Academic Librarian Faculty Status. Compiled and written by Edgar Bailey and Melissa Becher. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2022. 163 pp. Paperback, $52.00 (978-0-8389-3664-1)

The very concept of tenure is currently under fire across the nation as several states have proposed or passed legislation that severely weakens or eliminates tenure. Beyond tenure, faculty rights, including shared governance and academic freedom, are also under attack. Whether librarians should have faculty status, rank, or tenure has been controversial for decades, further complicated by these conditions in higher education. The topic is the focus of Academic Librarian Faculty Status, #47 in the CLIPP series, a publishing program under the auspices of the ACRL College Libraries Section that provides college and small university libraries with analysis and examples of library practices and procedures (vii).

This interesting and practical work was compiled and authored by Edgar Bailey, an instructor at the University of Rhode Island library school, and Melissa Becher, Associate Director of Research, Teaching, and Learning at American University Library. It presents the results of a survey of librarian status at small and medium-sized academic libraries and includes samples of policies and procedures related to librarian faculty status from several types of institutions.

The CLIPP survey was distributed to all 1,063 library directors with membership in ACRL. A low response rate prevented the results from being statistically significant or generalizable to all similarly sized libraries. However, the authors state that “the data…provide a useful indication of librarian status in a cohort that has not been widely studied in previous literature”, i.e., small and medium-sized academic libraries (29). Readers should note that survey respondents were primarily from private institutions (133 private versus 38 public), contributing to the lack of generalizability.

Approximately 40 percent of this slim volume comprises the literature review, study results, and data analysis. The remaining pages document policies about librarian faculty status submitted by participating institutions. The volume lacks an index.

The extensive literature review has nearly 150 references, primarily from the last twenty years. The review covers the varying opinions about and attitudes toward faculty status for librarians; the availability of research support for tenure-stream librarians; national, regional, and state surveys about tenure and faculty status; eligibility for sabbaticals across institutions; and more. One valuable resource cited is the WordPress site Academic Librarian Status (https://academiclibrarianstatus.wordpress.com), created by Lewis (n.d.) and now maintained by author Melissa Becher. This website offers a list of academic institutions sorted by the professional status of their librarians. Some include links to their tenure and promotion documents.

Respondents were asked if any full-time librarians on their staff were tenure-eligible or had faculty status, followed by a series of questions about how their process matched the ACRL Standards for Faculty Status (https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/standardsfaculty). The analysis and discussion section of the survey results is long and detailed, with graphs presenting the results for each question. Unfortunately, there is no abstract or conclusion section. A concise summary of the findings or conclusions would be helpful, as the data from individual questions is quite granular and difficult to synthesize. Notable findings include the following:

• Only 30 percent of the responding institutions reported employing tenure-eligible librarians.
• Tax status (public versus private) was a better predictor of whether librarians were tenure-eligible than student FTEs (33). Responses indicate that private institutions are much less likely to offer tenure to librarians; 102 of the 133 (77%) private institutions represented have no full-time librarians eligible for tenure, compared to 45 percent of public institutions.
• Of the institutions granting librarians faculty status, 28 percent reported a challenge to that status in the last twenty years (43). Respondents’ comments indicate that these challenges tend to come from higher-level university administrators like the provost or a vice president. Thirty-two percent of participants from institutions where librarians are not faculty reported attempts to obtain faculty status in the last twenty years. In either case, the support of the teaching faculty is often the most significant factor influencing the outcome. However, “comments revealed that efforts to obtain or extend faculty status for librarians almost always originate with the library and fail most of the time” (44).

Policy documents are included from two private secular and four private religious institutions, alongside four public institutions. There is also a position paper supporting faculty appointments for librarians from an institution with the name redacted. The following elements appear in most of the documents:

• Detailed criteria for promotion, rank, or tenure
• Definitions of what activities are acceptable such as teaching, scholarship, service, and librarianship
• Descriptions of the evaluation process and the makeup of tenure and promotion committees
• Enumeration and definition of ranks
• What is considered the terminal degree, and whether an additional degree is required for promotion or tenure
• Ability to participate in shared governance
• Policies regarding eligibility for sabbaticals
• Impact of promotion or tenure on contract length, availability of a grievance process, academic freedom, and other issues
• Information about post-tenure review

Librarians researching scholarship on faculty status or tenure eligibility should find the literature review and data analysis informative. The promotion and tenure policies may greatly help anyone developing their own tenure policies or proposing that librarians gain faculty status or tenure eligibility at their institution. — MaryAlice Wade, Fort Hays State University