Hello All
here is the summary from responses that I gathered from Coll-L, Acq-l and
ULS-L. Some of the responses indicate that the person sent me a document
with standards - if you would like to see those, let me know or contact the
poster. There is a wide range of information here and I need to digest it
all! One person who responded to me said the librarians at his school
base their growth on what is written in the job description and the
librarian's yearly goals. I thought this was an interesting method - at my
library, we have no job descriptions for the librarians nor do we have
yearly goals (we have goals for the library as a whole and departments
within the library, staff have goals but the faculty librarians do not set
goals). Does anyone else base their "growth" on yearly goals?
Stacey
Stacey Marien
Acquisitions Librarian
American University Library
smarien_at_american.edu
202-885-3842
*Summary of responses about evaluation for tenure and promotion*
Every department on our campus has a set of Bylaws, a document that
includes clear criteria for promotion and tenure. Ours are available at
https://www.nmu.edu/academicaffairs/sites/DrupalAcademicAffairs/files/UserFiles/Files/Pre-Drupal/SiteSections/ProceduresForms/Documents/Bylaws/AIS_Bylaws_1-31-12.pdf
.
Mollie
Mary P. (Mollie) Freier
Head of Public Services and Professor
Lydia M. Olson Library
Northern Michigan University
1401 Presque Isle Avenue
Marquette, MI 49855
906-227-1061
Does your university have those kind of standards for other departments? We
don't have anything like that because our supervisory letter (for all
departments) contextualizes the impact and importance of the work.
We've got librarians who publish a couple of articles compared to a book
chapter compared to participating/leading national grants compared to
running conferences. Each of those activities is a pretty major
contribution to the scholarly and professional environment of academic
librarianship so I would find any document trying to define impact to be
unweildy were it attempting to do justice to all the diverse ways library
faculty impact the field.
In addition to the supervisor letter, we also have to have two external
reviewers, so between those three letters the impact and growth over time
is assessed fairly well. Asking for quantitative measures is useful for
crafting a narrative, but would be difficult to be used as a major factor
when determining impact or growth over time.
Crystal M. Boyce
Sciences Librarian, Ames Library
Illinois Wesleyan University
(309) 556-1551 <%28309%29%20556-1551>
cmboyce07_at_gmail.com
Hi Stacey,
My personal thoughts, after much reading on the subject, is that impact
measures of individual scholars are hogwash. But this doesn’t square the
circle for you. I would say that the fast citing world of molecular biology
and chemistry (for which the journal impact factor was created) where
citation half-lives are about 2 years you might be able to get a sense of
long term impact by the first promotion. For librarianship, I *cannot
imagine* getting a measurable and meaningful sense of the long-term
citation performance of an individual piece of scholarship by first
promotion review.
Our language (established before I came to Akron) states “The impact of a
publication can be measured by several indicators: the publisher, journal,
citation studies, content, or awards.” I think qualitative measures such as
awards, whether it was invited, the level of review should be given an
explicit place in evaluation. I think downloads from institutional
repository and other altmetrics should also have a spot.
But administrators are going to administrate. You might look at Scimago’s
list of library and information science journals (
http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=0&category=3309&country=all&year=2014&order=sjr&min=0&min_type=cd),
as they try to normalize for subfield. You could suggest the quartile
system they use as an acceptable metric (librarians should publish in Q1
and Q2 journals only for tenure consideration). You could also get a sense
of what is cited well relative to the journal. For example. I’m about to
publish in Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship – it is an
invited, peer-reviewed publication from Taylor & Francis – a well-known (if
odious and overpriced) publisher. This is a Q2 journal according to
Scimago, and has average citations of below 1 with most articles not being
cited. So if it is cited once, I will be above average (hooray?). To my
observation neither Journal Citation Reports or Eigenfactor would be as
easy to use as Scimago for library asessment.
Hope this helps,
Ian McCullough
Physical Sciences Librarian
University of Akron, ASEC-104
(330) 972-6264 <%28330%29%20972-6264>
ibm_at_uakron.edu
Stacey,
Even a scientist mired in citation counts understands the principle of
normalization for the rational comparison of apples to apples. Briefly, if
the administrative heart is set on metrics, I would use Scimago as it at
least has a defined library and information science category.
Sincerely,
Ian
Stacey,
We raised this issue several years ago and came up with representative
criteria for each of our broad areas. You can see this beginning on Pg. 9
of the Faculty Handbook found here:
http://wooster.edu/_media/files/academics/affairs/resources/handbook/section7.pdf
Thanks
Mark Gooch
Hello Stacey. You’re probably aware of this already, but your situation
seems to be addressed by Ernest Boyer in 1990 in “Scholarship
Reconsidered,” where he presents a discussion of the scholarship of
practice. Boyer’s work is good for the theory; a number of institutions
have adopted his ideas for their own tenure and review process. Here’s
just one discussion:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/02/wcu
Here’s part of the Boyer:
https://depts.washington.edu/gs630/Spring/Boyer.pdf
A Google for *scholarship of practice boyer library OR librarian OR
librarianship* came up with a lot of interesting things.
This idea is discussed a lot in nursing education as well.
All things you’ve probably seen or thought of before, but thought I’d
mention just in case. Good luck!
Gretchen
*Gretchen Revie*
Reference Librarian and Instruction Coordinator
Seeley G. Mudd Library
Lawrence University
Appleton, WI
920-832-6730
gretchen.m.revie_at_lawrence.edu
Hey Stacey – At the College of Charleston we have guidelines online but as
you say nothing really specific about impact.
Don’t know if you were at the Conference last year. On Saturday morning,
Adam Murray gave a great paper on ROI for libraries and librarians. It is
online now, I believe. Anyway, he would be a good person to talk to about
this. He is now Dean of Libraries at George Mason University.
murrayal_at_jmu.edu
BTW, he is also doing a preconference in Charleston about this! Katina
Hi Stacey,
I'm attaching one of our documents for evaluating tenure-track librarians.
It reads, "Pre-tenured library faculty will have a minimum of two
manuscripts accepted for publication before tenure review. Articles, book
chapters or full-text published conference papers should be either
peer-reviewed or be published in a highly regarded professional journal."
Generally, if someone only has two published manuscripts, they would not be
going for promotion to associate professor; they'd only be eligible for
tenure. Two is the bare minimum.
Hope this helps,
Ruth
_________________________________________________________
Ruth S. Connell
Professor of Library Services/ Electronic Services Librarian
Christopher Center for Library & Information Resources 263
Valparaiso University
Phone: 219.464.5360
http://library.valpo.edu/faculty/connell.html
[image: https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
I haven’t seen this done in a library setting, but when I was working as an
information manager for a law firm we would use SWOT analyses for personal
assessments. Categories or guidelines within each area (Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities for Growth, and Threats/Obstacles to growth) can
be as general or specific as you desire.
*Faithe Ruiz | College of Central Florida*
Coordinator – Online Library Resources and Instruction
Learning Resources Center, Room 108C
3001 SW College Rd | Ocala, Florida 34474
352-854-2322 ext. 1749 | ruizf@cf.edu | library.cf.edu <http://www.cf.edu/>
Not baseline standards but I have attached our specifics. The university
calls them criteria. I would be interested to see what you gather. We
have never had a full professor but would be possible with a lot of work.
The teaching faculty are very protective of full prof rank.
Karen B Nichols
Associate Professor
Coordinator of Reference Services
Mary & John Gray Library
Lamar University
Beaumont, Texas
I’ve been working with a task force in my library on a complete overhaul of
our promotion policy, process, and guidelines. Librarians and archivists do
not have faculty status at this library, but our goal is to mirror the
process for promotion and tenure of our faculty as closely as we can. The
charge that our dean set for the task force was to devise a system that
would be much more objective and transparent than it has been in the past.
We decided to measure promotion candidates’ progress with a rubric that
assigns points for various types of scholarly output, scholarly activities,
and service. Our goal in writing the rubric was to be as inclusive as
possible for all types of scholarly output, especially for work that is
often overlooked in traditional measures. So in addition to awarding points
for scholarly monographs or journal articles, our rubric also recognizes,
for example, authorship of working papers, technical/scientific reports,
technical standards/guidelines, and grant proposals; creation and continued
administration of social media outlets that are influential in the
profession; and creation of apps or software – among other things.
Candidates for promotion must meet a baseline number of points to be
recommended for promotion by the committee that evaluates dossiers;
however, the dean has final say as to whether a candidate is promoted. The
new policy has not been officially adopted, but the dean has approved it,
and it will be going before all librarians and archivists for a vote soon.
If approved, the document will be published in our institutional repository
and licensed CC-BY-NC.
Jody
Jody Bailey, MA, MLIS
Director of Grants and Research and Liaison Librarian to Linguistics & TESOL
Central Library Room 214A
University of Texas at Arlington Libraries
817.272.7516
jbailey_at_uta.edu
http://libguides.uta.edu/profile/jodybailey
At Tulane, librarians do not have faculty status, but we do have academic
appointments along with some faculty benefits, like expanded retirement
benefits, the protection of academic freedom, and the ability to take
sabbaticals. We can also apply for emeritus status upon retirement for
those who are Librarian IV, our highest rank. We also strive to mirror the
tenure process, are a functioning academic unit within the university, have
a promotions committee that reviews dossiers and makes recommendations to
the Dean, and have promotion details stated in our department handbook,
available at
http://library.tulane.edu/sites/library.tulane.edu/files/documents/LibraryDepartmentHandbook.pdf.
I do have to say, though, that we have some unstated requirements, such as
substantial leadership skills for all librarian levels and substantial
participation in the profession at the national level for higher ranks.
Even though we are not faculty, promotion to Librarian III and IV is
difficult, and often takes more than one try.
*Sally R. Krash*
*Head of Acquisitions Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Tulane University*
7001 Freret St.
New Orleans, LA 70118
USA
Hi Stacey,
Our librarians are unionized and tenure track. Our criteria for promotion
and tenure are attached. Not sure this helps, but perhaps an example. The
evaluation criteria are in order of importance, and differ from the faculty
in that weighting. For the teaching faculty, “creative activity” (i.e.
research, etc.) is weighted more heavily than for librarians. Librarians
work 35 hours per week 12 months per year, and do not have much
flexibility or opportunity to do research. The examples given are just
that. The individual librarian creates his or her own dossier to support
their request for promotion, or to support their case for tenure. So a Tech
Services librarian or a Systems librarian always has to make their own
case, which is then supported (or not) by the Director. In my comments
which go to the P & T Committee (same one as for the regular faculty), I
try to place the accomplishments in a context that P & T can appreciate.
Patricia S. Banach
Director of Library Services
J. Eugene Smith Library
Eastern Connecticut State University
83 Windham Street
Willimantic, CT 06226
Email: banachp_at_easternct.edu
Sorry it’s taken me a couple of days to get back to this discussion. I can
echo much of what Sally from Tulane says below. The UT System confers the
status of “associates of the faculty” on librarians and archivists. We have
expanded retirement options and are also a functional academic unit with a
dean. We have a promotions committee composed of peers who evaluate
candidates for promotion and make recommendations to the dean. I think part
of the reason for having a process similar to tenure is what Claudia from
GMU states: it legitimizes librarians and archivists as scholars in their
own right among our faculty. It also raises the visibility of our
librarians and archivists since it encourages them to be active in
scholarly work and service, which in turn makes UT Arlington Libraries as a
whole more visible within the profession. It can additionally help those
who have worked at our organization for a while and gone through the
promotion process when they are looking for a new position. When an
individual has achieved a promotion by engaging in a rigorous process and
being successful – well, that’s always going to look good to a prospective
employer, and we want a process in place that will be beneficial to our
librarians and archivists while they are here at UT Arlington or wherever
they may be in the future.
To answer a specific question you had about whether we are self-governing,
Claudia, if by that you are asking whether we have an association that
represents the interests of the librarians and archivists to management, I
would respond “sort of.” We did have that type of association but it wasn’t
working well, so we need to do some rethinking about it and re-form it.
However, if you are asking whether we are unionized, then the answer is no.
We do have a handbook that is currently being revised, and as I stated
earlier, our promotion policy will shortly go up for a vote. If it passes,
we will make it public, and I will be happy to share it here.
Jody
Jody Bailey, MA, MLIS
Director of Grants and Research and Liaison Librarian to Linguistics & TESOL
Central Library Room 214A
University of Texas at Arlington Libraries
817.272.7516
jbailey_at_uta.edu
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Received on Wed Aug 19 2015 - 19:24:13 EDT
