College and Research Libraries Letters To the Readers of C&RL: The article ''Building Library Collections in University Libraries in Nigeria,'' by G. T. and R. W. Onadiran, which appeared in the September 1983 issue of College & Research Libraries V.44, no .5:358-67, was also published in Collection Building V.4, no.2:44-54 (Neal- Schuman), and in the Annals of Library Science and Documentation (ALSD) Spring 1982, V .29, no.3:95-106 (Indiana National Scientific Documentation Centre) . Unbeknownst to the editor of C&RL, and in violation of their signed copyright agreement with ALA, the authors submitted their manuscript to and had it accepted and published by these other journals while still under review by C&RL and its referees. I apologize to C&RL and its readers for any inconvenience that this unauthorized simultaneous publication may have caused. In a letter to the editor dated May 14, 1984, the Onadirans also state "Please accept our apology.'' C. JAMES SCHMIDT To the Editor: In the January 1984 issue of C&RL I am referred to on p.31 as the "former" university librarian of University of North Carolina by Nicholas C. Burckel. Do you, or he, know something they haven't told me? JAMES E. GOVAN The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill To the Editor: Three cheers for John N. DePew's forthright proposals on doing something about so- called "faculty status" (C&RL 44, no .6:407, November 1983). I am pleased to see concrete proposals made to change the standards, and I urge the Academic Status Committee to consider carefully his recommendations. Thank you for making his article the lead one. The time is now for doing something about this embarrassing situation. PHILIP E. LEINBACH Tulane University Libraries, New Orleans, Louisiana To the Editor: John N. DePew's argument that faculty status causes librarians undue" difficulties" and "strain" contains one basic flaw. The statement that librarians with faculty status are "wearing the hats of two professions" is nonsense. These librarians wear two hats no more than the faculty member who is an accountant, or an historian, or a chemist. Library faculty are faculty who happen to be librarians . It would be refreshing if studies were undertaken to determine the impact faculty status has had on the libraries involved instead of concentrating primarily on its effect on individ- uals. BARBARA J. SMITH The Pennsylvania State University 225 226 College & Research Libraries May1984 To the Editor: I personally believe Mr. DePew's article on the ACRL standards for faculty status to be ill- considered and unnecessary. . Having enjoyed full faculty status and rank in all my professional positions, I would say, quite simply: I would not have it any other way. Full faculty status eliminates questions and ambiguities; it helps to integrate librarians fully into the academic, decision-making power structure of a college or university and it gives us a shared rite-of-passage experience with our professional colleagues, an experience which promotes respect and communication. The problems at Dickinson College referred to by Mr. DePew, are hardly unique, but to draw the conclusions that Mr. DePew does from that example is hazardous. While I would certainly agree that tenure is currently difficult for many librarians to obtain, this difficulty is not confined to librarianship. It is universal in academe-largely a result of the popula- tion and monetary changes we are all familiar with-and a matter of concern for all un- tenured faculty, regardless of field or responsibilities. The solution is not the denial of "status" or tenure but the insuring that the appropriate criteria for judging performance are used. It is no more appropriate to use the same criteria for judging librarians that is used for teaching or teaching/research faculty than it is to use the same criteria for comparing research results between an instructor with a five-courses- per-semester load and another with a two-courses-per-semester load. That many colleges and universities do not differentiate enough is at the heart of many current tenuring crises. The solution is not moving or changing status but the campus by campus designing of rea- sonably obtainable criteria for each department or discipline. Most of us are not teachers and do not pretend to be teachers. What I, and others, insist is that faculty status is not a condition restricted only to those who spend their professional hours in the classroom. Rather, it is a status that should accrue to all whose duties are of an academic and intellectual nature as opposed to an administrative nature. Many librarians are administrators. Many librarians may, perhaps, think of themselves only as administra- tors. But that is not the nature of librarianship and it is not how our status should be deter- mined. MICHAEL W. LODER Pennsylvania State University, Schuylkill Campus To the Editor: As one who aspires to library administration, I turned eagerly to Barbara B. Moran's arti- cle on the subject of administrative career patterns in your September issue. What I found there is, I believe, a description of a generation whose time has come ... and departed. The pattern Moran found among women directors, that "the likeliest route to a director- ship is to try to get an administrative appointment in the best [small] academic institution possible and to stay put," simply does not jibe with my impression of current trends. So troubled was I by this conclusion that I have taken the time to look at the characteristics of female appointees to ARL (i.e., large, doctoral degree granting institutions) library direc- torships. There are at present 19 female directors of ARL libraries, 14 in U.S. institutions, and five in Canadian. Sixteen of these women were external candidates for their present director- ships, two were internal candidates, and one is of unknown status. Why were these women (and many women of similar career pattern in smaller academic libraries) missed by Moran's survey? Some, to be sure, have achieved their directorships since 1980. However, the discrepancy is better explained by another characteristic of these women administrators; careers. In 1970, three were assistant/associate directors, two of unknown status, but 14 had not yet become assistant/associate directors. Moran's methodol- ogy, which posits a ten year spart from assistant directorship to directorship, thus missed those individuals who went from middle management positions (e.g., department heads) to directorships in less than ten years . It is precisely these fast track careers which more closely resemble the career patterns of male directors. This evidence is not intended to refute Moran's conclusions about those women who ' I" Letters 227 were already assistant or associate directors in 1970. Their experience seems accurately de- scribed by the article's conclusions. However, it does suggest that a similar study of indi- viduals who were assistant/associate directors in 1978 and who are directors today would show vastly different results. In the brief time span since 1970 there seems to have emerged a new career pattern of women library administrators who are on the fast track and who achieve directorships via career paths more similar to those of their male colleagues. It is these successful and dynamic women whom aspiring future administrators should be en- couraged to emulate, not those from a bygone, less equitable era. JILL B. PATZER University of California, San Diego To the Editor: I would like to reply to the contents and conclusions of a recent article "Long-Range Ef- fectiveness of Library Use Instruction" in your November 1983 issue [Selegean and others, p.476]. The data analysis was so well presented and explained that it is a shame that un- founded conclusions are drawn. The authors do their best to convince the readers that the experimental and control groups are equal. But therein lies the fallacy. They most certainly are not equal. The experi- mental group was self-selected; that is, they were motivated to enroll in the course "Biblio Strategy." That in itself sets them apart from the control group. Although I do not possess the expertise to elaborate on the importance of self-motivation, I do know that the volun- teer in psychological experimentation is not necessarily representative of the population from which he/she comes. Therefore, I would like to dispute the authors' conclusions. Their data, I'm certain, are irreproachable, but it's important to understand that their conclusion-that students who completed the library use course were found to have a sta- tistically significant higher GPA than those who didn't complete the course-can not be generalized to the total population of students at that institution or any other. What was not controlled was the effect of self-motivation to enroll in the course. BONNIE GRATCH Bowling Green State University Libraries, Ohio To the Editor: I have only just seen the November issue of College and Research Libraries, hence my delay in commenting on the letters from Ms. Donna Lee Kurkul and Dean Charles H. Davis. I was initially annoyed by Dean Davis' pomposity, but eventually found myself moved to hearty laughter. Here is a man who is only interested in what he thinks, even in the face of thirty years of educational history. At age 35, I can remember the panic wrought in public education by Sputnik and how the development of education in science and mathematics peaked and died once it was no longer important to beat the Russians into space. Anyone who pays the slightest attention to the news is well aware of the state of public education over the past fifteen years, particularly in science and math. In liberal arts educa- tions in our own time, mathematics ceased to have any real importance. For many of us who concentrated on history, literature, political science, or the arts, our last contact with algebra was in our freshman years at college (an unconscionably long time ago for most of us). It is hard not to applaud Ms. Kurkul' s decision to include her appendix. It was only realis- tic. If that is an insult, it is not to the readers of College and Research Libraries. Whatever im- plied insult there may be falls right where it belongs. As to Dean Davis' assertion that "in- dividuals who do not possess this basic knowledge have not received a good education in the liberal arts and sciences, and they should not be admitted to our schools,'' one can only be speechless with awe. Dean Davis seems to be presuming to judge who should or should not be librarians. A strong knowledge of algebra seems like a pretty shaky credential, from my standpoint. One also wonders what the math requirements are for admission to Dean Davis' school. 228 College & Research Libraries May 1984 That many librarians are poorly skilled in mathematics and science is probably beyond doubt. Until that changes (and a lot of other things must change first), the realistic course to ·follow is one that acknowledges the fact and attempts to deal with it, rather than ignore it. ROBERT E. SKINNER Louisiana State University Medical Center, New Orleans Beginning with the July 1984 issue, Charles Martell, Jr., associate university librarian for public services at California State University, Sacramento, will be the new editor of College & Research Libraries. Previous to his appointment at Cal State University, Mr. Martell worked as acquisitions librarian at the University of Illinois, Chicago, since 1981, and from 1976 to 1981 he was assistant to the university librarian and reference librarian at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also taught library administration courses at UC Berkeley and the Univer- sity of Illinois-Urbana. A graduate of Brown University, MLS from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Mr. Martell authored The Client-Centered Academic Library: An Organizational Model (Greenwood, 1983). Material to be considered for publication should now be sent to Mr. Martell. C&RL' s out- going editorial staff send Mr. Martell sincere best wishes and congratulations. C. JAMES SCHMIDT GRovoung J~, Retrospective ~bookseller e 145 Palisade Street, Dobbs Ferry, New York 10522 • (914) 693-6116 ·you AND YOUR STAFF now can stay continuously in touch with cu"ent Federal technical information through Government Reports Announcements and Index ( GRA&l). ~-·~'" · · Each journal contains about 2,500 bibliographic citations, biweekly, of recently completed research compiled and published by the National Technical Informa- tion Service (NTIS). A subscription to GRA&I means an automatic tech- nological update every two weeks. And every GRA&I journal includes these five indexes to provide easy access to and selection of just the reports you need: • Keyword • Personal Author • Corporate Author • Contract/Grant Numbers • Accession/Report Numbers In the course of a year 's subscription you can turn to some 70,000 technical reports of research carried on in the labs of Federal agencies, universities, and industry. And GRA&I can be a helpful guide to the NTIS Bibliographic Data Base online. Discover the single-source guide to a wealth of new technology including: Aeronautics • Agriculture • Astronomy & Astrophysics • Atmospheric Sciences • Behavioral & Social Sciences • Biological & Medical Sciences • Chemistry • Earth Sciences & Oceanography • Electronics & Electrical Engineering • Energy Conver- sion • Non-Propulsive • Materials • Math- ematical Sciences • Mechanical , Indus- trial, Civil & Marine Engineering • Methods & Equipment • Military Sciences • Missile Technology • Navigation, Communications, Detection & Countermeasures • Ordnance • Physics • Propulsion & Fuels • Space Technology. r-------------------------------------------- ORDER CARD 0 YES! I want to receive Government Reports An- nouncements and Index. Please start my subscription immediately. I understand the subscription rate to be $325 annually. PB- 8 3- S J 01 v 0 AAS 0 Here is my check for$ __________ _ 0 Charge to my NTIS Deposit Account No. Owrge to: 0 American Express O VISA 0 MasterCard Account No. Exp. Date ____ _ Signature _______________ _ (Required to validate order) Name Occupation Organization Address City, State, ZIP U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE National Technical Information Service 5285 Port Royal Road Springfield , VA. 22161 Now another choice for your union list. Faxon has specialized in serials management for libraries for over 100 years. Now we're offering a Union List module on Linx, the online serials management system. Union list groups can add, share, and main- tain up-to-date information on their collec- tive serial titles and holdings. Because we're flexible, we can handle your current machine-readable lists or save time during your manual conversion, thus saving you valuable manpower resources. Our Union List products are available now and include both group lists and individual member lists in hard copy; tape, or microfiche. Make a choice soon! You don't have to use Faxon's subscription service to take advantage of our Union List. Call our Sales Department at (800) 225-6055 or (617) 329-3350 (collect) and arrange for. a demonstra- yon tion of Faxon's Union"List. .A The Faxon Company, 15 Southwest Pa rk , Westwood , MA 02090