College and Research Libraries


Letter 
To the Editor: 

I read with interest Bonnie Horenstein's "Job Satisfaction of Academic Librarians: An 
Examination of the Relationships between Satisfaction, Faculty Status, and Participa-
tion" (College & Research Libraries 54 [May 1993].) 

I have several methodological concerns about her study, however. The terms faculty 
status and faculty rank are too imprecise, convey multiple meanings, and reduce the 
validity of results of the study. For example, the questionnaire asks librarians to respond 
yes or no about having faculty status. This is a complex question and possibly there are 
multiple answers. For example, librarians of the University of California are academic 
appointees and do not have senate faculty status. And UC librarians have academic 
rank and career status, not faculty rank or tenure. So, ifUC librarians had been sampled, 
they might have given diverse responses according to their interpretation of faculty 
status. In addition, Horenstein's questionnaire may have unintentionally included a 
self-fulfilling prophecy: only full-time librarians were sampled. 

There is also a potential gender and ethnic bias as some important part-time librarians 
were excluded who may have been women or men with a family or other valuable 
duties. Also, several significant, developing areas of academic specialization were not 
listed in the service area of the questionnaire: bibliographic instruction; computer-as-
sisted research; collection development; and research instruction. In addition, the 
author's survey seemed to include only currently employed librarians; it did not 
include librarians unemployed because of layoffs or hiring freezes. Clearly, regional 
and state economies may impact professional satisfaction. 

In addition, the issue of political correctness is important. During academic down-
sizing and job reductions, some librarians would be politically correct to express high 
job satisfaction on an anonymous questionnaire because of concern that review initia-
tors may learn of their professional dissatisfaction. Finally, academic librarians may 
have perceived differences between growing academic goals and current professional 
opportunities and had difficulty in communicating those concerns in terms of academic 
status and satisfaction. In essence, these significant issues of academic status and 
satisfaction require further in-depth study and analysis of the many factors influencing 
research librarians' attitudes and responses to surveys. 

SALLY WILLSON WEIMER 
Library, University of California at Santa Barbara 

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