College and Research Libraries Tenured Librarians in Large University Libraries Karen F. Smith, Tamara U. Frost, Amy Lyons, and Mary Reichel The article is based on a 1979 suroey of 530 tenured librarians in thirty-three large academic libraries. The professional productivity of the librarians pre- and post-tenure is examined as well as the tenure criteria and evaluation process applied at the time the suroeyed librarians received tenure. Comparisons to the situation in 1979 are drawn. The mobility pattern of ten- ured librarians is also explored. II n 1979, four librarians at State University of New York at Buf- falo surveyed tenured librari- - ans at thirty-three large aca- demic libraries. The survey developed because the authors had questions for which they were unable to find answers in the professional literature, such questions as How productive are librarians before and after tenure? What are the most com- mon scholarly and professional activities for librarians? What is the probability of a librarian leaving a tenured position? For what reasons have librarians left tenured positions and under what circumstances would they leave their present tenured positions? What are the criteria and proce- dures used to award tenure to librarians at universities? Have the criteria and proce- dures become more stringent over t~e? The survey was designed to gather data on the characteristics and accomplish- ments of tenured librarians. The findings presented here, while primarily descrip- tive, do provide base data which individ- uals and library personnel committees can use for comparative purposes. METHODOLOGY In the fall of 1979, postcards were sent to directors of ARL libraries to verify that their librarians had faculty status and ten- ure. Thirty-three library directors agreed to participate in the survey, and question- naires were distributed through those di- rectors to 1,026 tenured librarians. The response rate varied from library to library, ranging from a low of 24 percent from the University of Colorado to a high of 71 percent from Iowa State University. The largest number of questionnaires from an individual library came from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. The complete list of libraries surveyed is given in table 1 along with the number of librarians who responded from each library and the response rate. Sex CHARACTERISTICS OF TENURED LIBRARIANS The characteristics of these tenured li- brarians are not surprising. The break- down by sex shows 39 percent males and 61 percent females, which agrees with the overall statistics reported for ARL librari- ans in the annual salary survey for 1979/ 80. 1 We infer from this that neither sex . is granted tenure at a rate disproportionate to its numbers in the total population (see table 2). Karen F. Smith is head, Documents, Lockwood Library, State University of New York at Buffalo. Tamara U. Frost is chief, Catalog Department, Stanford University Libraries. Amy Lyons is head, Circulation, Health Sci- ences Library, SUNY -Buffalo. Mary Reichel is head, Reference, Georgia State University. 91 92 College & Research Libraries TABLE 1 RESPONSE RATE OF LffiRARIES PARTICIPATING IN THE SURVEY Library Number of Librarians Responding Res_ponse Rate (Percent) Alabama AriZona Cincinnati Colorado Colorado State Florida Hawaii Houston illinois Indiana Iowa State Kansas Kent State Kentucky Louisiana State Miami Minnesota Ohio State Oklahoma State Oregon Purdue Rutgers South Carolina Southern California Southern illinois SUNY -Buffalo SUNY -Stony Brook Tennessee TexasA&M Virginia Virginia Polytechnic Washington State Wisconsin Total 9 14 7 5 14 15 21 7 48 30 20 18 13 18 16 11 43 28 9 21 8 25 10 6 26 17 7 15 9 3 6 13 17 529 60 40 58 24 61 38 43 58 62 33 71 55 57 58 43 55 58 58 56 68 36 60 53 40 67 53 30 68 64 43 43 41 57 52 Note: One other questionnaire was received with the library identifier obliterated. That questionnaire was used in the tabu- lations for a total of 530 responses. Age Librarianship is a profession with a sig- nificant proportion of older workers. In 1970, for instance, nearly 44 percent of all librarians were age forty-five or more. 2 One would expect tenured librarians to be older than average, and indeed, 54 per- cent of the librarians responding to this survey in 1979 were age 45 or more. Marital Status Nearly 62 percent of the respondents were married as versus never married, separated, divorced, or widowed. How- ever, only 53 percent had children. March 1984 TABLE 2 CHARACTERISTICS OF TENURED LffiRARIANS Characteristics Number Percent Sex (N=512) Female 313 61.1 Male 199 38.9 Age (N=511) 28-34 55 10.8 35-44 180 35.2 45-54 143 28.0 55-68 133 26.0 Marital Status (N = 510) Married 314 61.6 Other 196 38.4 Children (N = 518) None 242 46.7 One or more 276 53.3 Sala'J. (N = 482) $1 ,000-15,999 36 7.5 $16,000-20,999 239 49.6 $21,000-25,999 145 30.1 $26,000-35,999 50 10.4 $36,000-48,999 12 2.5 Contract Type (N = 510) 3.3 Academic year 17 Calendar year 493 96.7 v~rees (N = 522) A . 3 .6 MA 8 1.5 MLS/BLS 305 58.4 MLS/BA 135 25.9 MA/MA 2 .4 ABO certificate 11 2.1 PhD 8 1.5 MLS/PhD 37 7.1 Other 13 2.5 Rank (N =496) Level 1 (low) 29 5.8 Level2 146 29.4 Level3 235 47.4 Level4 (hi~) 86 17.3 Type of work = 507) Administration 111 21.9 Technical services 106 20.9 Public services 110 21.7 Collection development 90 17.8 Special collections 31 6.1 Documents, AV, maps 27 5.3 Other 32 6.3 Note: Rounding errors account for column totals * 100 per- cent. Salary The salaries of tenured librarians in this 1979 survey were only slightly higher than the figures for all librarians shown in the ARL salary survey for 1979-80. 3 The thirty-three libraries represented in this · survey reported a median overall salary just ,tJnder eighteen thousand dollars while the tenured librarians from those l l same libraries had a median salary of twenty thousand dollars. The spread of these two figures is surprisingly narrow. This seems to suggest that having tenure does not noticeably escalate one's salary. Comparable medians for teaching faculty are not available; however, a rough com- parison is provided by the fact that associ- ate professors from these institutions were earning an average of $22,700 that year on academic-year appointments. 4 Very few academic librarians have academic-year contracts. In this survey it was just 3 percent. Degrees Most of the tenured librarians in large university libraries have a bachelor's or master's degree in library science. One- third have a second master's or PhD de- gree in addition to the library degree. Rank Librarians at twenty of the thirty-three libraries have professorial titles. Six insti- tutions have numbered librarian ranks (li- brarian I, II, III) and another six use librar- ian ranks that have names similar to professorial ranks (i.e., assistant librarian, associate librarian, etc.). One library has no ranks at all. Respondents without pro- fessorial titles often volunteered informa- tion about the equivalency of their particu- lar rank structure. SiXty-five percent of the tenured librarians are in the top two ranks (levels 3 and 4 in table 2). According to the American Association of University Pro- fessors, 30.5 percent of all faculty hold the rank of professor, but among our tenured libraries only 17 percent hold the top rank. 5 fob Titles The respondents were quite evenly dis- tributed among the broad areas of admin- istration (22 percent), technical services (21 percent), public services (22 percent), and collection development (18 percent), with the balance being in special collec- tions, documents, audiovisuals, or maps or unclassifiable. TENURE Half of these tenured librarians earned Tenured Librarians 93 their library degrees during the 1960s, which was the decade of great expansion for higher education and a time of great shortages in the field of librarianship. However, it was not until after 1971, when the Association of College and Research Libraries adopted the Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Libraries that tenure became widely available to ac- ademic librarians. Not surprisingly, 75 percent of the librarians in the survey were granted tenure during the decade of the 1970s. Indeed, 30 percent waited eleven to thirty-seven years for tenure. As table 3 shows, however, the most typical pattern is for librarians to be granted tenure six years after earning their professional library degree, with the aver- age being nine years. At many institu- tions, tenure and promotion occur simul- taneously. However, 30 percent of the librarians reported that they were pro- moted in rank after tenure was granted and some even received two promotions. The median time between tenure and first promotion in rank was three years. Fur- thermore, over 40 percent of the librarians said that their professional involvement increased after tenure, while only 8 per- cent said that it decreased, and over 50 percent of the librarians felt that their job responsibilities increased after tenure. These are all indications that receiving tenure is not the culmination of achieve- ment for academic librarians. CRITERIA USED TO GRANT TENURE In order to determine whether the crite- ria for tenure had changed over time, the librarians were asked to rank the impor- tance of job performance, research/publi- cations/grants, library/university/com- munity service, contributions to professional associations, and continuing education as criteria for obtaining tenure at the time of their own tenure review and at the time of the survey (see table 4). Space was allowed for entering additional criteria. Overall, 57.6 percent of the librarians thought that the criteria had changed since they themselves were granted ten- ure. The percentage was higher (80 per- 94 College & Research Libraries March 1984 TABLE 3 YEARS IN WHICH TENURED LIBRARIANS EARNED THEIR LlliRARY DEGREES AND WERE GRANTED TENURE Year Number Year Library Degree Earned (N =504) 1934-1955 102 1956-1960 67 1961-1965 93 1966-1970 160 1971-1979 82 Year Tenure Granted (N =510) 1944-1960 18 1961-1965 35 1966-1970 75 1971-1975 210 1976-1979 172 Time between Library Degree Earned and Tenure Granted* (N =427) 1-5 years * 89 6-10 years 209 11-15 years 68 M~~~ ~ 21-37 years 25 Mean = 9 years Median = 7 years Mode = 6 years Time between Tenure Granted and Subsequent Promotion in Rank* (N = 158) 1~ ~ ~~~ ~ 4-5years 44 ~v~~ ~ Mean = 4 years Median = 3 years Mode= 1year *Excludes those with previous tenure . Note: Rounding errors account for column totals * 100 percent. Percent 20.2 13.3 18.5 31.7 16.3 3.5 6.9 14.7 41.2 33.7 20.8 48.9 15.9 8.4 5.9 20.2 32.9 27.8 19.0 cent) for librarians receiving tenure prior to 1970 and lower (30 percent) for librari- ans who received tenure between 1976 and 1979. Only three libraries seemed to have maintained stable criteria over a long period of years. For most of the other li- braries it was possible to observe a point in time after which the librarians agreed that the criteria did not change. But there were a few libraries that still seemed to be in a state of flux at the time of the survey. in importance in 1979. Libraries where 50 percent or more of the librarians ranked research and publication high at the time of the survey include Illinois, Ohio State, Oregon, Purdue, SUNY -Buffalo, SUNY- Stony Brook, Texas A&M, and Virginia. Libraries where five or more librarians agreed that research and publication had increased in importance include Houston, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio State, Rutgers, and Southern Illinois. The respondents clearly felt that job per- formance was, and remained, the single most important criterion in the awarding of tenure. Unlike teaching, which often seems of secondary importance for the teaching faculty in universities, librarian- ship is the sine qua non for university li- brarians. Research and publication was ranked fourth or fifth by 45.5 percent of the re- spondents for themselves, whereas 58.4 percent ranked it as either first or second As for the other criteria, at the time ten- ure was awarded, librarians felt university and community service was the second most important criterion, with a sizable percentage ranking it as third or fourth. Very few individuals ranked university/ community service as either of highest im- portance or lowest importance, and the importance of university/community ser- vice remained about the same in 1979. Pro- fessional activity, at the time tenure was awarded and in 1979, was ranked third Tenured Librarians 95 TABLE4 CRITERIA USED TO GRANT TENURE TO LIBRARIANS Factor 1 (High) At the Time the Librarian Was Granted Tenure Job performance (N = 504) 87.1 Research and gublication (N = 399) 13.8 University an community service (N = 429) 8.9 Professional activity (N =408) 4.7 Continuing educatiOn (N = 368) 4.1 At the Time of the Suroey (1979) Job performance (N=496) 71.0 Research and gublication (N = 485) 28.5 University an community service (N = 482) 5.8 Professional activity (N = 47 4) 3.8 Continuing education (N = 408) 3.7 Note : Rounding errors account for column totals * 100 percent. most important, while continuing educa- tion was least important. One can conclude that there has been lit- tle shifting of importance in the criteria for awarding tenure except in the case of re- search and publication, which shifted from a fairly even distribution across the scale up to the high end in 1979. A number of librarians filled in other cri- teria they felt were important, such as brown-nosing, personality, library poli- tics, teaching, longevity, supervision and management capability, and "not rocking the boat." Several librarians also com- mented that getting tenure was much less difficult than obtaining a promotion be- cause of the additional salary costs typi- cally involved in promotions. REVIEW PROCEDURES Table 5 shows the review procedures used by the surveyed libraries in granting Importance as Ranked by the Librarians Surveyed (Percent) 2 3 4 S(Low) 6.3 3.4 1.2 2.0 21.3 19.5 22.1 23.4 45.5 21.0 21.0 3.7 18.9 40.7 26.7 9.1 11.1 15.5 17.1 52.2 12.3 8.9 4.6 3.2 29.9 15.9 13.0 12.8 34.2 26.6 25.9 7.5 20.9 39.0 27.8 8.4 10.3 10.5 18.1 57.4 tenure and how those procedures have changed over time. There has been a de- cided increase in the use of librarian peer review in the form of library review com- mittees and votes by the tenured library faculty. This shows that ARL university li- braries are beginning to follow the Stan- dards for Faculty Status for College and Uni- versity Librarians, which states, "A peer review system similar to that used by other faculty is the primary basis of judge- ment in the promotion process for aca- demic librarians. " 6 Forty-nine percent of the librarians reported that the process had changed between the time they were granted tenure and 1979. PRODUCTIVITY BEFORE AND AFTER TENURE Librarians were asked to indicate their productivity level for the categories listed in table 6. Space was allotted for listing ad- TABLE 5 Level of Review Library committee Tenured library faculty Library director REVIEW PROCEDURES USED IN GRANTING TENURE Used at Time Librarian Was Granted Tenure (N=526) University-wide committee Un~versity. president or academic vice president 46 .6 38.0 89.5 51.1 61.6 (Percent) Used at Present Time (N=518) 74.9 61.6 91.5 62.4 65.1 96 College & Research Libraries March 1984 TABLE 6 PRODUCTIVITY BEFORE AND AFTER TENURE Before Tenure Aft er Tenure Activity Number Articles Published (N=446) None 226 One 75 Two 47 Three 34 Four 14 Five or more 50 Books Published (N=450) None 397 One 37 Two or more 16 Grants Received (N=437) None 373 One 41 Two or more 23 Paper Presented (N=414) None 274 One 42 Two 33 Three or more 65 Consultations (N=422) None 355 One 27 Two 21 Three or more 19 Served on library (N=503) committees 454 Served on university (N=484) committees 206 Served on professional (N=499) committees 269 Held elected orace in (N=495) professiona organization 186 Note : Rounding errors account for column totals =F- 100 percent. ditional professional activities. There is no significant difference be- tween the productivity levels of these li- brarians pretenure and posttenure. The mean number of articles published pre- tenure and posttenure is 2.0 and 1. 9 re- spectively. In the other categories, the mean number of pretenure and post- tenure books is 0.2 and 0.3; of grants, 0.2 and 0.2; of papers, 1.4 and 2.0; and for consulting, 0.4 and 0.8. The percentage of librarians serving on library, university, · and professional committees, or holding an elected office in a professional organi- zation is higher in all cases after tenure than before. A number of librarians did list other ar- eas of scholarly activity, such as teaching, editing journals, indexing, book review- ing, translating, and refereeing manu- scripts. Percent Number Percent (N=447) 50.7 241 53.9 16.8 64 14.3 10.5 49 11.0 7.6 22 4.9 3.1 15 3.4 10.9 56 12.5 (N=453) 88.2 380 83.9 8.2 45 9.9 3.5 28 6.2 (N=441) 85.4 373 84.6 9.4 44 10 .0 5.2 24 5.4 (N=435) 66 .2 246 56 .6 10 .1 57 13.1 8.0 36 8.3 15.4 96 21 .9 (N=428) 84.1 319 74 .5 6.4 54 12.6 5.0 19 4.4 4.3 36 8.4 (N=515) 90.3 495 96.1 (N=511) 42 .6 309 60.5 (N=515) 53.9 320 62.1 (N=507) 37.6 216 42.6 Although the amount of publishing of books and articles has remained fairly con- stant for librarians pretenure and post- tenure, the overall output is low. It is par- ticularly so, compared to publication productivity of nonlibrary faculty re- ported in an article by Lionel S. Lewis. 7 Lewis reports that of faculty granted ten- ure in 1977 and 1978, only 5.3percenthave not published articles, although 60.5 per- cent had not published a book. Compara- ble percentages for librarians granted ten- ure in 1977 and 1978 are 37.0 not publishing an article and 78.7 not publish- ing a book. In general, however, the li- brarians granted tenure in the late 1970s are more prolific authors than their librar- ian predecessors. There is some relationship between the level of publishing activity in a library and the importance placed upon research and publication as a criterion for tenure (chi- square 4.568 significant at .05 with one de- gree of freedom). Some libraries where the librarians have a good publication rec- ord, even though their criteria do not place particular emphasis on research and publication, include Cincinnati, Colorado State, Kentucky, Washington State, and Wisconsin. MOBILITY It is interesting to note that for the fifty- five respondents who left tenured posi-: tions in other institutions, the main reason for leaving was advancement, and that comparatively few individuals (only 2.2 percent) were remaining in their tenured positions because they expected job ad- vancement (see table 7). For a large pro- portion of the librarians surveyed, mobil- ity is restricted by personal and miscellaneous reasons. Personal and mis- cellaneous reasons were explained by many respondents and included such fac- tors as spouse's job, kids in school, favor- able location, restrictions because of spe- cialization, inertia, health reasons, or tuition benefits for children. What is most interesting, however, is that a large pro- portion of tenured librarians are not to- tally tied to an institution because of ten- ure considerations and would leave for personal reasons, advancement, or better salaries-in that order. The responses of married persons to this series of questions did not differ in the slightest from the re- Tenured Librarians 97 sponses of unmarried persons. In fact, married persons were somewhat overrep- resented in the group of librarians who had actually left tenured positions at other institutions. CONCLUSIONS Our conclusions were summed up nicely in the comment of the librarian who wrote, "For me, tenure was just another hurdle. I set professional goals for myself in the beginning of my career and have ac- complished some of them. I have done the things I felt were worthwhile and tenure considerations did not enter into it. I have done nothing different since I obtained tenure." That a librarian's productivity does not decline with the granting of tenure is evi- dent in the comparison of scholarly activi- ties before and after tenure and in the con- tinued professional involvement and number of promotions received after be- ing granted tenure. Nevertheless, the pro- ductivity of librarians in the area of pub- lishing is markedly lower than that of their nonlibrarian faculty colleagues. Although the criteria for awarding tenure have re- mained largely the same over time for li- brarians with faculty status, emphasis shifted so that research and publication had become the second most important criterion after job performance by 1979. Likewise, peer review had become decid- edly more prominent in the tenure pro- cess by 1979, especially review by library TABLE 7 MOBILITY OF TENURED LIBRARIANS Indicator Held Tenure at Another Institution (N =55) Left tenured position for better salary Left tenured position for advancement Left tenured position for better working conditions Left tenured position for personal reasons Would Leave Present Position (N =498) For better salary For advancement For better working conditions For personal reasons Primary Reason for Staying in Present Position (N =496) Advancement opportunities Near retirement age Good salary Pleasant working conditions Personal and miscellaneous reasons Number of Librarians 23 40 13 25 212 261 176 299 11 46 59 169 211 Percent 41.8 72.7 23.6 45.9 42.6 52.4 35.3 60.2 2.2 9.3 11.9 34.1 42.5 98 College & Research Libraries peers. Having tenure does not appear to be an overriding consideration restricting . the mobility and advancement of tenured librarians. Librarians, whether married or not married, are generally tied to their jobs for a~iety of personal reasons. --"Tile data gathered in this survey, al- though conducted in 1979, has not been superseded or contradicted by later re- March 1984 search available in the literature. Based also on the experience of the authors, it does not appear that the criteria applied for awarding tenure have changed be- tween 1979 and today. It is, however, the experience of the authors that mobility has been affected by the economic situation of the early 1980s and that librarians may be slightly less mobile today than in 1979. REFERENCES 1. "Table 13: Number and Average Salaries of ARL University Librarians, July 1, 1980," in ARL An- nual Salary Survey, 1979-1980 (Washington, D.C.: Assn. of Research Libraries, 1980), p.24. 2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, LibraryManpower(Washington, D.C.: Govt . Print. Off., 1975), Bul- letin 1852, p .14. 3. "Table 4: Average, Median, and Beginning Professional Salaries in ARL University Libraries," in ARL Annual Salary Survey, 1979-1980 (Washington, D.C. : Assn . of Research Libraries, 1980), p.9- 13. 4 . "Regressing into the Eighties: Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1979-1980," Academe 66:260-320 (September 1980). 5. Ibid. 6. College & Research Libraries News (September 1972), p .211. 7. Lionel L. Lewis, "Getting Tenure: Change and Continuity," Academe 66:373-81 (November 1980).