next »

[yemaya]

I'm in complete agreement with you, kaysixteen.  No one...regardless of whether they are a professor, librarian, or scrub the toilets at McDonald's, should be treated like that (or put up with treatment like that.  If this prof had assaulted me, I would definitely have pressed charges.  And if the university had made my life difficult over it, I would have gone to the press and told anyone who would listen.  There's nothing like the threat of bad press to keep a bad university in line.  (This was very much a PR-driven uni. that prided itself on a welcoming, squeaky-clean image.  It had some decent programs, but for the most part no one went there for the academics.)

[wibald]

I spend nearly as much time the classroom as my "teaching faculty" peers and I also put up subject guides on topics of "contemporary social issues" where resources useful for students often run into areas that are sensitive for the religious organization the sponsors my college.  I definitely need academic freedom!

The part I'm not sure of is whether publishing is the way librarians should earn tenure.  How many times have you all opened a library journal and seen yet another article with 12 co-authors touting the success of the online tutorial that everyone else is using too.  It is published because those people need to keep their jobs, but does it really, truly "further the profession"? This is not to say that there shouldn't be scholarly publishing in LIS, just that eliminating the publishing that happens only to earn tenure might lead to higher quality journals.

Why not let us earn tenure through teaching/committees/software programming/research tool creation (you know, the things we really do for a living) and let the people who have summers off for research do the publishing.

[gesualdo]

I've been a librarian for over 20 years, and have just started my first tenure track job at an institution that grants librarians tenure.  So my attitude at the moment (three months into it) is ... wait and see.  It's hard to form an opinion without having some real knowledge of how both systems work, so I'm waiting to see how this tenure thing works for me.  So far, so good.  As far as my daily work life goes, being on the tenure track makes no difference at all.  Here, tenure requirements for librarians do not involve publishing or research, so I'm not doing anything differently than I did at non-tenure granting libraries.

I will say that if granting us tenure could somehow keep people like Senior Prof from lumping librarians with Masters Degrees in with maintenance staff - bring it on.  I know, I know, he's a troll, but still.... jerk.

Ahh..but it won't.  Granting tenure to librarians will not change Senior Prof's opinion of what librarians do, nor will it change the opinions of many of real professors just like him.  Librarians are often viewed as clerical staff, but having tenure isn't going to change anyone's opinion.  I came to the conclusion long ago that "who cares?"  I'm just going to do my job.  If I do it well, eventually even the trolls come around and find respect for them.

[bunny]

I am not sure what "guest" status means but I note that senior prof has no other posts here and I assume it means something like he/she is not registered.

I suspect he/she is not a senior professor and is,in fact, a troll.

Posting statements such as "They are service providers no different then the maintenance workers of campus or the people who work in the personnel office."   is meant only to anger and shock, get a reaction, which is what trolls feed upon.

Ignore it.

[gesualdo]

I am not sure what "guest" status means but I note that senior prof has no other posts here and I assume it means something like he/she is not registered.

I suspect he/she is not a senior professor and is,in fact, a troll.

Posting statements such as "They are service providers no different then the maintenance workers of campus or the people who work in the personnel office."   is meant only to anger and shock, get a reaction, which is what trolls feed upon.

Ignore it.

I already suspected he was a troll.  Unfortunately, there are a few tenured types who could be him and actually think like that. 

[daurousseau]

These two questions are not the same:

Should librarians have tenure?
Are librarians faculty?

I think tenure is a good idea in this era when pseudo-academic think tanks and the government at all levels systematically sponsor lying, censorship, and the undermining of science. Think "commisar."  Then there are self-appointed citizens' committees such as ICC who want to recreate the reds-under-the-beds system of the 1950s for spying on your neighbor. Maybe they'll want Norman Finkelstein's books to have a red "A" branded on the binding.

You'll find that librarians always have been and always will be in the front lines fighting censorship and the like, while tenured faculty may stick their necks out (but don't count on it). So a little body armor would help.

[francie_]

FYI:

I am not sure what "guest" status means but I note that senior prof has no other posts here and I assume it means something like he/she is not registered.

"Guest" means the post is from The Before Time, when dinosaurs roamed and trolls ruled the fora, that is, before the current software with required registration was installed in June 2006.

The posts of "senior prof" are very old and can be safely ignored.