Way back in 2005, I wrote a post about tenure for librarians in which I argued against it. Since then, I’ve spent six years as a librarian with faculty rank and no tenure and three years as a librarian on the tenure track, and I can say that my feelings against tenure status for librarians has only grown stronger.
When I told one of my colleagues that I was leaving for Portland Community College, she said “are you sad you’re not going to be doing scholarship anymore?” Why wouldn’t I? Portland Community College already has 3 Library Journal Movers and Shakers (I’ll be #4!) and faculty who’ve published and presented some really thought-provoking work. I wrote a book and a bunch of articles and presented a ton when I wasn’t on the tenure track. I did plenty of it on my own time and some of it while at work. As a tenure-track librarian, I do plenty of scholarship on my own time and some of it while at work. I know at some places, librarians are told that they can take x% of their time for scholarship or that they can take one day/week for it. At most places, that isn’t the case. You try to fit it into your work week while you’re doing your “real work” and are expected to take it home with you because it’s how you’re going to keep your job. And expectations around time for research change with different library administrations, which can be stressful (says the woman on her third UL and AUL for public services in 3 years).
For me, doing scholarship is actually fun. I’ve enjoyed the articles I’ve written and the research I’ve done. I may not have done all of it had I not been tenure-track, but this kind of stuff is fun for me. However, there are lots of people for whom the idea of research, writing, and presenting at conferences is horrifying. There are even more people who just have no interest in doing it. And this is why we have a literature with a small number of gems amongst a whole lot of of mediocrity. There are many studies that are so poorly designed that they do more to obfuscate knowledge than to advance it. I recently read an article that concluded that an one method of instruction was no more effective than another. The authors had a tiny sample size (one class with each methodology — 2 classes total), had a person teach the class who’d never used one of the chosen methods before, and based effectiveness on recall (using a poorly-designed quiz) rather than the students’ ability to actually do research or satisfaction with the session. In the end, the authors didn’t even seem to have confidence in their own findings. What can anyone actually learn from this??? And yet this was published in one of our profession’s top journals. There are so many articles out there in the library literature exactly like this. Librarians get little education in research design and then are told they must do research to keep their jobs. If we can barely find the time to do our scholarship, is it any wonder that we don’t have time to become good researchers? I would argue that the library literature would be much better (though smaller) if not for the tenure track and that many of those who have published the gems would have done so with or without a mandate to do so.
The idea that librarians need tenure to be on faculty-level committees seems like a red herring to me, because there are so many institutions at which librarians who are not tenure-track (and even not faculty) serve on these committees. I chaired an academic committee of disciplinary faculty members at Norwich and served on another faculty senate committee, all while being “staff with faculty rank.” I wasn’t thought of as less than, but as different. Then again, I’m also ok with being seen as different from disciplinary faculty, which some librarians seem uncomfortable with. I know we are different. I think librarians are much more effective when they show what unique value they bring to a collaboration with faculty than when they try to show how they’re just like disciplinary faculty. We’re just not.
I’ve come to find that we have a lot more in common with some student affairs units than we do with disciplinary faculty. Units like the writing center, the learning/tutoring center, and the career center provide a mix of point-of-need and course-integrated instruction as well as significant outreach. Some even teach credit courses (our College Success classes are taught by student life faculty). The staff or faculty in these units are not tenure-track, yet they often serve on faculty senate committees because they have a valuable POV. The Director of PSU’s Learning Center shares knowledge and presents at conferences. She’s very involved in assessment. I kind of wish more academic librarians would see themselves as having a kinship with student affairs (and vice versa) because there are some valuable collaborations that can happen between those units. We really do share the same goals.
One of the biggest arguments for tenure is academic freedom, but I have felt less free to write and say what I think over the past three years than I did at any other point in my career. I don’t think it has to be this way, but tenure can push people to take the safe route, which Nicole Pagowsky alluded to in her most recent post. I think the tenure process can silence librarians early in their careers when they’re most likely to want to challenge the status quo. By the time a librarian has achieved tenure, he or she has a specific scholarly agenda and most will not likely make a radical u-turn in what they research and write/speak about. Also, over time, it’s easier to become complacent about things that would have fired you up five or six years before.
I thought I’d have no problem sailing through the tenure process since I give a lot of talks and have no problem writing a lot (as you’ve probably noticed), but then I learned that it wasn’t just about having x# of presentations and peer-reviewed publications (in fact, I got dinged for giving too many presentations in my first year). It was about doing it all the “right way.” And figuring out what the “right way” is can be just about impossible, because what’s right is in the eye of the beholder. One person may value being on certain committees more than scholarship. Someone else may feel entirely opposite. For some it’s about national service and for others it’s local/state service. In some cases it may be about how well-liked you are. For me, having a blog with a national audience was more of an albatross than an asset. I’m ashamed to admit that I considered shuttering this blog after my last promotion and tenure review, because the feedback I received was so vague that it wasn’t clear to me what specifically I’d done wrong and how I could fix it. I felt paralyzed.
At Norwich, I did write one or two things on my blog that got me into trouble. My Director was a great protector of intellectual freedom, so she didn’t sell me out when a vendor rep called her to complain about a blog post I’d written about them. But when I did write something my Director or a colleague didn’t like or felt was inappropriate, they discussed it with me directly and was able to talk it out and apologize for anything that might have been inappropriate or hurtful. And I learned from those experiences how to be more politic in writing about work. I still don’t know specifically what I wrote over the past three years that was wrong and who was bothered by it. I wish I did because I’d gladly apologize to them and improve based on their feedback.
I believe that academic freedom can be protected contractually. If it’s in your contract, it’s law. At PSU, we’re union-represented and if something is done that violates the union contract (which includes academic freedom), we can file a grievance. Even without a union, a contract is a contract. And let’s not forget that tenure seems to be no guarantee of full academic freedom (see Kansas, the University of Saskatchewan, etc.). Also, what good is academic freedom when it only protects a small percentage of the workforce? Oh, I deserve academic freedom, but my fixed-term and adjunct faculty colleagues don’t?
It can be exceedingly difficult to do things on the tenure track that are daring or controversial or that run counter to what is valued in your library. At my current job, lower-division instruction is greatly undervalued. While these are the students with the greatest needs and at the greatest risk of leaving college, focusing on liaison instruction to upper-division undergrads and graduate students and outreach to disciplinary faculty is far more valued. As the person who coordinates our lower-division instruction and also has four disciplinary liaison areas, I constantly felt pulled in two directions by what I knew was right and what I knew was valued. I tried to find a balance between things like outreach to get my faculty to deposit their work into PDXScholar (our repository) and providing outreach to our college success classes, but I often found myself thinking about what will look good to my colleagues and I can’t say it never swayed my decisions.
I also find it strange that in the tenure process, you’re often evaluated by a group of people who may not supervise you, report to you, or have much of anything to do with your work. My direct reports were never on my P&T committee because they were not tenure-track faculty (they were fixed-term), nor were they asked for their opinions on my performance as a manager. I’ve heard horror stories from other institutions about people using the promotion and tenure process as a weapon against people they don’t like. It’s certainly a process ripe for abuse by those who are passive-aggressive or grudge-holders because so much of it is essentially about one’s personal feelings about a person and their body of work. I know there is great variety in how the tenure process is structured at different institutions, but I’ve heard too many negative things to believe it worth whatever minor gains in status we may (or may not) get from it.
From talking to people about my impending job change, I get the sense that a few people see it as a step down from what I’m currently doing. One person looked at me quizzically and said “and are you happy about this change?” Moving away from the tenure-track is not a step down in any way. In fact, I feel a freedom I haven’t felt in a long time to focus more fully on student success. I feel the same thing with the move to a community college. When you’re at a former college that is trying to become a world-class research university, you don’t have the library staffing to focus enough on either the research mission or the teaching mission. I’m so excited to be going to a place where the priority is clear. This is why I went into librarianship; not to do research or be thought of as faculty, but to teach, support teaching, and support student success. I’ve worked at a small private rural teaching university and a large public urban research university and I feel like a large urban community college combines all of the things I loved most about each of those settings.
Photo credit: Carrot And Stick by Allan on Flickr
It breaks my heart that someone as clearly talented as you are was stymied by the (unwritten) policies and politics of a large urban university with a tenure system. Everything you say is right and I know, so long as I don’t rock the boat, so long as I tow the line, so long as I make incremental “progress”, so long as I make the effort when asked I’ll have no problem getting tenure. But then what? For librarians tenure seems to be a recipe for a culture of apathy and a stalwart commitment to the status quo… though nothing is monolithic. I’d like to hope that there are vibrant, risk-taking, envelope-pushing environments where tenure track librarians (or not) can flourish.
I’m sure there must be some wonderful libraries where the tenure track encourages professional development, risk-taking, and growth. And there are probably plenty that don’t try to bang round librarians into square holes. But too often it silences people and makes them make safe choices at a time in their careers when people are most open and enthusiastic about risk-taking. It’s a shame.
I think the negatives about tenure you bring up ring true for many disciplines, and being evaluated by peers and others on campus not involved in the candidate’s work is standard. I definitely agree the tenure process could use much improvement, but I find it beneficial otherwise for issues of status, working with faculty, and as a way the campus shows what work is valued and later protected (I say this as someone also at the 3 year mark). The risk-taking issues I brought up in my blog post might be present for all faculty. And even though risk could be more supported, because I have greater status and an expectation to publish as a tenure-track librarian, I find I am able to use my status to a degree to question power structures and get into more critical territory. As someone who works very closely with student affairs and other staff on campus, I can see that there is much less protection for staff and little to no time provided for pursuing research interests that is otherwise afforded to library faculty. Thanks for writing this, always good to have engaged discussions on this stuff!
Oh yes, many of these things are the same in other disciplines. I agree that there are definitely some benefits to tenure, but the negatives — in my opinion — far outweigh them.
I’ve always felt conflicted about tenure for librarians and your post articulates this conflict well. Thank you for your honesty and for not always taking the “safe” route. And congratulations on the new job!
Thanks Amanda! It was great seeing you in person at Library Instruction West!
Briefly, I think you bring many of the commonly-known concerns regarding the tenure system (and not just for librarians), though you also seem greatly (and naturally) influenced by your personal (and somewhat unique) path through that system at a particular institution. I did want to call out your comments about student affairs, as I’ve written about those connections, as well, and I think the parallels have only become stronger in recent years. I have held tenure at 3 institutions, and currently do not, and I agree that one does not need to be tenure-system to do good, scholarly work. For you, it seems that the institutional fit, rather than the nature of the appointment, is what you feel will help you to do your best work, and that ‘s what is important.
Thanks for the comment, Scott. Your current position (and how you’ve rocked it) shows that one doesn’t need to be tenured to have an important leadership role on one’s campus or do good scholarly work and national service. 🙂
I am much closer to Nicole’s vantage-point. I think faculty and tenure track status for librarians is crucial, for academic freedom and for the way that librarians are perceived within a campus community. The ongoing professional development that the tenure process promotes makes for a good intellectual culture, it promotes collaboration with teaching faculty, and it probably broadens one’s horizons as a librarian.
But what about all the librarians who have academic freedom, are seen as partners by faculty, and serve on campus committees and don’t have tenure status? I guess I haven’t seen any evidence in the literature that librarians are more likely to collaborate with faculty if they are tenure-line.
I’ve worked at three higher education institutions, and the one where the librarians were tenured and in the faculty union was by far the worst working experience I’ve had. Part of it was the culture of apathy, part of it was the seeming inherent passive-aggressive nature of librarians, but most of it was the strange focus on scholarship over service. My job was to manage a not insignificant collections budget and small department, but in order to keep that job, regardless of how well I did it, I would have to produce scholarship at a level that was nearly another part-time job. I left that place for many reasons, but the ridiculous expectations of tenure-track librarians (mind you, just the new ones — the rest were grandfathered into a more lenient system) was definitely up there.
Where I am now, I have neither contract nor tenure to secure my job status, which works in the culture of the place. My work output is what matters, and at that I’m no slacker. I also have the freedom to blog as I want, present as I want, and travel to conferences (mostly) as I want. The key here is that service is valued over scholarship, which is frankly what most of us got into this field to do in the first place.
One more thing. Our research and instruction librarians have build solid relationships with faculty over the years. The value of our collaboration is not lost on them. Granted, we have honorary faculty status in the College of Arts & Sciences, but that guarantees nothing except a place at some of the tables. The rest comes with showing them the benefits of working with us, and I would say most of our faculty are convinced of that.
Anna, I don’t think anyone would accuse you of being a slacker! I think the problem at many institutions is that supposedly scholarship is supposed to be “part of your job expectations,” but because your “teaching” duties are full-time, you’re expected to devote your personal time to this. It’s one thing if you choose to spend your personal time on scholarship and service; another entirely when it’s forced upon you. Freedom is a big thing for me too and, like you, I don’t plan to be any less active just because I’m no longer on the tenure track. I’ll just channel my energies to those things I’m passionate about.
I agree. I’ve worked at three universities. At one, it was a union environment and librarians were part of the professional staff union, not the faculty union. At the second, librarians had a tenure equivalent, though it wasn’t called tenure. Those dossiers still went to the campus P&T committee though. And my current one, we’re faculty but non-tenure track.
The tenure-equivalent was by far the job I liked least. There were absolutely reasons for that beyond that status, but the three years I was there it felt like an axe of doom hanging over my head. I’d much rather be someplace like I am now, where I absolutely can publish – it’s highly encouraged – but where the impact it has on my reviews and such is clear.
My comment pertains to the whole notion some people within librarianship that you are taking a “step down” by accepting a non-tenured position at a community college as this type of thinking (some may academic snobbery) is divisive and not needed.
When I left my academic library position in small liberal arts college (where I had faculty status) to accept my current job at an amazing public library where I would get to combine several of my strongest skill sets in a vibrant community, I had lots of comments about how I was taking a step down and I was even dramatically told by one person that I was “committing career suicide and the doors of academia would not be easy to open again if I stayed too long in public librarianship”. Needless to say, I was sure to send copies of the article when I was named a Mover and Shaker to the person who predicted my “career suicide”.
I think all forms of librarianship have their challenges and opportunities and no type of library is “better” than the other. For each person, it is recognizing your strengths and also staying true to the reasons you became a librarian. I admire those that wish to do scholarly research to move the profession forward as much I admire those that want to commit their time to student success or public service.
I am excited for you Meredith and I wish you all the best on your new position. I can’t wait for updates.
Janie, that former colleague sounds like such a snob! Well, with your many successes in the years I’ve known you, you certainly got the last laugh. I’ve experienced that feeling of being looked down upon by some librarians at ARLs and prestigious liberal arts schools myself (not most, just a few people). It’s crazy. It’s as if they think we’re high school students looking at college rankings, when we’re actually people who should be looking for the best organizational culture and opportunities that play to our strengths. I’m glad you found a good home at PPL and I hope I have the same good fortune at PCC. 🙂
Typing too fast and should have proofread, just caught two typos. Should be:
My comment pertains to the whole notion by some people within librarianship…
When I left my academic library position in a small liberal arts college …
sigh. sorry about that.
Well put. I’ve worked as a professional librarian for four different large research universities. At two, I had faculty status and was tenured at one of them, while the other two classify librarians as staff (including my current employer). I’ve experienced or witnessed many of your points about the arbitrary nature of tenure processes, but I would point out that one thing they all have in common is that they consume, collectively, an enormous amount of work hours. I’ve often referred to this ‘work’ as the tenure tax that is placed on libraries that have faculty librarians. The meetings, dossier prep, etc. all take large amounts of time, and while these activities also take place in libraries without faculty status for librarians, in my experience they consume far less time and headspace.
It’s well documented that as our libraries grow ever more complex in terms of the roles we must fill, we are consistenly shrinking in terms of the number of people we have on the payroll (often in both absolute and relative terms, a nefarious double whammy) to do work. As such, we need to focus every ounce on our effort on performing work that benefits our communities. As you point out, often the demands of tenure make it unsafe to do the work that needs to be done for those we serve and point people toward the work they have to do to survive in their career. That’s an unsustainable schism.
With regard to academic freedom, I would suggest that anyone arguing that faculty status ensures that librarians can avail themselves of academic freedom and enjoy their support of their institution should, in fact, try this out with their employer. As someone mired in a long-running legal issue that is pretty much all about about intellectual and academic freedom, I can say without hesitation that I have no doubt that the former employer where I had tenure as faculty would have thrown me under the bus in the face of such a lawsuit, while my current employer–where I have no faculty status–has been a stalwart and unequivocal defender of my academic freedom, even when it’s been unpleasant for them. Academic freedom–when push comes to shove–is really about institutional culture and values, not an individual’s status, as your story and my saga make clear.
Yes! I can’t believe I missed that elephant in the room. The amount of time we spend on obsessively looking for evidence to put in our tenure portfolio, putting together the tenure portfolio, and then all of the people who review the portfolio and write the letters…. it’s mind-boggling. The year that I served on P&T, I was completely swamped in the Fall between reviewing portfolios and teaching classes. Now the PSU Library is moving to a committee of the whole model where EVERYONE is involved in the reviews. It should help make things more fair for those being reviewed, but my gosh… the amount of time lost to this that could be spent helping students and faculty. Sigh…
And I agree 100% with you about academic freedom. People talk and talk about it, but I know few people who really pushed the boundaries and tested that freedom and support. I’m so sorry for what you’re going through, Dale, and I’m glad you’re at a place that supports you so steadfastly. When I talked to my union rep about my blog, his suggestion was that I should show my blog posts to my colleagues before I publish them to make sure they’re ok with them. While that might help me achieve tenure, it’s not academic freedom, IMHO.
I haven’t yet been on the tenure track, but your blog is certainly thought-provoking and very much appreciated! I come from a strong research background – a desire to research is what brought me into librarianship. I completed a research-focused MA before my MLS, which had a research component focused on academic libraries. So I very much do hope to find a position where scholarships is a substantial part of what I do, while the effects are still practical and beneficial in the university library community.
For me, one sign of health is that the landscape of university libraries as a whole offers both faculty with rank and faculty without rank positions. Those people whose strengths are in the traditional combination of research/instruction/service can do all three, and those whose whole heart is in developing top-notch student services can do that as well. I’ve always wondered, even in traditional academic disciplines, if we couldn’t have a mixture of positions, some teaching/instruction focused, and others research/innovation focused. Why not have colleagues divide up the whole work of a university (library) and each do what they do best?
Why not have colleagues divide up the whole work of a university (library) and each do what they do best?
A very good question. Wouldn’t that be the ideal?
Thanks for this post, Meredith – it’s certainly got me thinking about some very important issues! Your position makes a lot of sense, and I agree with much of your reasoning. I also strongly agree that moving to a CC is a great move and it’s an absurd pretense for some librarians to think that they’re doing more important work serving elite or wannabe elite institutions.
That said, I’ve always been a staunch advocate for tenure for librarians and I still am (I’m a little bit behind where you are/were at this point in the tenure clock myself) for (at least) a couple of reasons:
1. It ensures that librarians and the library have equal power within the institution – we can’t be pushed around as easily by administration and by other departments, and we are more likely to have an equal say in important decisions that affect students.
2. $$$$ We deserve the same compensation as the ‘teaching faculty’ (we are, of course, also teachers), and if we weren’t faculty there would be little reason for administration (or the politicians or trustees they answer to) to pay us faculty salaries (even if we were unionized, though that would certainly make it harder). In other words, faculty status is one of our protections against the relentless downgrading of our status, dignity and worth in the neoliberal university.
A word about scholarship. What you write about mediocrity in scholarly publishing is just as true about other fields as it is about LIS! I know that LIS literature is notorious in this regard, but a perusal of journals in other fields doesn’t really leave one feeling much better about those, either. Everyone in the tenure game is forced to be productive, but only a certain percentage really do it out of love for scholarship. You can see this in both the drop-off in productivity after tenure, and the poor quality of production before it. And yes, conformism and not offending anyone as the surest ways to tenure are corrosive of the kind of open, adventurous exploration.
I’ve always thought that tenure should also reward service and teaching not just as adjuncts to scholarship. Why is scholarship necessary, not just for librarians but for any one, when forcing people to produce is just creating this mountain of largely worthless material, which, as you note, may actually *hurting* the disciplines? I suppose the reason is to prove that one is a leader in one’s field, or at least that one is making a significant contribution to the field. But we know – perhaps better than scholars in other fields – that there are many different ways of making contributions to one’s field!
Rather than give up on tenure, I think tenure should be reformed. Or, alternatively, a wholly different system ought to be devised. But until that happens, my view is that librarians as a profession have to protect themselves in an increasingly corporatized academia that is threatening to commodify scholarship and turn us all into contingent wage workers with little or no benefits and no job security.
I totally respect your support for tenure for librarians, but my experiences at PSU contradict the notion that tenure protects the library from being “pushed around.” The library was much more protected and held in much higher regard at the previous institution I worked at.
I think you’re right that tenure doesn’t have to be the way it is at many institutions. In a perfect world, it would be all about helping junior faculty members to develop and improve based on their interests and strengths.
One other point that I had intended to make was that we as a profession are not prepared, globally, to do academic research. Many professional librarians have only a bachelor’s degree and an MLS, and neither of those degrees typically prepares or qualifies one to do publishable research. Of course, a large set of us also have second graduate degrees, whether a master’s or PhD or both, but depending on the nature of that degree, it may also not have prepared one to do the kind of research that takes place in organizations.
For example, those of us who come from a humanities background–in other words, a sizable chunk of academic librarians–were often trained in close reading and critical theory (those coming from literary programs) or in historiographical methodology, etc. In libraries, much of the research we do and need to do concerns methodologies more commonly found in the social sciences. As well educated as I consider myself, I am an amateur in the world of statistical analysis, and no amount of pretty prose is going to hide that from someone who knows better. This explains why I, personally, tend to write on areas where I can parse text and meaning rather than deal in numbers.
In the previous comment, Ian states that “we are, of course, also teachers.” That’s not a true statement, and only applies to a certain and diminishing subset of academic librarians. Many of the librarians I supervise are more similar in nature to other types of staff on campus, whether that be program adminstrators or IT staff, so trying to align their work with what faculty do is a difficult enterprise bound to fail.
Agreed. I was amazed when my article was accepted by C&RL this year because I know nothing about data analysis and feel like I didn’t do the data we collected in our survey justice. Most of us are totally out of our depth when it comes to doing anything beyond writing up a case study or doing a lit review.
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Well said, well said. While I have no experience seeking tenure, I have worked with both tenure-track and non-tenure track librarians. Some of the research I’ve seen presented has been excruciatingly shady and worse – involved up to 6 people just so they can plop something in their portfolios or CVs. I have too often seen arrogance associated with tenure… Glad I don’t have to see it everyday as I now also work at a community college. More time to focus on what’s really important as a librarian – learners.
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