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On its quest to snag a prestigious national research ranking, Louisiana State University is making it harder for librarians to keep tenure.
“It’s not appropriate for librarians to receive tenure,” said Roy Haggerty, LSU’s provost, The Louisiana Illuminator reported Tuesday. He noted that the tenure changes will hold librarians accountable to their job descriptions, which usually require 15 percent of work to be research related. “The culture of a library is typically not focused around the production of knowledge,” he said, but rather “the culture of creating access to knowledge.”
At a meeting last week, LSU administrators told librarians across the eight-campus system that they can’t hire for any more tenure-track positions; library faculty who already have tenure or are on the tenure track will have to publish more if they want to keep their status.
“The purpose of this is to strengthen tenure by increasing the integrity of the way in which we measure teaching and scholarship,” Haggerty said.
The tenure changes for librarians are part of the institution’s strategy to get invited into the prestigious American Association of Universities (AAU), a group of 71 top research institutions. When reviewing prospective members, the AAU considers factors such as an institution’s research spending, faculty awards, published books and frequency of faculty research citations.
While publications from universities that have already reached AAU status are cited an average of 208 times per faculty member in a five-year period, LSU’s average was 82 in the same time period, according to a report from the university. LSU also lags behind AAU members in areas such as research spending and fellowships and grants awarded.
