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[twolives]

Just got hired. TT academic librarian.

1. I am hired at full time.  Consider me completely insane, but is it possible to negotiate my next appointment to part-time?  Would that be severely frowned upon?  It sounds to me like part-timers are applicable for tenure just as full-timers.  When would be a good idea to bring this up?  Year 3/reappointment?

2. How do I "work towards a degree" like many people say.  Are they doing this part-time or "less than part-time".  How do you apply to a program that doesn't specify they allow part-timers?

3. Do you know of any tenured, part time librarians?  Can you tell me anything about dual appointments?  Do they ever exist outside the library? To dispel the aura of strangeness, my goal is to wiggle my way into a dual appointment with another department.  I really want to teach in my second degree, and I'd like to advance towards tenure either jointly or dis-jointly.  My secret weapon is that in my area of librarianship, I will get to write lots of grants that will allow me to write my job, and I hope to just write myself right into a dual appointment.  I hope you have ascertained that my naivety in this matter is dangerously absurd.

4. Just assuming I am full time, if I seek a job in the near future, lets say 3 years, will I start over at 0 in my progress towards tenure at my new institution?  i.e. will I be on track to get tenure in 4 years (3+4=7) or will I need 7 more years (0+7=7)

[punchnpie]

I know of librarians at my school who are .75 and .50 time. I will ask if they can be tenured.

The rest of your post wasn't very clear. Why do you want to go PT - to go back to school? Will you seek a 2nd masters or do you want a PhD? What makes you think (I don't mean that as harshly as it looks) you will get a teaching job with so many PhDs out there?

Considering the financial state of many libraries, they may be happy to see you go to less than FT.

I'm an LIS prof, so I don't see all of the practitioner side, maybe collegekidsmom will step in and give her 2 cents.

[ranganathan]

I'm an academic librarian.  If you're at an R1 you might have some flexibility, but I've never heard of a TT track librarian being part time. You might just ask around and see if it's been done at your institution.  A few issues come to mind:

1. Librarians pretty much have a 40 hour work week.  If you move to part time, who is going to work your desk hours/do your share of cataloging/teach your classes, etc?  They'd have to hire and train another librarian for a part-time position.

2. Getting the okay to hire a part-time position is really difficult in these economic times.  Admin is more likely to shoot it down and then your lucky co-workers would get to cover for you.

3. The librarians I know on TT spend a lot of time doing research.  If you dropped to PT, you'd have to either give up the research or give up doing your daily librarian activities. 

4. Part-timers are usually the first positions to go during fiscal emergencies.

I do have a librarian friend who worked full time, got tenure, and earned a PhD in another field all in the same time period. She received her degree from the same university at which she worked. She took night classes and spent her weekends doing homework. Luckily, she was able to 'double dip' her research so that it applied to her PhD and her tenure packet (the research was interdisciplinary).

Dual appointments exist, but they are rare.  Really, if a library had a full time position then it NEEDS someone to do full time work.  And in these budgetary times, I would never give admin the impression that someone could do all of my work at half time (and half the pay). 

[totoro]

If tenure is to protect academic freedom, why should librarians be tenured? So they can buy books that people think are dangerous? Or recommend people read them?

[ranganathan]

If tenure is to protect academic freedom, why should librarians be tenured? So they can buy books that people think are dangerous? Or recommend people read them?

Hmmmm- that's a very, um, interesting view of what librarians do. 

Librarians who have tenure are active in research, often on similar topics as done by professors in education, information science, psychology, etc.  They would face the same academic freedom issues as teaching faculty.

But whether librarians should do that much research and should be tenured is a hot topic in Library Land.  I think the main reason librarians on some campuses fight to keep their tenure is to keep on equal footing with teaching faculty.   

[collegekidsmom]

I suppose the answer depends on the type of institution and culture, and what career level you are at in librarianship. If you are at a high level in your library career, that is of course another story and maybe you are planning to go up early for tenure, and already have a robust record of publications. If you are new to the tenure track and to librarianship, there will be a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time.

You have landed a tenure track position, and will come up for reappointment in year 3. By the time you put together your dossier, you will likely have to have worked full-time in the library(proving competence and impact using a variety of strategies), have published in the peer-reviewed library literature(or at least show some promising trajectory), have given numerous presentations to local, national and possibly international library conference audiences, and given some of your time to service in both your own institution and national library organizations. Many on the tenure track work in the library every day-or most days, and then find time for research, writing, and publishing in good journals. The subject of the research is librarianship, not another subject. Daily work in the library can turn into writing reports, white papers, and all kinds of other take-home work stuff as well. Maybe you will be answering reference questions virtually at night or sitting on a busy reference desk on the weekend-I don't know what your position entails.

So, just to understand, when it gets to year three, and you pass in your materials-you are intending to ask if you can instead work in the library part-time? That will not go over very well IMHO.
 

I worked for many years part time in academic libraries. There are hourly positions, positions analogous to adjunct lines, etc. Appointments are annual, or semester, and always chopped first in any budget cut. I know of people using these part-time library jobs to supplement other types of jobs, even other academic positions in other institutions. I have never heard of any part time faculty library line including any chance at tenure.

I think you want to know whether you can share tenure in two depts-the library being one. That would be very unusual. At this point, you have a full tenure track line. The library won't give that up, but likely get another person who will be able to give their full time attention to what is likely a need in the library faculty. Some of our librarians are also involved in research centers, or they might teach a course for an academic department. But splitting equal time-I have not heard of that.

Librarians certainly have the option to work toward another degree just like anybody else. You can do it in the few hours you have left after working all day and writing and doing research. Many do it very part-time over a number of years. It is nice to have tuition remission to pursue added credentials. However, you would not have much time leftover for a life.

I would run your ideas by your mentor or other advisors, but not start out the tenure track with this idea or be too vocal about your desire to switch to part-time. Otherwise, you may just find yourself working part-time in the library without any job security, contract, or benefits.

[punchnpie]

Here's an edited* response from one of our PT librarians. We are at a big state R1.

"I'm actually one of those librarians -- I've been working PT for 3 years....    We are not tenured here, but we do go through a promotion process....  My last promotion was equivalent to getting tenure.  The gist of what is expected of me part-time is that I have to do the SAME AMOUNT of professional work as a full-time person.  So basically my cv looks the same as a full-time person (you can't tell from it that I'm part-time).  That means that I have a lot of extra work to do outside of work time to keep it all going, and I have to make it to the same number of conferences, etc...."

This person also noted that no one here had done this before. I don't know if that's an indication that you might have problems trying to pull this off at your place, but it may be an issue, especially considering collegekidsmom response.

*Edited due to remarks directed to me personally and that provided info that might out this person.

[laniev]

This has been very helpful.  I had the same question, but my motive for being interested in dual appointments was to supplement my income.  The dilemma is deciding what additional line of work to choose.  I come from a corporate background and this is my first academic library position.  I have experience in grant writing, a new teaching ESL certification, and a great deal of electronic database research experience.  I do not want to be viewed as uncommitted to my library work. But I seriously need to supplement my income.

Can you offer any suggestions about the best way to do both? (library work plus one other) I was told I cannot work as an adjunct in two public institutions of the same state.  So I interpret that to mean there is no way to be paid for two different jobs at the same institution.  So my next question is, what exactly is a "dual appointment"?

I hope it doesn't mean working twice as hard for the same low pay.

Thanks for all comments.

[collegekidsmom]

All depends on the nature of your primary appointment and the rules of your institution. If you are a faculty member on the tenure track, or if you are part-time-or some other category, your institution likely has rules about having other jobs. Once you know what the rules or guidelines are, you can then find other income sources that fit that.

[dellaroux]

well i was looking for that
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