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Re: Article in Chronicle of Higher Ed



I am curious about something. You said in the third paragraph of your email that you "don't like teaching," but just a few lines further down, you said you are doing archival work until you "get a teaching job."  What gives?
 

Barbara M. Pope, MLS
Reference Librarian
St. Louis College of Pharmacy
4588 Parkview Place
St. Louis MO 63110
(314) 367-8700 x. 1001
FAX (314) 454-3382

-----Original Message-----
From: Georgen Gilliam [mailto:GeoGil@NGW.LIB.USU.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 10:48 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Re: Article in Chronicle of Higher Ed

I thought this was a very interesting article, but I thought that the two main issues that it brought up have little to do with archives, but more to do with academic librarianship.
 
The first issue is the whole faculty/staff difference. I know in most academic libraries, there are some librarians who have faculty status and some who have various kinds of staff classification. It seems to have very little to do with the work involved in one's job, the amount of skills one has, or one's education level. Many of these institutions pay lip service to the idea that there is no difference in status; those of us who work in these situations know very well that there is a big difference in the amount of respect and support given to the individual. In fact, if you're a staff member and doing a lot of "professional" activities, you'll encounter a lot of resentment, which is probably what Ms. Young was encountering here. (Hey, when the stakes get low, the fight gets dirty.) The theory seems to be that giving librarians faculty status will make them equally respected to faculty members on campus and will foster an atmosphere of research and scholarship. Instead, you have the faculty librarians spending work time churning out often shoddy research when they could be actually creating pathfinders, cleaning up databases, or assisting patrons. And you have the caste-climate like Ms. Young experienced, where the professional staff librarians work all day and the faculty librarians sit in their offices reading novels. (A strong statement, but I assure you this is based on my experience in one, however atypical, institution.)
 
The second issue is the whole "librarians who want to be faculty members" issue. There are lots of these people working in libraries, especially in Special Collections departments, where there remain a cadre of individuals who think that a PhD in history is sufficient training to be an archivist (none of us believe that, of course). This may sound crazy, but I don't want to be a faculty member. The elements of my current job that are driving me out, the nasty politics and pettiness are, often more intense in faculty positions; I also don't like teaching; I don't like writing articles when I have nothing to say. I think that being an archivist or a librarian is an honest, often interesting, and usually useful living. I'm collecting and providing access to historical materials and researchers will bless my name for generations to come! Well, okay, probably not, but I still feel useful. I like it, and I'm doing it as a stopgap until I get a teaching job.
 
I thought that Chris Flynn's comments on using this article as a wake up call to our own situations was an excellent one. How many of us are creating this situation in our own places of work? As for how Ms. Young became an archivist, who cares? We all have come to our profession through meandering roads, often gaining useful skills and experience along the way. It sounds like from her activities that she's an excellent archivist, but she probably won't stay in the profession because of the bullshit she's having to put up with within the academic library system. Is that happening in one of our institutions?
 
 
 
Ms. Georgen Gilliam
Utah State University Libraries
geogil@ngw.lib.usu.edu
What time is it? http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html