College and Research Libraries


ELDRED SMITH 

Academic Status for College and 
University Librarians- Problems 

and Prospects 

Academic librarians will achieve and deserve full academic status 
only after they cause changes in the bureaucratic structure of libraries 
and in library education, and when they provide professional service 
on a scholarly level. 

CoLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY librarians 
have not enjoyed overwhelming success 
in their efforts to secure full academic 
status. 1 With only a few exceptions, the 
benefits of academic status have been 
superficial; substantive areas-salaries, 
research support, self-direction on the 
job, voice in academic policy and prac-
tice, peer evaluation-have not . really 
been touched. The reason is because li-
brarians have had great difficulty in 
demonstrating to the academic commu-
nity, and frequently even to themselves, 
that they perform a function justifying 
full academic status. 

The situation is now changing. Not 
only do the new information demands 
and problems of the academic commu-
nity provide an opportunity for the li-
brarian to assume a role that is as so-
phisticated, demanding, and necessary 
as any other within that community, 
they require that he do this or step 
aside so someone else can take over this 
function. Furthermore, it is becoming 
clear that full academic status will not 
be simply an outgrowth but a necessary 

Mr. Smith is Head, Search Division, Ac-
quisition Department, at the University of 
California at Berkeley. 

concomitant of his assumption of this 
role. Consequently, this is an opportune 
time to look once again at the problem 
of academic status for librarians, to 
gauge how it may be achieved, the ob-
stacles that remain, and what is in store 
for librarians if they do not achieve it. 

Any consideration of academic status 
must begin with an appraisal of the ac-
ademic community, its structure and 
value system. John J. Corson, in his 
analysis of college and university organ-
ization, notes that it has C<two structural 
arrangements operating to a large de-
gree on .a parallel basis," each of which 
fulfills a different function. 2 On the one 
hand, there is the C<academic" segment, 
composed primarily of faculty members, 
and organized into departments and 
schools. These are the specialists who 
perform the primary teaching, research, 
and public service functions of the in-
stitution.3 They are (Cnot a subordinate 
level of workers operating under a struc-
ture of hierarchical authority [but they] 
exercise individual and collective re-
sponsibility for the conduct of the learn-
ing and research process."4 They evalu-
ate each other's performance through 
review committees and, meeting togeth-
er as a council or senate, they determine 

/7 



8 I College & Research Libraries • January 1970 

the educational policy of their college 
or university. 5 

The second or "nonacademic" struc-
ture is quite different. It follows the 
classic "line" organizational pattern of a 
bureaucracy. 6 It includes managerial, 
clerical, and maintenance personnel 
who keep the records, operate the busi-
ness offices, and perform custodial func-
tions. Such personnel carry out, accord-
ing to well-established routines, deci-
sions made by administrators. This dou-
ble structure is coordinated by the presi-
dent, chancellor, deans, and department 
chairmen-administrators with academ-
ic backgrounds or practicing academics 
who also perform a part-time adminis-
trative role. 

This structure and the roles of its 
component elements have evolved over 
time, characterized by steadily increas-
ing specialization and diversification. 
Until 100 years ago, the professor was 
"an intellectual generalist who might at 
once profess natural history, ethics, and 
theology while remaining a Latin or 
Greek scholar."7 College faculties were 
small and performed most of the institu-
tion's managerial as well as educational 
functions. 

During the past century, however, 
both the nature of the college or uni-
versity and the role of the professor 
have undergone significant _changes. Ed-
ucational institutions have become "plu-
ralistic" combinations of "diverse struc-
tures, programs, and personnel."8 The 
faculty member has changed from a 
generalist to a specialist. There has been 
"a progressive decline of his character-
developing function .along with a strong 
tendency for the research and informa-
tional functions to part company and 
form two separate callings." His orienta-
tion has become primarily "professional 
as opposed to institutional."9 

One of the most significant out-
growths of this situation has been the 
appearance of a growing number of pro-
fessional specialists, researchers, counsel-

ors, program developers, and many 
others who perform highly skilled func-
tions that were once carried out by the 
faculty as part-time activities or which 
did not exist until recently. These spe- · 
cialists occupy .a kind of no-man's-land. 
While the sophistication of their work is 
unquestioned, and while their contribu-
tion to the educational, research, and 
public service activities of their institu-
tions is becoming more pronounced and 
essential, they have not generally been 
accepted as full-fledged members of the 
"academic" community.10 The trend, 
however, seems to be in this direction. 
Certainly the academic community is 
coming to recognize that successful edu-
cation, research, and public service in 
the modern world reguire an increasing 
array of highly qualified personnel, all 
of whom make essential contributions to 
the academic enterprise. 

Among such personnel, librarians oc-
cupy perhaps one of the most ambigu-
ous positions. Originally a custodial 
function carried out by faculty members 
in spare moments, academic librarian-
ship has become a full-time occupation 
requiring special graduate education.11 

Yet despite its educational require-
ments, librarianship has not been wide-
ly accepted as an academic activity. 
Much of this is due to the approach that 
librarians have taken to their responsi-
bilities. 

By concentrating their efforts on the 
more routine aspects of library opera-
tion, by emphasizing institutional goals, 
and by adopting bureaucratic organiza-
tional patterns, college and university li-
brarians have effectively aligned them-
selves with the nonacademic segment of 
their communities. Even librarians who 
have most vigorously advocated their 
acceptance as full -scale academics have 
recognized the serious defects in the 
image they present to those who must 
accept them into partnership. They 
note, for instance, that most faculty are 
unable to distinguish between members 



of the clerical and professional library 
staffs when they contact them. 12 Unfor-
tunately, the full implications of this sit-
uation-the need to realign functions 
within the library and to concentrate on 
expanding sophisticated professional 
service-have only recently been clearly 
perceived. Prospects for such changes 
seemed remote in the past; they now 
appear not merely attainable, but nec-
essary. There are several reasons for 
this. 

Fundamental changes are taking 
place in modern education. With the 
growing stress on self-direction and re-
search for the undergraduate student, 
instruction is moving beyond the con-
fines of the classroom and into the in-
formal conference, the laboratory, and 
the library. 13 At the same time, faculty 
and graduate research is becoming in-
creasingly complex, with a rapidly 
growing volume of material to absorb in 
every field , even as the urgency to cover 
that material and accomplish the re-
search quickly also intensifies. Social de-
mands continue to broaden the areas of 
research and instruction. 

Such d evelopments have brought a 
new importance to traditional library ac-
tivities. The great volume and variety 
of scholarly and informational publica-
tion that is a direct outgrowth of con-
temporary research is making biblio-
graphical control both more demanding 
and more necessary. 1 4 

Major advances are being made in 
descriptive bibliographical control by 
inter-institutional cooperation. 15 Hope-
fully, these will be extended and sup-
plemented by more of what one writer 
has termed "exploitive control . . . the 
·special' library serving a group of schol-
ars accustomed to talk to each other, 
and staffed by persons approaching the 
type of the bibliographical consultant 
rather than the bibliographical aid."16 

Such consultants can provide service 
tailored to a library's specific clientele, 
such as the compilation of special bibli-

Academic Status for Librarians I 9 

ographies and information about new 
publications, and can fill in the gaps in 
more formal bibliographical coverage 
through public.ation.17 In this respect, 
the bibliographical consultant would al-
so become a bibliographical scholar. 

The explosion of knowledge and pub-
lication is also making in-depth refer-
ence or information service a prime ne-
cessity in sophisticated educational and 
research programs. With the growing 
emphasis on individual study, libraries 
will be expected to provide such service 
to scholars and students who are be-
coming less bibliographically self-suffi-
cient even within their specialties.18 

Moreover, as information developments 
make a moderate skill in library re-
search almost a necessity for every edu-
cated person, academic librarians must 
assume a more formal instructional role 
in their colleges and universities, teach-
ing students at least its more rudimen-
tary principles. 

One of the most heartening develop-
ments in academic librarianship is the 
increasing assumption of collection-de-
velopment responsibilities by librarians. 
Not only are faculty members increas-
ingly reluctant to continue to bear this 
responsibility in addition to their teach-

. ing, research, and committee work, but 
collection development is itself becom-
ing so specialized and demanding that it 
is unmanageable for anyone except an 
expert who combines a knowledge of 
the field with a specialty in its bibliog-
raphy and in library practice. Indeed, a 
corps of such specialists who work with-
in each of the scholarly disciplines as 
well as together in developing the over-
all library collection program can ration-
alize that program and tailor it to the 
needs of the institution in ways never 
possible before. 19 

Such developments are making it pos-
sible not only for the academic librarian 
to assume substantially important func-
tions within the academic community 
but to achieve full partnership there. As 



10 I College & Research Libraries • January 1970 

he provides formal classroom instruction 
in library research and more personal-
ized informal instruction through in-
depth reference, as he shoulders the re-
sponsibility of bibliographical scholar-
ship, as he cooperates actively in re-
search and education programs through 
collection development and specialized 
bibliographical coverage, he moves to-
ward full parity in the teaching, re-
search, and public service functions. Un-
der such circumstances, as Charles E. 
Bidwell recently noted, "some of the 
endemic problems of academic librari-
anship will be swept away; for example, 
the indifference of the faculty or the 
marginal status of the librarian."20 More-
over, the librarian will do this not by 
aping the faculty but by performing a 
complex and necessary service that no 
one else in the academic community is 
qualified to provide. 

Yet serious obstacles remain. A crucial 
problem is the bureaucratic structure of 
libraries, which emphasizes institutional 
goal~ and loyalties. Professional service 
functions must be made clearly primary, 
and distinguished from nonprofessional, 
secondary institutional functions. 21 Li-
brarians must transform their hierarchi-
cal, bureaucratic junctions with each 
other into collegial, professional rela-
tions. 

This means that decision-making in 
such matters as collection development, 
bibliographical control, and information 
service must be within the discretion of 
the individual expert practitioner, act-
ing within a collegial framework, and 
restricted only by the most necessary in-
stitutional restraints. Supervision of pro-
fessional activity must be abandoned 
and replaced by general administrative 
coordination and peer evaluation. Re-
wards must be based primarily on pro-
fessional accomplishment, not bureau-
cratic position; academic benefits must 
be substantial enough to attract, keep, 
and develop topflight personnel. 

A second problem is evident from a 

recent study, which showed that the 
profession does not generally attract the 
highest level of student, that it is unable 
to keep many of the best that it does 
attract, and that it contains a high pro-
portion of people who have little com-
mitment to advancing their field of ac-
tivity-women for whom librarianship 
is a secondary function, men who have 
tried several fields before settling into 
one which presents fewer challenges or 
who sought such from the beginning. 22 

Considered in relation to faculty and re-
search personnel, what is most wanted 
is the dynamic, creative individual who 
is serious about the work he does, its 
importance, and his own decisive role 
in performing it. 

This means librarians who do not sim-
ply accept direction or depend upon 
routine but who will question what they 
do and how they do it, and who will at-
tempt to enlarge and perfect their field , 
its theory and practice. It also means li-
brarians who will involve themselves 
with the rest of the academic commu-
nity not as handmaidens but as part-
ners. 

A third problem involves changes in 
library education. The Committee on 
Research Libraries of the American 
Council of Learned Societies, in its re-
port to the National Advisory Commis-
sion on Libraries, noted that "an in-
crease in the number of trained librari-
ans would not necessarily meet the dis-
tinctive requirements of research li-
braries." Rather, library schools must be-
gin to "produce the rare hybrid that 
every research library seeks, the librari-
an-scholar, either by divided graduate 
programs or by courses in librarianship 
specifically designed for linguistic or 
area specialization.''23 

This statement has several implica-
tions for academic librarianship. First, it 
stresses the need for more librarians 
with specialized knowledge. Unfortu-
nately, it perpetuates an old shortcom-
ing by its altogether too-limited view of 



the kind of specialization that the mod-
ern academic library needs. Library 
schools must, of course, produce gradu-
ates who are much more knowledgeable 
in subject and area bibliography, but 
they must also produce specialists who 
have a sophisticated knowledge of the 
bibliography of maps, government pub-
lications, and other special materials. 
They must also produce graduates who 
are knowledgeable in scientific manage-
ment, organization theory, social psy-
chology, and other pertinent fields so 
that they can administer the complex 
activities of the modern academic li-
brary. 

Second, the statement points up the 
need for more stress on substantial theo-
ry in library education. Where, in the 
past, library schools have placed em-
phasis on cataloging practice, they 
should now stress the theory .and prac-
tice of bibliographical control, of which 
cataloging is only one increasingly nar-
row and routine part. Where they have 
taught lists of reference titles, they must 
now stress the theory and practice of 
information service, including the evalu-
ation of client needs and the techniques 
of locating the information that most 
suits those needs. 

Third, the committee has highlighted 
the importance of interdisciplinary edu-
cation. Neither library schools nor grad-
uate subject programs are presently ed-
uc.ating the "scholar-librarian" that the 
research library needs. Only coordi-
nated programs, in which the subject 
field provides the subject education and 
the library school the bibliographical 
and information-process training, will 
answer this need. 

Finally, the committee's statement 
raises once again an old bugbear of li-
brary education: quality vs. quantity. 
For a number of years, in the mistaken 
belief that libraries require a vast herd 
of additional professional personnel, the 
schools have produced a large number 
of poorly educated graduates. Academic 

Academic Status for Librarians I 11 

libraries do not need a great many ad-
ditional professionals. If anything, they 
have too many librarians now: most of 
them spend the bulk of their time doing 
clerical work which nonprofessional per-
sonnel can perform equally well for sub-
stantially less money. What academic li-
braries do need is fewer but better-edu-
cated librarians who can step into 
the collection-development, substantial-
reference, and bibliographical-consul-
tant positions that are now largely un-
filled. 

Library educators have demonstrated 
an awareness of these problems for some 
time; however, they have moved rather 
slowly toward solving them while they 
have continued to debate their merits. 24 

Now some important steps are being 
taken to improve library education 
through more emphasis on divided pro-
grams, particularly within the compass 
of the developing sixth-year specialist 
programs. 25 Such efforts must be accel-
erated. At the same time, the old fifth-
year programs should be abandoned or 
drastically revised for academic librari-
ans. Certainly, the generalist approach 
is no longer applicable to the education 
of the sophisticated specialists that re-
search libraries require. 

Even if the problems of organization, 
personnel, and education are solved, ac-
ademic librarians will still have to over-
come the strong tendency toward ex-
clusivity within the academic communi-
ty. Those who have academic status 
keenly remember the long and difficult 
education they underwent to gain ad-
mittance themselves, and they highly 
esteem the substantive work they do to 
maintain their position. An academic's 
perfectly proper jealousy does not make 
it easy for others, who may have some-
what different qualifications and func-
tions, to become full-Hedged members 
of the .academic club. 

Faculty members have, however, 
demonstrated a willingness to welcome 
as colleagues those librarians who pos-



12 I College & Research Libraries • January 1970 

sess bibliographical expertise in specific 
fields, particularly when such expertise 
is scholarly and is based on substantial 
formal education, including graduate 
work. Thus, for example, a librarian spe-
cialist in African studies, with advanced 
degrees in that field as well as in li-
brarianship, who is involved in an area 
studies program-coordinating collec-
tion development, extending biblio-
graphical control tailored to the pro-
gram, instructing students in how to do 
research in the literature, and doing re-
search himself that is oriented toward 
improving the control or use of the lit-
erature-is functioning as a full academ-
ic peer of the African studies faculty. 
Furthermore, the librarian soon makes 
it evident that he is a very essential part 
of the program. Where librarians have 
functioned in this way, faculty response, 
which may have been quite skeptical at 
first, has become enthusiastic. 26 Further-
more, in studies of faculty attitudes to-
ward library service and the status and 
role of librarians, it is this kind of li-
brarian that they have requested and it 
is this kind of librarian that they have 
been willing to recognize as a full-
fledged academic colleague. 27 

College and university administrators 
must also approve the granting of aca-
demic status. This is usually the last and 
decisive step, and it may also prove to 
be the most difficult, because adminis-
trators rightly perceive higher costs in 
higher status. It will be crucial to have 
faculty support: influential pressure, 
based on an awareness and appreciation 
of high-quality service from specialist li-
brarians, may well determine the out-
come. 

Academic and professional library or-
ganizations will have to provide more 
active support; it is unfortunate that 
these associations have not done more to 
help librarians deserve and achieve full 
academic status. 

Obviously the changes outlined in the 
preceding pages are not going to be 

easy. They will require considerable 
commitment, planning, risk taking, and 
a willingness to relinquish old ways. On 
the other hand, perhaps the greatest 
strength in the academic librarian's 
drive for improved status, as Goode 
noted in a somewhat different context, 
is that many of the crucial decisions are 
in his own hands. 28 The reorganization 
of libraries, the revision of library edu-
cation, the expansion of professional 
service and the reallocation of responsi-
bilities within libraries-these are mat-
ters that are largely within the province 
of the profession. Some expansion of 
benefits to librarians, such as more time 
for research, more professional involve-
ment, additional leaves, some salary ad-
justment, are also possible in most aca-
demic libraries without outside approv-
al. It certainly is true that as long as li-
brarians treat each other as nonprofes-
sional and nonacademic bureaucrats, 
they will retain just that status within 
the academic community. 

It is time, also, that librarians recog-
nized that academic status is much 
more than a matter of position or bene-
fits. It is closely tied to their present 
and future role in higher education. Un-
less they assume responsibility for pro-
viding the bibliographical and informa-
tion service that is crucially needed in 
colleges and universities, others will be 
called in to do this and the librarian's 
status problem will be solved once and 
for all in a way that he does not want. 

REFERENCES 

1. The literature on the academic status of librarians 
is voluminous. A good recent survey is provided 
by Florence Holbrook, "The Faculty Image of the 
Academic Librarian," Southeastern Librarian, 
XVIII (Fall 1968), 174-193. 

2. Governance of Colleges and Universities (New 
York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 34-35. 

3. Robert H. Knapp, "Changing Functions of the 
College Professor," in The American College, ed. 
by Nevitt Stanford (New York: John Wiley, 1962), 
p. 290-311. 

4. John D. Millett, The Academic Community (New 
York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), p. 105. 

5. Corson, p. 35. 
6. Ibid. 



7. Knapp, p. 293. 
8. Charles E. Bidwell, "Librarian, Administrator, and 

Professor: Implications of Changing College So-
cial Structures," in Libraries and the College 
Climate of Learning, ed. by Dan Bergen and 
E. D. Duryea (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 
1964), p. 63. 

9. Knapp, p. 292-295. 
10. For a treatment of the status problems of academ-

ic research personnel see: Carlos E. Kruytbosch and 
Sheldon L. Messinger, "Unequal Peers: the Situa-
tion of Researchers at Berkeley," The American 
Behavioral Scientist, XI (May 1968), p. 33-43. 

11. Elmer D. Johnson, Communication (New York: 
Scarecrow Press, 1966), p. 134. 

12. Jane Forgotson, ' ~The Staff Librarian Views the 
Problem of Status," College & Research Libraries, 
XXII (July 1961 ). The librarian's "actual status 
is . . . frequently ambiguous, with students and 
faculty alike regarding him as some kind of super-
clerk or administrative aid." ( p. 275) "The faculty 
members are not alone in their doubts as to the 
librarian's role. The librarians themselves are 
confused, and so are the college administrators." 
(p. 280) 

13. This trend has been the subject of considerable 
discussion in higher-education literature. Examples 
include: Dell Felder, "Independent-Study Prac-
tices in Colleges and Universities," Journal of 
Higher Education, XXXV (June 1964), p. 335-
338. Robert H. Beck and Robert C. McClure, "A 
University Looks to the Future," Journal of Higher 
Education, XXXIV (December 1963), p. 496-502. 

14. Edwin E. Williams, "Bibliographical Control and 
Physical Dissemination," On Research Libraries: 
Statement and Recommendations of the Commit-
tee on Research Libraries of the American Council 
of Learned Societies (Cambridge: M.I. T. Press, 
1969 ), p. 26-58. 

15. Ibid. 
16. Patrick Wilson, Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on 

Bibliographical Control (Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1968), p. 150. He makes a very 
useful distinction between "descriptive" and "ex-
ploitive" bibliographical control. See also his de-
scription of "bibliographical therapists" who diag-
nose . . . the perhaps unfelt needs of scientific 
workers and the general public (and) satisfy 
those needs with suitable doses of literature!' 
p. 144. 

17. Ibid., p. 145. "A proper bibliographical policy 
would be one that was not passive, in the sense 
of providing the means by which those who felt 
a certain interest could satisfy it, but active, in 
the sense of supplying, unasked, those writings 
most likely to furnish what would improve the 

Academic Status for Librarians I 13 

quantity and quality of work. This would be a 
policy for the most rational exploitation of writ-
ings, for the rationalization or making completely 
rational of the use of writings." 

18. Proceedings of the Conference on the Research 
Library Sponsored by Daedalus and the Council 
on Library Resources (Boston: House of the Amer-
ican Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1966), Her-
man Fussier: "Take, for example, so mundane a 
matter as the competence of the scholar in his 
own bibliographical disciplinary areas. The evi-
dence suggests that it is poor, and that the scholar 
is not really exploiting his own libraries very 
efficiently." p. 20. 

19. J. Periam Danton, Book Selection and Collections 
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1963) 
p. 134-137. Cecil K. Byrd, "Subject Specialists 
in a University Library," College & Research 
Libraries, XXVII (May 1966), p. 191-193, de-
scribes the successful program at Indiana Uni-
versity. Excellent more general discussions are: 
J. Periam Danton, "The Subject Specialist in 
National and University Libraries," Libri, XVII 
( 1967), p. 42-58, and Robert P. Haro, "The 
Bibliographer in the Academic Library," Library 
Resources & Technical Services, XIII (Spring 
1969)' p. 163- 169. 

20. Op. cit., p. 80. 
21. Amitai Etzioni, "Authority Structure and Organi-

zational Effectiveness," Administrative Science 
Quarterly, IV (June 1959), p. 52. 

22. Eli Ginzberg and Carol A. Brown, Manpower for 
Library Services (New York: Columbia University 
Conservation of Human Resources Project, 1967 ). 

23. On Research Libraries, p. 24. 
24. Education for Librarianship: Papers Presented at 

the Library Conference, University of Chicago, 
August 16-21, 1948, ed. Bernard Berelson (Chi-
cago: American Library Association, 1949). In-
tellectual Foundations of Library Education (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). Major 
Problems in the Education of Librarians, ed. 
Robert D. Leigh (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1954). 

25. Lester E. Asheim, "Education and Manpower for 
Librarianship," ALA Bulletin, LXII (October 
1968) , llOl. 

26. Samuel Rothstein, The Development of Reference 
Services Through Academic Traditions, Public 
Library Practice, and Special Librarians hip (Chi-
cago: American Library Association, 1955 ) , p. 
95-96. 

27. Holbrook, p. 188-189. 
28. William J. Goode, "The Librarian: from Occupa-

tion to Profession," ALA Bulletin, LXI (May 
1967), 547.