Many of the arguments made on behalf of giving tenure to librarians are, in fact, arguments for academic status. I have no objections to academic status for librarians, which usually means they are more involved in their institution’s governance, more inclined to participate in core academic activities like curriculum reform and course development, and more engaged in professional development.
However, those benefits can exist without librarians’ earning tenure. The issue of tenure should therefore be considered separately. To explore it, one needs to ask two questions: First, why does tenure exist? And second, do the reasons for its existence apply to librarians?
Tenure exists to protect the expression of ideas and opinions from political pressure inside and outside the institution. It allows scholars to explore controversial issues and to present unpopular perspectives in the classroom. Perhaps most important, tenure exists to support and protect the pursuit of diverse and specialized areas of research.
Universities create knowledge. Unlike the fabrication of a market commodity, the creation of knowledge requires nurturing, patience, and the highest tolerance for experimentation, and tenure helps create those favorable conditions. All new knowledge, no matter how specialized, is valuable to society: Professors who spend their careers investigating the religious rites of ancient civilizations contribute to our understanding of the world, just like professors who devote themselves to finding cures for diseases.
But even people inside academe acknowledge that tenure can have negative consequences. The unparalleled job security that it provides can be exploited, and often is. Only a tiny percentage of faculty members have their tenure revoked, and post-tenure review processes are not known for their rigor. But tenure for teaching and research faculty members has survived despite its flaws because, in the balance, tenure fosters the high level of creativity and independence that is essential to the mission of higher education.
Inertia also plays a role. In part, tenure continues to exist because it has been in force for so many years. The opportunity to apply for tenure has become a standard expectation of teaching faculty members. With nearly all colleges and universities offering tenure-track positions, it would be very difficult for an institution to recruit the best and brightest without giving tenure.
Those reasons for tenure do not apply to librarians. One of the most basic principles of our profession is that we collect and preserve the broadest possible range of scholarship, opinions, and ideas. The American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights” specifies that “materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.” If we are doing our jobs, we are building collections that, in the words of the ALA’s “Freedom to Read Statement,” represent “the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.” A corollary is that librarians are also expected to maintain neutrality with respect to political, moral, or aesthetic views.
Because we work under that different set of expectations, librarians do not need the academic-freedom protection that faculty members get through tenure. Our role is to collect material espousing a range of perspectives. Professors’ work, on the other hand, may well include communicating or even endorsing one particular controversial view.
Librarians do not need tenure in our role as teachers, either. Although many academic librarians teach courses, in the classroom we usually focus on research methods and information literacy. We teach technique more than content, and technique is seldom, if ever, controversial.
A few librarians engage in original research, but that is not the norm. We function as knowledge providers, not knowledge creators. Therefore, we do not need tenure to protect the pursuit of highly specialized research interests.
Some colleges and universities do offer tenure to librarians, but it is certainly not the norm that it is for faculty members, and its absence does not make an institution less appealing to prospective employees. According to a recent survey by the Association of College and Research Libraries, fewer than half of baccalaureate institutions give librarians tenure. In fact, the pressure associated with achieving tenure could actually discourage some applicants.
Librarians are in the service business. Some teach courses, and some do research, but those are not our primary activities. Most of us work year-round, which leaves little time to do original research. As a consequence, the tenure bar for librarians is often set lower than it is for other faculty members. But even in those cases, tenure expectations can mean less attention to our core responsibilities of providing services to library users.
When librarians argue for tenure, they often focus on the privileges: the opportunity to build closer relationships with faculty members, the right to “sit at the table” in matters relating to the governance of their institution, and salary equity. But those opportunities can and do exist at universities that do not give librarians tenure. In addition, lowering the tenure bar for librarians might well result in resentment from other faculty members, rather than in closer relationships with them.
Within academe, libraries are at the forefront of rapid and unprecedented change. Administrators need the flexibility to respond to and direct change, which means encouraging librarians to rethink their responsibilities and roles. The tenure process could hamper that flexibility because librarians with tenure do not have the same incentives to adapt to change.
Tenure for librarians is not necessary. It provides few benefits beyond job security for the individual and may work against the library’s best interests.
Deborah A. Carver is university librarian at the University of Oregon.
http://chronicle.com Section: Libraries Volume 52, Issue 6, Page B10