CUNY Librarians and Faculty Status: Past, Present, and Future
Librarians in the City University of New York system have held faculty ranks since 1965, but their faculty status dates back two decades further. How did they achieve faculty status and faculty ranks? What role did their professional association (LACCNY, later known as LACUNY) play? Is their status secure?
Faculty status: The next generation employment status preferences among millennial LIS students and new librarians at ARL institutions
Abstract Stereotypes regarding employees of the so-called millennial generation suggest that they like to change jobs frequently and prefer flexibility to long-term job stability. Library administrators who assume this stereotype to be true may believe (or assert) that faculty status and the opportunity to earn tenure are not as important to millennials as to older librarians. This belief may even lead administrators to eliminate or phase out faculty status for librarians at their institutions, on the assumption that younger librarians would find professional staff positions more appealing because they don't want to work at the same institution for the six or more years that it takes to earn tenure. This study, which specifically explores questions concerning faculty status and the opportunity to earn tenure, examines the job-status preferences of hundreds of new academic librarians at ARL-affiliated institutions and soon-to-be academic librarians currently enrolled in ALA-accredited master's programs in the United States and Canada. The themes that emerge from the results indicate that job security is an especially strong concern for this population of academic librarians and students, that faculty status and the opportunity to earn tenure are associated with perceived job security, and that that this population views academic librarians' work as being equal to that of “regular” faculty members. Moreover, this study finds that millennial status is not correlated with any particular view about faculty status and the opportunity to earn tenure.
Origins of Academic Freedom Litigation
Institutional differentiation and political conceptualizations of organizational processes framed this investigation of factors influencing faculty reliance on litigation to resolve disputes involving academic freedom. This study of selected court cases suggests that such litigation is more likely to originate from public multiversities and comprehensives and among faculty in the humanities and social sciences, implying that academic units with greater organizational ambiguity are most likely to generate litigation related to academic freedom.