Faculty status for academic librarians: Compliance with standards, opinions of university administrators, and a comparison of tenure-success records of librarians and instructional faculty

The problem of this study was to determine whether certain concerns about librarian faculty status are justified. The study inquired into whether key university administrators tend not to believe librarians merit faculty status, whether there is a trend away from adoption of the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Librarians, whether the ACRL sanctions against institutions violating the ACRL Standards have been effective in any sense, and whether librarians are significantly less likely to earn tenure than are instructional faculty. Academic affairs administrators, library directors, and librarians active in the librarian faculty status movement were surveyed by telephone and mail to answer the research questions. It was found that several Standards were not fully implemented on most campuses, that most administrators thought librarian faculty status benefitted universities but that librarians do not merit the status that is held by instructional faculty, that the ACRL sanctions have never been imposed against universities violating any of the Standards, and that librarians and instructional faculty were earning tenure at almost identical rates regardless of whether the librarians were required to publish. It was concluded that there has been no substantial trend toward or away from the adoption of the Standards in recent years, that most administrators supported an alternative status for librarians to that required by the Standards, and that publication requirements do not necessarily prevent librarians from achieving tenure at similar rates as instructional faculty.