ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Letters

Are standards appropriate?

To the Editor:

The revised Standards for Faculty Status (May 1992) seem to me to make perfect sense but for their apparent assumption that the status of teaching faculties (referred to as if appropriate to them, although that may be doubted) is everywhere and automatically appropriate to academic librarians. Surely it is strange to set forth as standards whatever working conditions apply to larger populations laboring alongside those persons whom the standards in question are intended to benefit.

I hope that librarians contemplating employment in colleges and universities that have accepted the nine standards will scrutinize every aspect of employment to which the standards refer (especially tenure and promotion) and then decide whether conditions at particular institutions are ones they not only can endure but can, as it were, joyfully embrace. (But why are we not setting forth our own standards— standards applicable to all academic librarians, indeed, to all members of the profession regardless of the kinds of libraries that employ them? A related question: Is academic librari- anship essentially a subset of library service or a subset of higher education? If the latter, ACRL should consider leaving ALA and emigrating to what?—the AAUP?—even if to enjoy only marginal status there.)—Robert M. Pierson, cataloged The Santa Fe Indian School, New Mexico

Kudos for Washington Hotline

To the Editor:

I was pleased to see “Washington Hotline” focus on telecommunications issues (April 1992). Librarians have a lot of homework to do to keep up with these complex and important issues.— Mark Scott, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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