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The American Association of University Professors has updated guidelines for librarians to reflect their changing roles as teachers and researchers. The joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians now includes language on technology in the library and recommends that institutions adequately compensate librarians for the 12-month cycles in which they typically work.
It also recommends that colleges and universities involve librarians in governance issues, such as curriculum development, said Deanna Wood, a reference librarian and associate professor of reference at the University of New Hampshire who helped draft the updated guidelines. That way, students won’t enter the library to do research and find “there’s nothing there to support it.”
The revised statement also reaffirms an earlier version’s call to consider librarians involved in teaching and research as faculty members and lauds their role as independent guardians of intellectual and academic freedom. Wood said while she and many fellow librarians at public land-grant universities are tenured faculty, the practice is rarer at private universities. It’s unclear what percentage of librarians are tenure-track faculty nationwide, she added.
A joint committee of AAUP and Association of College and Research Libraries members drafted the updates to the original, 1973 guidelines, which were approved by both groups last year.
