Tenure and the Law Library Director
Richard D. Danner & Barbara Bintliff, Academic Freedom Issues for Academic Librarians
Tenure and the Law Library D irector
James M. Donovan 0
Kevin B. Shelton 0
0 See e.g., James M. Donovan, Do Librarians Deserve Tenure? Casting an Anthropological Eye upon Role Definition within the Law School , 88 Law Libr. J. 382 (1986); Catherine Murray-Rust & Deborah A. Carver, Should Librarians Get Tenure? , 52 Chron. Higher Educ. B10 (2005); Spencer L. Simons , What Interests are Served When Academic Law Library Directors are Tenured Law Faculty? An Analysis and Proposal , 58 J. Leg. Educ. 245, 255, 2008
The status of librarians of any rank within a law school has been the subject of ongoing discussion.1 The major fault line in the debate has been whether librarians are administrators, faculty, or one of those imperfect hybrids that anthropologist Mary Douglas noted makes everyone uncomfortable.2 Depending on where a librarian lands, certain consequences follow. If he falls squarely within faculty, there are the added demands of performance and evaluation on tenure criteria, but also the benefits of full participation in the shared governance of the law school, an obvious value to the library. On the other hand, administrators are spared such heightened scrutiny, leaving them more time to run the library; again, in theory, a benefit to the organization. Reasonable people can disagree as to which choice better supports the mission of the institution. Always simmering just below a boil, this disagreement has generated new heat due to a review of American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards that began in earnest in 2008. As it presently reads, Standard 603 requires that the director have tenure or tenure-like protections. Factions within the ABA, especially law school deans, view such rules as intrusive, depriving them of needed flexibility to determine the terms of employment for their librarians. The first section of this article describes the current state of the Standard 603 review to identify the terms in which the discussion has been conducted and the positions of the major interested parties. Part II defends the present requirement that law library directors be appointed as tenure-track faculty on Mary Douglas, The Abominations of Leviticus, in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo 41-57 (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1966).
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James M. Donovan is Director of the University of Kentucky College of Law Library. The
authors thank Carol A. Watson, Carol A. Parker, and Duncan Alford for helpful comments on
earlier drafts.
Kevin B. Shelton is Reference and Government Documents Librarian at the Hofstra University
Barbara and Maurice A. Deane Law Library.
the grounds that doing so bolsters academic freedom and shared governance,
twin goals that tenure historically supports. Academic freedom can be
considered the intrinsic justification for tenure status. The question to be
asked is whether the law library director requires this protection. If so, then
the conclusion shall be that to deny tenure-track appointment to any class
of persons who satisfy the asserted preconditions for tenure undermines the
value and security of tenure for everyone.
The second argument looks at the second prong of the historical justification
for tenure, the ability to share in the university’s governance. Participation
in shared governance may be deemed an extrinsic criterion for tenure,
meaning that it is not a basis for the emergence of tenure, but rather an added
functional application of tenure status after it has appeared. While the review
of intrinsic factors looks at the qualifications and activities of the librarian, the
extrinsic test examines the pragmatic value to the library when its director is
present in key policy discussions that may determine the future direction of
the institution. In other words, the director may need tenure in order to be
accorded the access and respect to do his or her job for the library as much for
the primary safeguards of academic freedom.
Either of these factors—protection of academic freedom and participation in
faculty governance—warrants retaining the current version of 603 and pushing
for its stricter enforcement. The evidence shows, however, that both conditions
apply: The law library director both qualifies for tenure due to the intrinsic
qualifications and responsibilities of the position, and, even were that not
true, would still require tenure in order to fulfill the professional obligations
incumbent upon him or her.
Given the strong case favoring tenure for law library directors, the position
should be less controversial than it has proven to be. Part III recognizes the
possibility that the threat to deprive directors of this needed protection may
have arisen in part because today’s directors have failed to keep their end of
the social contract that is tenure, many neglecting to sustain a level of scholarly
achievement comparable to that of their doct (...truncated)