has or will participate, 
and that outside funding is beginning to come in as 
well. A number of the faculty received outside 
funding for research, travel, sponsoring confer­
ences, etc., that they have also donated. Others 
wrote checks. The mathematics faculty have col­
lected over $70,000 for the endowment, which 
they plan to open July 1 of this year. Dennis hopes 
to raise $250,000 from faculty contributions and 
match that with another $250,000.

At first, the idea didn’t sit right with all o f those 
now participating. Professor Moss Sweedler, for 
instance, grumbled when he was invited to partici­
pate. But as he considered financial realities of the 
periodicals market, he decided to participate. “An 
endowment that will pay for subscriptions to 50 
journals a year will make a big difference in the 
short run. But I ’m skeptical of how much of a 
difference this money will make compared to the 
magnitude of the problem,” said professor John 
Guckenheimer.

Mathematics librarian Steve Rockey reports 
he’ll spend $110,000 on periodicals, a 30 percent 
increase over last year’s $84,000. Most math jour­
nals cost about $200 per year. ■  ■