faculty status

Grappling with My Faculty Identity

Please welcome our new First Year Academic Librarian Experience blogger Melissa DeWitt, Research and Instruction Librarian at the Regis University, Denver, Colorado.

When I began applying for academic library jobs late last year, I was introduced to the wild world of academic personnel classification. First, I figured out what tenure was and what that might mean for my own career. I then discovered that there are tenure track librarians on 9 or 12 month contracts, faculty librarians who are not tenure track, librarians who are not classified as faculty, and everything in between. It was complicated, and I didn’t quite understand what my status might mean in the greater context of the university or college I would work for. In fact, I’m still grappling with my identity on campus, what it means in relation to my colleagues, and how rank influences interactions.

In April, I became a faculty research and instruction librarian at a small university. We do not have tenure, but we are on a rank and promotion track, which means that I have service requirements to students and the university and requirements to contribute to the profession through presentations, publications, and research so that I can be promoted. There are a mix of tenure track and non tenure track positions at my university, and the designation depends heavily on the college. Complicating these designations are the histories behind them. There used to be a faculty union for some of the colleges, but that union dissolved. The library used to have tenure, and some librarians still have tenure, but new librarians do not. I learn new information every day about my university’s history, college structures and classifications, and I’m still confused. It’s like a jumbled bowl of faculty spaghetti. I don’t know if I’ll ever figure it out, and this is just one college campus.

I’m not usually one to care about titles, what I’m called, or what my status is; however, I’m discovering that other people really do care and that has implications for how they interact with me. What I’ve started to care about is how people perceive what I do. It seems that a large part of my job is fixing people’s perceptions of my job and advocating for it in the first place. Veronica Arellano Douglas recently posted an article that helped me reflect on some of my feelings. A lot of times, I think I’m seen as a resource or as something that can be used by others instead of as an educator and expert in my own field of study. There was a conversation on Twitter recently about this idea that librarians are seen as helpers rather than colleagues. This comes across in emails where colleagues ask me to present an impossible list of things in a 20 minute period or introduce me as a magician who can pull resources out of thin air instead of a colleague that studied and practiced and is an expert in her field. Or, there are comments of surprise that the librarians attenda so many events (it’s literally our job and we want to support our students and colleagues), though attending campus events can sometimes be a struggle when we’re left off the invite list.

Which brings me back to labels. What does it mean if I’m classified as faculty but am not always treated as one? What I think it means is that I have to do a bit more work to build relationships and collaborate with other faculty members. When a colleague remarked that it’s nice the library is invited to faculty events, we had a conversation about how librarians are invited because we’re also faculty. If I receive an instruction request that includes too many topics or doesn’t give me enough time to teach, I can push back and inform them how I approach instruction. I’m trying to find my boundaries and tell colleagues “this is what I do” instead of “is it okay if I do this?” because I don’t need permission to do my job. I’m having conversations about my role in educating students, pointing out opportunities for collaboration, and valuing my own skills and expertise. Many of my colleagues are really receptive and great to work with. I’ve had success teaching classes that go beyond the one-shot model because colleagues were open to the idea that we could have more than one class. I’ve also helped colleagues create research projects for students and brainstorm ideas to teach students information literacy topics. Those moments feel like a win.

I’d also like to point out that, as a new librarian, this is all very terrifying. For one, I feel like an imposter half the time, and I’m also a young female that’s mistaken for a student more often than not so talking to seasoned academics is intimidating. However, I’d like to believe, even if I weren’t classified as faculty, that I’d still be having these conversations and building these relationships with my colleagues. I have to remind myself that I know a lot of stuff and I can make a substantial contribution to my university, our students, and the library profession. For now, I’m going to keep learning all that I can about my university, continue building meaningful relationships with my colleagues, and perhaps one day, figure this academia thing out.

How are librarians classified on your campus? What do your relationships with faculty look like?

Library Research and the IRB: Is It Generalizable?

By Nicole Pagowsky and Maura Smale

There are generally two types of research that take place in the LIS field, one is more rare and is capital-R-Research, typically evidence or theory-based and generalizable; the other, more prevalent, is lowercase-r-research, typically anecdotal, immediate, and written in the style of “how we did it good.” The latter has historically been a defining quality of LIS research and receives much criticism, but as librarianship is a professional field, both theory and practice require documentation. Gorman (2004) notes how value and need have contributed to a mismatch in what is published, “[leading to] a gap in the library journal literature between arid and inaccessible reports of pure research and naive ‘how we did it good’ reports.” There are implications for these concerns both within and outside of the field: first, those within the field place less value on LIS research and might have lower confidence and higher anxiety when it comes to publishing, and second, those outside the field might take LIS research and librarians less seriously when we work to attain greater equality with faculty on campus. Understanding these implications and how human subjects research and the Institutional Review Board (IRB) fit into social sciences research can help frame our own perceptions of what we do in LIS research.

What is the IRB? The IRB regulations developed in the wake of the revelation of Nazi experimentation on humans during WWII, as well as the U.S. government’s infamous Tuskegee study in which black men with syphilis were allowed to go untreated so that researchers could examine the progression of the disease. All U.S. academic and research institutions that receive federal funding for research must convene an IRB to review and monitor research on human subjects and ensure that it remains ethical with no undue risk to participants. There are three levels of IRB approval — exempt, expedited, and full; a project is assigned its level of review based on the amount of risk to the subject and the types of data collected (informational, biological, etc.) (Smale 2010). For example, a project involving the need to draw blood from participants who are under 18 would probably be assigned a full review, while one featuring an anonymous online survey asking adults about their preferences for mobile communications devices would likely be exempt. It’s worth noting that many of the guidelines for IRB review are more relevant to biomedical and behavioral science research than humanities and social science research (for more discussion of these issues, see George Mason University History professor Zachary Schrag’s fascinating Institutional Review Blog).

Practically speaking, what is the process of going through IRB approval like for LIS researchers? We’ve both been through the process — here’s what we’ve learned.

Maura’s Experience

I’ve gone through IRB approval for three projects during my time as a library faculty member at New York City College of Technology (at City University of New York). My first experience was the most complex of the three, when my research partner and I sought IRB approval for a multiyear study of the scholarly habits of undergraduates. Our project involved interviews with students and faculty at six CUNY campuses about how students do their academic work, all of which were recorded and transcribed. We also asked students to photograph and draw objects, locations, and processes related to their academic work. While we did collect personal information from our participants, we’re committed to keeping our participants anonymous, and the risk involved for participants in our study was deemed low. Our research was classified by the IRB as expedited, which requires an application for continuing review each year that we were actively collecting data. Once we finished with interviews and moved to analysis (and writing) only, we were able secure an exempt approval, which lasts for three years before it must be renewed.

The other two projects I’ve sought IRB approval for — one a solo project and one with a colleague — were both survey-based. One involved a web-based survey of members of a university committee my colleague and I co-chaired, and the other a paper survey of students in several English classes in which I’d used a game for library instruction. Participation in the surveys was voluntary and respondents were anonymous. Both surveys were classified exempt by the IRB — the information we collected in both cases were participants’ opinions, and little risk was found in each study.

Comparing my experiences with IRB approval to those I’ve heard about at other colleges and universities, my impression is that my university’s approach to the IRB requirement is fairly strict. It seems that any study or project that is undertaken with the intent to publish is considered capital-R-research, and that the process of publishing the work confers on it the status of generalizable knowledge. Last year a few colleagues and I met with the Chair of the college’s IRB committee to seek clarification, and we learned that interviews and surveys of library patrons solely for the purpose of program improvement does not require IRB approval, as it’s not considered to be generalizable knowledge. However, the IRB committee frowns on requests for retroactive IRB approval, which could put us in a bind if we ever decide that results of a program improvement initiative might be worth publishing.

Nicole’s Experience

At the University of Arizona (UA), I am in the process of researching the impact of digital badges on student motivation for learning information literacy skills in a one-credit course offered by the library. I detailed the most recent meeting with our representative from IRB on my blog, where after officially filing for IRB approval and having much back-and-forth over a few months, it was clarified that we in fact did not exactly need IRB approval in the first place. As mentioned above, each institution’s IRB policies and procedures are different. According to the acting director of the UA’s IRB office, our university is on the more progressive end of interpreting research and its federal definition. Previous directors were more in line with the rest of the country in being very strict, where if a researcher was just talking with a student, IRB approval should be obtained. Because their office is constantly inundated with research studies, a majority of which would be considered exempt or even little-r research, it is a misuse of their time to oversee studies where there is essentially no risk. A new trend is burgeoning to develop a board comprised of representatives from different departments to oversee their own exempt studies; when the acting director met with library faculty recently, she suggested we nominate two librarians to serve on this board so that we would have jurisdiction over our own exempt research to benefit all parties.

Initially, because the research study I am engaging in would be examining student success in the course through grades and assessments, as well as students’ own evaluation of their motivation and achievement, we had understood that to be able to publish these findings, we would be required to obtain IRB approval since we are working with human subjects. Our IRB application was approved and we were ranked as exempt. This means our study is so low-risk that we require very little oversight. All we would need to do is follow guidelines for students to opt-in to our study (not opt-out), obtain consent for looking at FERPA-related and personally identifiable information, and update the Board if we modify any research instruments (surveys, assessments, communications to students about the study). We found out, however, that we actually did not even need to apply for IRB in the first place because we are not necessarily setting out to produce generalizable knowledge. This is where “research” and “Research” come into play. We are in fact doing “research” where we are studying our own program (our class) for program evaluation. Because we are not saying that our findings apply to all information literacy courses across the country, for example, we are not producing generalizable “Research.” As our rep clarified, this does not imply that our research is not real, it just means that according to the federal definition (which oversees all Institutional Review Boards), we are not within their jurisdiction. Another way to look at this is to consider if the research is replicable; because our study is specific to the UA and this specific course, if another librarian at another university attempted to replicate the study, it’s not guaranteed that results will be the same.

With our revised status we can go more in depth in our study and do better research. What does “better” mean though? In this sense, it could be contending with fewer restrictions in looking for trends. If we are doing program evaluation in our own class, we don’t need to anonymize data, request opt-ins, or submit revised research instruments for approval before proceeding because the intent of the research is to improve/evaluate the course (which in turn improves the institution). Essentially, according to our rep, we can really do whatever we want however we want so long as it’s ethical. Although we would not be implying our research is generalizable, readers of our potentially published research would still be able to consider how this information might apply to them. The research might have implications for others’ work, but because it is so specific, it doesn’t provide replicable data that cuts across the board.

LIS Research: Revisiting Our Role

As both of our experiences suggest, the IRB requirement for human subjects research can be far from straightforward. Before the review process has even begun, most institutions require researchers to complete a training course that can take as long as 10 hours. Add in the complexity of the IRB application, and the length of time that approval can take (especially when revisions are needed), and many librarians may hesitate to engage in research involving human subjects because they are reluctant to go through the IRB process. Likewise, librarians might be overzealous in applying for IRB when it is not even needed. With the perceived lower respect that comes in publishing program evaluation or research skewed toward anecdotal evidence, LIS researchers might attempt big-R Research when it does not fit with the actual data they are assessing.

What implications can this have for librarians, particularly on the tenure track? The expectation in LIS is to move away from little-r research and be on the same level as other faculty on campus engaging in big-R Research, but this might not be possible. If other IRB offices follow the trend of the more-progressive UA, many more departments (not just the library) may not need IRB oversight, or will be overseeing themselves on a campus-based board reviewing exempt studies. As the acting IRB director at the UA pointed out to library faculty, publication should not be the criterion for assuming generalizability and attempting IRB approval, but rather intent: what are you trying to learn or prove? If it’s to compare/contrast your program with others, suggest improvements across the board, or make broad statements, then yes, your study would be generalizable, replicable, and is considered human subjects research. If, on the other hand, you are improving your own library services or evaluating a library-based credit course, these results are local to your institution and will vary if replicated. Just because one does not need IRB approval for a study does not mean it is any less important, it simply does not fall under the federal definition of research. Evidence-based research should be the goal rather than only striving for research generalizable to all, and anecdotal research has its place in exploring new ideas and experimental processes. Perhaps instead of focusing on anxiety over how our research is classified, we need to re-evaluate our understanding of IRB and our profession’s self-confidence overall in our role as researchers.

Tl;dr — The Pros and Cons of IRB for Library Research

Pros: allows researchers to make generalizable statements about their findings; bases are covered if moving from program evaluation to generalizable research at a later stage; seems to be more prestige in engaging in big-R research; journals might have a greater desire for big-R research and could pressure researchers for generalizable findings

Cons: limits researchers’ abilities to drill down in data without written consent from all subjects involved (can be difficult with an opt-in procedure in a class); can be extremely time-intensive to complete training and paperwork required to obtain approval; required to regularly update IRB with any modifications to research design or measurement instruments

What Do You Think?

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References

Gorman, M. (2004). Special feature: Whither library education? New Library World, 105(9), 376-380.

Smale, M. A. (2010). Demystifying the IRB: Human subjects research in academic libraries. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 10(3), 309-321.

Other Resources / Further Reading

Examples of activities that may or may not be human research (University of Texas at Austin)
Lib(rary) Performance blog
Working successfully with your institutional review board, by Robert V. Labaree

Nicole Pagowsky is an Instructional Services Librarian at the University of Arizona, and Tweets @pumpedlibrarian.

Shared Governance and Library Faculty: Jazzing Academic Community

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Sue Wiegand, Periodicals Librarian at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN.

As Commencement season draws near, I thought again of lines from Dana Goia’s poem: “Praise to the rituals that celebrate change…Because it is not the rituals we honor/but our trust in what they signify…” It’s been two years now since I served as Chair of our Faculty Assembly, the first librarian here to be elected to this role. Commencement is a ritual celebrating academic community — when we come together to celebrate the culmination of the academic year and our successful graduates. I think the ideal of academic community — all of our voices blending to make plans and create respectful discourse for mission-based decision-making — is what “shared governance” is all about. It’s a kind of jazz — a participatory blend of traditions, always changing — as well as a shared trust.

How many librarians participate in jazzing shared governance at their institutions, given the disparity of appointment categories at academic libraries? My “historic” 2009 election to be Chair-Elect of our shared governance body, Faculty Assembly, made me think more about this. I may be incredibly idealistic to be thinking in terms of academic community and shared governance at all, let alone as a librarian, a profession still subject to debate on its status, still sometimes considered a woman’s profession (well-behaved librarians don’t make history, right?). Higher education itself is on the very precipice of change in many of its hallowed traditions, and can ill afford more confusion. Could shared governance survive a librarian leading Faculty Assembly? Well, I had a lot to learn, but yes, we survived, with a lot of support from my faculty friends. Jazz is improvisational, after all. It absorbs and transforms tradition, and gives a participatory voice to all.

Are librarians faculty? Yes — in some academic institutions. Are we tenure-track? Yes — again, in some places. Can we earn promotion? You guessed it — maybe, maybe not, depends on where you are.

According to the Joint Committee on College Library Problems (including ACRL, AACU: American Association of American Colleges and Universities, and AAUP: American Association of University Professors), in a report issued in 2012: “Faculty status entails for librarians the same rights and responsibilities as for other members of the faculty. They should have corresponding entitlement to rank, promotion, tenure, compensation, leaves, and research funds.” I like the dual reference to rights and responsibilities. ALA and ACRL have also weighed in with their guidelines, the Standard for the Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure of Academic Librarians. The Chronicle of Higher Education has covered the question periodically; two examples are from 2008 and 2013. The comments sections often show a nice variety of perspectives on the subject, and incidentally on the academic tenure system in general.

Obviously, mileage varies a great deal on this one, and each tradition has its adherents. For me, having faculty status and earning tenure was a valuable experience that led to increased collaboration with classroom faculty, in both collection development of library resources and library research instruction. These include my favorite topic of conversation, scholarly communication — how it informs collection development as well as guiding research instruction for library resources — leading to informative discussions. The bittersweet part for me is that librarians here earn tenure, but are not eligible for promotion. It seems as though every place has its own ethos — its own distinctive style — about what seems to work best for them. Tradition rules.

Should librarians participate in shared governance? In my experience, the answer to that is an unequivocal yes — the experience is so rich, and the opportunities for interaction with classroom faculty so rewarding, I think librarians should let their voices be heard in their academic communities whenever possible. Shared governance and faculty status lets the librarian voice be heard, lest students enter the library to do research and find “there’s nothing there to support it,” says Deanna Wood, quoted on Inside Higher Ed. Yet, opportunities to contribute to shared governance and partnering with faculty vary as much as the opinions about librarian status. Should librarians stay in their place, the library? Which committees should they be eligible for? Does faculty status matter? How might the faculty status of librarians and their contributions to scholarship and shared governance enhance the educational mission and improve student learning in the academy? More research is definitely needed.

Still, for me, sharing the anxiety of figuring out what to do to be a full academic citizen involved getting to know my fellow faculty travelers on that uneasy road in a way that would not have been possible otherwise. After a fair amount of committee service over the years, when the question arose of putting my name on the slate for Chair-Elect, the first of my many protests was that I didn’t want to be Chair of Faculty Assembly — I was told that that was the first criteria! A Philosophy professor answered another protest of mine — that no one would vote for me — making me see that it wasn’t about me, but about being willing to make the commitment that underlies the “academic community/citizenship” rhetoric (I’m not a philosopher, so I’m paraphrasing here — what he actually said started with “So what?”). So I put my ego on the line, and was surprised and pleased to find that even a librarian could be elected to lead the Faculty Assembly at my academic institution.

Transformation — can the rituals that celebrate change and tradition encompass jazz harmony in shared governance and even librarian participation? Does our trust in the significance of academic citizenship invite us to think more deeply about the role and opportunities of librarians in the academy? I’m thinking about this as we prepare for Commencement here. Do we, to quote Goia again, “…dream of a future so fitting and so just/that our desire will bring it into being?” How do librarian status, service, and shared governance play out at in your academic community?

Wearing Different Hats: Academic Service and Librarianship

Like many academic librarians, I’m on the tenure track, and with that comes the opportunity and requirement for academic service. I genuinely enjoy most of my service work, which ranges from membership in our faculty governance body to work on committees dealing with academic technology and curriculum development, among others. Right now I’m in the midst of a five-year commitment on a large grant-funded pedagogical project at my college. My time is devoted either to the project or to my work in the library on different days of the week, with some exceptions. I joke about taking off one hat and putting on another from day to day or meeting to meeting.

My library days are structured along similar lines as they were before my involvement in the grant project. But on my grant days I often don’t feel like a librarian: no library instruction, no reference, no information literacy program planning, no library meetings — only work related to my other service obligations. On those days I sometimes wonder: what does it mean when I spend more time outside of the library than inside?

Despite occasionally feeling as if I’m being pulled in different directions depending on which hat I’m wearing, I’m certain that my service work augments my work in the library. College service makes me feel connected to the institution, and allows me to gain a more complete understanding of and contribute to the college’s mission, going beyond the work I do in the library. I also think that academic librarians taking on service commitments can bring more visibility to the library on campus, almost a stealth form of marketing. Faculty in other departments whom I’ve met on various committees will sometimes contact me to ask a question about the library, and I hope that makes them more likely to send their students to the library as well.

My academic service outside of the library also helps inform my work as an information literacy librarian. In my roles on college-wide projects I’ve become much more familiar with the programs and majors available for our students, which facilitates making connections across the curriculum and planning information literacy outreach. College service work increases the number of faculty from other departments whom I meet who can be potential collaborators, too. I’ve drawn on these colleagues when we’ve wanted to pilot different initiatives for library instruction, and have sometimes sought feedback from them on our programs and efforts.

I hope that being in this space at the intersection of multiple identities can help push me to think in new ways about the role of academic libraries and about myself as a librarian and an academic. But despite the benefits of college service work, the crowding of these multiple identities that I inhabit is not always entirely comfortable — sometimes I wish I had two heads for my two hats. If you’re a librarian involved in academic service, what strategies do you use to reconcile your two roles?