Rank Promotion and Tenure in the Library: How Criteria and Process (Still) Favor Reference and Instruction Work

Abstract

In a The Way I See It essay in the July/August 2000 issue of C&RL News, Rodger C.
Lewis briefly recounted the history of how librarians came to have tenure in the 1950s
and 1960s. He noted that this movement was not without controversy, and that
...on many campuses there were a couple of interesting bumps on that road to a
new identity: the teaching faculty began to feel threatened by the possibility of
having to share whatever wealth and privilege there might be with a larger group,
and they objected vociferously; the technical services librarians realized that the
public service librarians, in their attempt to take on a new identity, were emphasizing
their instructional contact with students and their assistance to professors at
the expense of the clever people in the back room, so a break in the ranks occurred
that threatened to derail the movement