College and Research Libraries MARY BAIER WELLS Requirements and Benefits for Academic Librarians: 1959-1979 This study examines job advertisements for academic librarians published in three journals between 1959 and 1979. It attempts to discover basic changes in the requirements demanded of, and benefits offered to, job candidates over this time period. Announcements were analyzed in terms of their require- ments for education, experience, qualifications, and responsibilities and their offers of salary and faculty status. The study concludes that, although aca- demic librarians were expected to bring more to their jobs in 1979 than in 1959, salaries in real dollars showed no appreciable increase, and faculty sta- tus was not explicitly offered in most cases. pROFESSIONAL LITERATURE of the past twenty years has outlined certain trends that have had a good deal of impact on the aca- demic librarian's work environment. The fi- nancial climate changed markedly with the ample budgets of the fifties and sixties shrink- ing to austerity levels by the seventies. A more democratic concept of education pro- duced a broader-based student body; a larger proportion of college students was drawn from the adult working population. Trends in curriculum emphasized individual research skills at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Modern technology invaded the campuses; computers assumed more and more of the routine chores formerly per- formed by humans. Published material not only increased exponentially, but also be- came international in scope and variable in form. All of these changes had implications for the academic librarian. As a result of budget- ary problems, fewer professionals were em- ployed, and paraprofessionals began to per- form the libraries' more routine duties. The use of paraprofessionals resulted in a recogni- tion that the professional's contribution was intellectual rather than clerical in nature. Mary Baier Wells is a record associate at Oppen- heimer Law Firm, St. Paul, Minnesota. Research for this study was funded by a grant from the Uni- versity of Minnesota Computer Center. 450 I The changing student body and the research- oriented curriculum called for librarians to develop bibliographic instruction programs and to perform more in-depth reference work. The international growth of publica- tion meant that librarians needed foreign- language proficiency. The technology explo- sion gave librarians new opportunities for service, but also required that they master unfamiliar skills like online searching and microforms management. Since collection development took place under budgetary constraints in order to support a research- oriented curriculum, librarians were often expected to have a strong subject background and to initiate and maintain close ties with faculty who could assist them in their selec- tions from an ever-increasing amount of ma- terial. Formerly, librarians had been ex- pected to collect, preserve, and organize collections of books. In the last few years, however, they have come to assume addi- tional roles: communicator, information specialist, manager, and scholar. If the perceptions in the literature are ac- curate, more is being demanded now of aca- demic librarians than when libraries were simply depositories of books. If more is re- quired, it follows that more should be offered in compensation. The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether empirical evidence sup- ports the belief that academic librarianship has changed in terms of the requirements de- manded of, and the benefits offered to, its practitioners, and if it has, to attempt to pin- point some of the changes. Specifically, the study examines three hy- potheses: 1. Librarians are expected to bring more to their jobs in education, experience, and qualifications. 2. The nature of the librarian's work has expanded in scope and complexity. 3. Librarians are being offered more in return for meeting these higher standards. METHOD A study of job advertisements was initi- ated with the goal of ascertaining whether these notices supported the three hypotheses listed above. Five years, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, and 1979, were chosen to represent the twenty- year span from 1959 to 1979. The years cho- sen were evenly spaced to reflect fluctuations in the job market and to indicate when cer- tain changes began to appear. Three journals were used as sources of job announcements: Library journal, ALA Bulletin/American Libraries, and College and Research Librar- ies/College and Research Libraries News. All postings for academic librarians from the journals and years listed were extracted and analyzed. Advertisements were used only once even if they appeared in more than one publication. A notice was selected for inclu- sion only if the job title or responsibilities im- plied that the position advertised was not pri- marily administrative or technical in nature. Notices selected were analyzed in terms of job type, education, qualifications, responsi- bilities, status, and salary. The type of job could sometimes be dis- cerned by its title (catalog librarian, for ex- ample), but when the title was vague, a type was assigned by examining the responsibili- ties listed in the advertisement. The educa- tion component was broken down into two groups: the type of library degree specified and the type of subject master's degree re- quired. Those persons seeking professional li- brary employment were assumed to be col- lege graduates. Qualifications and responsibilities were noted as they appeared, and were included regardless of whether they were listed as required, desired, or pre- ferred. Status was noted as faculty, civil ser- Requirements and Benefits I 451 vice, or a professional/academic classifica- tion between the two. The last component noted was the salary or range of salaries for each position. After all of the data was accumulated, it was broken down into variables and coded so that it could be punched onto Hollerith cards. Nine job types emerged as the data were analyzed. When the word librarian was used without specified job responsibili- ties, or when widely diverging responsibili- ties such as cataloging and reference were ex- pected of one person, general librarian was used as the job type. A subject specialist was defined as a librarian with a strong subject background whose responsibilities cut across the traditional public and technical services boundary. Branch head was included as a job type because many positions combined administrative and library duties and thus fit into the scope of this study. Library education was grouped into four categories: unspecified library coursework, a bachelor's degree in library science, a gen- eral MLS, or an ALA-accredited master's. The next variable, the subject master's de- gree, was broken into two categories depend- ing on whether or not the announcement specified a subject. The same principle was applied to library experience. A distinction in coding was made on the basis of whether the advertisement asked for general or spe- cialized library experience. In all cases, 0 was the co(\.e used to indicate that a variable was not mentioned in the notice. The next eight variables dealt with the qualifications that candidates needed to bring to the job. Some of these variables are self-explanatory, but others will need defini- tion. Computer expertise encompassed train- ing or experience with computers, biblio- graphic utilities, or databases for information retrieval. Subject background or training included an undergraduate de- gree or graduate work short of the master's in a particular subject. A- V knowledge was a wide-ranging category, including knowl- edge, training, or experience with audiovi- sual machinery, media production, or the bibliographic control of multimedia materi- als. Specific library expertise meant special- ized knowledge of library practices and was expressed with phrases like "knowledge of AACR" or "experience with LCSH." Com- 452 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 municative ability concerned skill in relating to faculty, students, and co-workers. Admin- istrative or supervisory ability had to do with experience or training in personnel, budget- ing, planning, or business management. Each of these variables was coded with a 0 if the qualification was not desired, and a 1 if it was. The next variable, sex, indicated whether the employer specified a preference for a man or a woman for the job. Zero indicated no preference; 1 was the code for a man, and 2 for a woman. Successive variables were concerned with job responsibilities. Some definition will again be necessary. Processing and acquisi- tions were distinguished by the fact that the former had to do with the handling of books after their arrival at the library, and the lat- ter was concerned with preorder searching, verification, and order-file maintenance. Collection development entailed choosing individual titles, and more importantly, de- veloping a focused, well-directed plan for the growth of the collection as a whole. Bib- liographic instruction included formal courses, orientation activities, and produc- tion of guides and bibliographies. A- V work meant handling audiovisual machines as well as multimedia products. Computer work included design or use of automated li- brary operation systems, information- retrieval systems, or bibliographic utilities. Administrative duties encompassed plan- ning, budgeting, and management. Person- nel work, defined as training and supervision of employees, was separated from adminis- trative duties. Variables such as work in a specialized subject or work with specialized materials were indicated in addition to other duties. Phrases like "reference with govern- ment documents" or "cataloging musical scores" illustrate why these distinctions be- came necessary. The final variables had to do with bene- fits. Status was divided into civil service, pro- fessional/academic, and faculty categories. Salary was coded as it appeared in the job ad- vertisement. If a range of salaries was speci- fied, only the minimum was coded, since it was the only one that could be determined with any certainty. A standardized salary was calculated by using a computer program to divide each salary by the consumer price index for the year in which it was offered. The result was that the salaries were adjusted to account for inflation and were expressed in 1967 dollars, giving a basis for comparison among the years in the study. From this point on, when the word salary is used, it will refer . to the standardized salary. Variables were deliberately kept general, since fragmenting them would have resulted in too few cases per category for findings to be meaningful. Appropriate statistical tests using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) were chosen and applied to the data in an at- tempt to verify the hypotheses. After the tests had been performed on individual variables, several variables were combined for testing by summing their scores. For example, a new variable, E score, was formed by adding the scores for library education and subject mas- ter's, to obtain a total score for education. Qualification and responsibility scores were treated in the same way to obtain variables Q score and R score. Statistical tests were then run on these combined variables, and all findings were analyzed. FINDINGS A CROSSTABS statistical program was run to determine the number and types of po- sitions advertised each year. The results of this test appear in table 1. One thousand two hundred fifty-four academic library posi- tions were announced in the five years stud- ied. The highest proportion of positions, 28. 7 percent, was advertised in 1969. The propor- tion of advertisements seeking general librar- ians came down through the years from a high of 20.5 percent in 1959, to a low of 10.0 percent in 1979. The demand for catalogers was the highest in total; 28.9 percent of all jobs advertised were for catalogers. (Cata- loging positions accounted for the highest percentages of jobs advertised in 1959, 1964, and 1969, and the second-highest percent- ages in 1974 and 1979.) The demand for technical-services librarians remained fairly steady throughout the twenty-year study, but the numbers of circulation librarians needed, never a very high percentage, de- creased during the period. This decline was to be expected since circulation is one func- tion that has largely been given over to para- professionals. Demand for reference librari- ans was steady until1979, then it took a jump Requirements and Benefits I 453 TABLE 1 TYPES oF PosiTIONS BY YEAR 1959 1964 General 38 46 librarian 20.5 % 17.3 % Cataloger 58 88 31.4 % 33 .1 % Technical services 20 35 librarian 10.8 % 13.2 % Circulation 14 14 librarian 7.6 % 5.3 % Reference 31 50 librarian 16.8 % 18.8 % Subject 14 24 specialist 7.6 % 9.0 % Branch head 6 8 3.2 % 3.0 % Rare-book or 2 1 special- collections 1.1 % 0.4 % librarian Bibliographic- 2 0 instruction 1.1 % 0 % librarian Total 185 266 positions 14.8 % 21.2 % advertised each year upward from 17.6 percent to 30.4 percent. The demand for subject specialists started to go up in 1969 and peaked in 1974, with em- phasis on subject specialization in the litera- ture. Branch heads were never heavily repre- sented in the study since they were included only if a substantial portion of their responsi- bilities were not administrative; but the number of branch head openings fitting this criterion showed a slight trend upward. Rare-book/ special-collection librarians and bibliographic-instruction librarians were in- cluded because there were a few announce- ments for these types of positions; but neither category was heavily represented. CROSSTABS was also used to discover the number of advertisements asking for certain requirements each year. Table 2 details the type of library education required. In 1959, 72.9 percent of the postings mentioned li- brary education only in very general terms if they mentioned it at all. Only 26.0 percent of the candidates were specifically asked for an MLS, with or without ALA accreditation. This number rose steadily throughout the years until 1979, when 97.6 percent of the 1969 ' 1974 1979 Total 39 29 25 177 10.8 % 15.0 % 10.0 % 14.1 % 112 43 61 362 31.1 % 22.3 % 24.4 % 28 .9 % 52 23 28 158 14.4 % 11.9 % 11.2 % 12.6 % 19 1 5 53 5.3 % 0.5 % 2.0 % 4.2 % 55 34 76 246 15.3 % 17.6 % 30.4 % 19.6 % 62 45 33 178 17.2 % 23.3 % 13.2 % 14.2 % 18 8 16 56 5.0 % 4.1 % 6.4 % 4.5 % 2 8 5 18 0.6 % 4.1 % 2.0 % 1.4% 1 2 1 6 0.3 % 1.0 % 0.4 % 0.5 % 360 193 250 1,254 28.7 % 15.4 % 19.9 % 100 % advertised positions required the library sci- ence master's degree. The figure for an ALA- accredited MLS also rose between 1959 and 1969, but then in 1974 took a jump from 13.3 percent to 52.3 percent, with another jump occurring in 1979 when 77.2 percent of jobs advertised required an ALA-accredited MLS. The number of candidates asked for a sub- ject master's degree, noted in table 3, did not rise as steeply as those needing the MLS, but here also a steady rise could be discerned, from .5 percent in 1959 to 27.6 percent in 1979. The number of candidates asked for li- brary experience (summarized in table 4) likewise rose, with an especially dramatic in- crease noted between 1969 and 1974 in the percentage of positions requiring specialized experience (from 15.0 percent to 40.9 per- cent). By 1979, 68.4 percent of all academic library job notices were asking for some kind of experience. Figures for individual qualifications and responsibilities appear in tables 5 and 6. The general trend was for the percentages to go - -----~--~--------------------~----------------------------------------~ 454 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 TABLE 2 LIBRARY EDUCATION REQuiRED BY YEAR 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 None listed 70 116 115 27 4 37.8 % 43 .6 % 31.9 % 14.0 % 1.6 % Unspecified 65 69 26 4 2 library degree 35.1 % 25.9 % 7.2 % 2.1 % 0.8 % BLS 2 0 0 0 0 1.1 % 0 % 0 % 0 % 0 % MLS 39 48 171 61 51 (unaccredited) 21.1 % 18.0 % 47.5 % 31.6 % 20:4 % ALA -accredited 9 33 48 101 193 MLS 4.9 % 12.4 % 13.3 % 52.3 % 77.2 % TABLE 3 PosiTIONS REQUIRING A SuBJECT MASTER's DEGREE 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 None 184 264 349 148 181 99.5 % 99.2 % 96.9 % 76.7 % 72.4 % Any subject 1 1 3 17 29 0.5 % 0.4 % 0.8 % 8.8 % 11.6 % Specific 0 1 8 28 40 subject 0 % 0.4 % 2.2 % 14.5 % 16.0 % TABLE 4 PosiTIONS REQUIRING LIBRARY EXPERIENCE 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 None 115 148 229 70 79 62 .2 % 55.6 % 63 .6 % 36.3 % 31.6 % Any 50 83 77 44 33 27 .0 % 31.2 % 21.4 % 22.8 % 13.2 % Specialized 20 35 54 79 138 10.8 % 13.2 % 15.0 % 40.9 % 55.2 % TABLE 5 QuALIFICATIONS REQUIRED BY YEAR 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 Foreign 38 48 45 44 88 language 20 .5 % 18.0 % 12.5 % 22.8 % 35.2 % Computer 0 0 11 11 103 expertise 0 % 0 % 3.1 % 5.7 % 41.2 % SubLect 20 32 67 55 81 hac ground 10.8 % 12.0 % 18.6 % 28 .5 % 32.4 % A-V knowledge 1 1 5 9 18 0.5 % 0.4 % 1.4 % 4.7 % 7.2 % Teaching 2 2 7 10 11 experience 1.1 % 0.8 % 1.9 % 5.2 % 4.4 % Specific library 10 10 24 21 52 expertise 5.4 % 3.8 % 6.7 % 10.9 % 20.8 % Communicative 2 7 7 7 34 ability 1.1 % 2.6 % 1.9 % 3.6 % 13.6 % Administrative 1 6 5 14 28 ability 0.5 % 2.3 % 1.4 % 7.3 % 11.2 % Requirements and Benefits I 455 TABLE 6 RESPONSIBILITIES REQUIRED BY YEAR 1959 1964 Reference 34 45 18.4 % 16.9 % Cataloging 24 20 13 .0 % 7.5 % Circulation 22 15 11.9 % 5.6 % Processing 8 4 4.3 % 1.5 % Acquisitions 9 12 4 .9 % 4.5 % Collection 1 18 development 0.5 % 6.8 % Bibliographic 4 3 instruction 2.2 % 1.1 % Faculty 0 5 liaison 0 % 1.9 % Teach library 4 1 science 2.2 % 0.4 % A-V work 2 2 1.1 % 0.8 % Computer work 0 0 0 % 0 % Administrative 5 13 duties 2.7 % 4.9 % Personnel work 1 9 0.5 % 3.4 % Specialized 1 7 subject 0.5 % 2.6 % Specialized 27 32 materials 14.6 % 12.0 % upward, with notable increases between 1974 and 1979 in computer expertise, com- municative ability, administrative ability, computer work, and administrative duties. The number of postings requiring reference, faculty liaison, personnel work, and work with specialized subjects also increased be- tween 1969 and 1974, while the number of notices mentioning bibliographic instruction rose dramatically in 1974 and again in 1979. In the case of only one variable, teaching li- brary science, was the percentage lower in 1979 than it was in 1959. An analysis of variance using the program ONEW AY was performed to indicate whether there were statistically significant differences among the mean salaries paid in each year of the study. This test, utilizing the Scheffe procedure, found that there were no 1969 1974 1979 51 85 133 14.2 % 44.0 % 53.2 % 38 47 78 10.6 % 24.4 % 31.2 % 15 15 21 4.2 % 7.8 % 8.4 % 1 8 16 0.3 % 4.1 % 6.4 % 20 25 21 5.6 % 13 .0 % 8.4 % 36 59 102 10.0 % 30.6 % 40 .8 % 6 28 84 1.7 % 14 .5 % 33 .6 % 24 28 45 6.7 % 14.5 % 18.0 % 3 2 5 0.8 % 1.0 % 2.0 % 7 8 19 1.9 % 4.1 % 7.6 % 8 9 65 2.2 % 4.7 % 26.0 % 23 21 52 6. 4% 10 .9 % 20.8 % 15 27 46 4.2 % 14.0 % 18.4 % 15 60 80 4.2 % 31.1 % 32.0 % 57 32 60 15 .8 % 16.6 % 24 .0 % statistically significant differences between mean salaries paid in 1959 and 1979 and be- tween those paid in 1964 and 1974. For the five years studied, three salary groups emerged: the "low salary" years (1959 and 1979), the "middle salary" years (1964 and 1974) , and the "high salary" year (1969). Figure 1 graphs the progress of salaries from · 1959 to 1979. Salaries in real dollars rose sharply between 1959 and 1969 and then fell. Although 1979's salary was higher than 1959's, the analysis of variance showed no statistically significant difference between salaries of the two years. In practical terms, this means that librarians in 1979 were not much better off financially than they were in 1959. Findings on faculty status were less clear. Table 7 shows the numbers and percentages 456 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 7500 7000 6500 6000 5500 5000 Fig. 1 Mean Salary by Year of positions offering faculty status by year. Considering the amount of agitation for fac- ulty status since 1959, a steady rise in these percentages could be expected, with a major- ity of positions offering faculty status by 1979. However, the percentage totals fluctu- ated from year to year and never went above 52 percent. Either librarians are not attain- ing faculty status in the numbers generally believed, or faculty status has become so widespread that employers feel that they no longer need to mention it in a job posting. The truth probably lies somewhere in be- tween. The library experience and subject mas- ter's variables were tested with analyses of variance that proved inconclusive, so they were broadened and retested. Both of these variables had been designed to include three categories depending on how specific the ex- perience or degree requirement was. For the second tests, each variable included only two categories dependent simply on whether or not the variable was required. T-tests were run on these variables to determine whether experience or a subject master's degree indi- cated a higher salary. Findings of these tests are summarized in tables 8 and 9. From these tables, it can be discerned that experience was a fairly stable indicator of higher salary while a subject master's degree indicated a higher salary only in the last two years, the time period when more employers were ask- ing for this qualification. Figure 2 graphs E, Q, and R scores (the scores that combine all education, qualifica- tions, and responsibilities into three separate variables) for each year. In all three cases, analyses of variance found statistically sig- nificant differences between earlier and later years, with the predominant trend being a steady rise in the scores between 1959 and 1979. The program SCATTERGRAMS was run in an attempt to discover whether there was any relationship between salaries and E, Q, and R scores. The three variables were bro- ken down by year and tested, and statisti- cally significant results were noted in table 10. What was sought were statistically signif- TABLE 7 Number Percentage Mean salary of inexperienced group Mean salary of experienced grout T-va ue T -significance PosiTIONS OFFERING FACULTY STATUS BY YEAR 1959 85 45.9 1964 73 27.4 TABLE 8 1969 185 51.4 1974 74 38.3 SIGNIFICANT FINDINGS FOR T-TESTS MEASURING SALARY BY EXPERIENCE 1959 1964 1969 1974 5446.14 7437.98 6537.57 5894.96 7880.62 7009.69 - 3.29(dj85) - 3.15(dj222) - 2.95(dj151) .0005 .001 .002 1979 112 44.8 1979 5585.28 6090.25 - 4.43(dj229) .000 Requirements and Benefits I 457 TABLE 9 SIGNIFICANT FINDINGS FOR T- TESTS MEASURING SALARY BY SuBJECT MASTER's DEGREE Mean salary of group without subject master's degree Mean salary of group with subject master's degree T-value T -significance 1959 1964 1969 1974 6699.25 7310.42 - 3.43(dj151) .0005 1979 5868.00 6072.05 - 1.67(dj229) .048 TABLE10 CoRRELATIONS BETWEEN SALARIES AND E, Q, AND R ScoRES BY YEAR 1959 1964 1969 1974 1979 E score Q score R score •r lr2 .41000 .16810 .00172 tSignificance of r 4.5 4 . 0 3. 5 3 . 0 2. 5 2. 0 1.5 1.0 . 5 1959 1964 1969 1974 Fig. 2 E, Q, and R Scores by Year .22574* .05096t .0127lt .38158 .14560 .00156 1979 icant positive correlations, in other words, cases where the salary went up with the score. Qualifications seemed to be the most important indicator of a higher salary; a higher Q score meant a significantly higher salary in 1959, 1974, and 1979. Education .14221 .02022 .04128 .36908 .13622 .00019 .14751 .02176 .02085 followed with a higher E score meaning a higher salary in 1964 and 1969. In both cases, however, only a little variation in salary was accounted for by education (as indicated by the r 2 figures). Also, this variable showed no statistically significant results in the last two years, perhaps because educational require- ments became more standardized. Since can- didates were asked for a similar education, the salary offered depended on other factors. R score was the least indicative of the three job aspects; a higher R score was equated with a higher salary in 1964 only. CoNCLUSIONS In terms of the hypotheses, therefore, sev- eral conclusions can be drawn. The notices indicated that librarians did have to bring more to their jobs, especially in the realm of education. There was strong evidence that the basic educational requirement for entry into librarianship had become more struc- tured and stringent. Strong evidence also supported the idea that library experience was increasingly necessary to obtain a post as an academic librarian. Some evidence did 458 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 back up the idea that other qualifications were more necessary in 1979 than in 1959, but this evidence was weaker than that sup- porting the increased requirements for edu- cation and experience. The second hypothesis concerned changes in responsibilities. The study indicated that no individual responsibility outweighed an- other at any time. There was a statistically significant difference between 1959 and 1979 for the combined responsibility scores, and these scores did show a continuous rise, but the range of scor~s was very narrow. The third hypothesis was that benefits were improving in response to new demands. Benefits were studied mainly in terms of sala- ries, since status proved to be unreliable as an indicator of the value placed on various job aspects. Salaries followed the general cycle of wealth and scarcity in higher education by rising and then falling. Experience and a sec- ond master's degree were the only qualifica- tions that commanded higher salaries; no re- sponsibilities were more highly rewarded than others. Little empirical research has been con- ducted regarding the changes in academic li- brarianship, and much remains to be exam- ined. Perhaps a study could be made, using careful safeguards of privacy, to compare the qualifications and responsibilities listed in the advertisements with those of the persons eventually filling the openings. Such a study could aid readers and writers of job an- nouncements as well as providing a more ac- curate assessment of the condition of aca- demic librarianship. Another research line might be to compare librarianship's condi- tion with that of other professions. An espe- cially interesting project might be a compari- son of librarianship with other professions in which women predominate. A good deal of literature has been pub- lished about the role. of the academic librar- ian and the changes in academic librarian- ship. This literature speculates and offers opinions, but little supporting evidence is provided for any conclusions. It is hoped that this study will be a first step in providing that evidence.