But Don't Call 'em Librarians

It's a great idea to put humanities Ph.D.s to work in libraries…

New gateways to the library profession are in the works. They are seen as a threat to the monopoly of the library and information studies (LIS) programs leading to the current entry-level credential, the American Library Association (ALA)–accredited master's degree in library and information studies (MLIS). For decades, however, we've watched great research libraries hire scholars over librarians as their directors. Lately, several of these very LIS programs have installed new deans who hold the Ph.D. in another discipline and no library credential. Our libraries are loaded with staff who have no library degree. LIS education as we have known it has only been around for a little longer than half a century. It has adapted to many new needs in that time, whether those needs developed from new library services, new technologies, or a glut of people with advanced degrees. Debates over how we address these needs in our LIS programs are a healthy example of the permanent tension between library practice and LIS education, even if they often take a decade to get results. Claims of a lack of qualified people for certain specialized positions in libraries have forced our great research libraries to initiate new ways to attract highly qualified scholars. That, in turn, has forced the LIS programs to come up with ways to protect their degree, our degree, and create programs that will lure the new scholars not only to our profession but to our credential. Right now a most tempting pool of candidates is formed by the surfeit of scholars earning the Ph.D. in the humanities. Asked who has the greater need, libraries or humanities scholars, Elliott Shore, chief information officer (CIO) at Bryn Mawr College, quickly responds, "I think it's a need for those who have just earned humanities Ph.D.s. A huge percentage of them cannot get jobs in teaching." Since there are needs in academic and research libraries as well, Shore says he hopes these experiments will draw people who will ultimately want careers as subject specialists or in special collections. "We're hoping that these people become attractive to libraries and that they are attracted to library careers," says Shore. Some of the experiments await decisions from funding agencies. Others are nearly ready to be launched. Still others are on the drawing boards in academic and research libraries, library organizations, and a variety of library and information think tanks nationwide. Among the most enthusiastic proponents of these investigations is Yale University librarian Alice Prochaska. She expects Yale to take part in several initiatives to attract both Ph.D.s and graduate students in many disciplines to library assignments that hook them on library careers. The pipeline problem While there is no urgent shortage of candidates for library jobs, nor an oversupply of openings, the long-term outlook, after baby boomers retire, suggests shortages. Duane Webster, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), cites special collections and rare books, subject specialties, and bibliography in many disciplines in the humanities, especially area studies. Some agree with him, some don't. Joe Hewitt, associate provost, University Libraries at University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, says that LIS programs don't attract humanities and social science Ph.D.s. "We need an alternative way to get such people into the profession," he says. "I don't want to undermine the MLS…but for special collections or rare books librarians there are very few programs." "As the schools have shifted to IS and digital technology they have shifted faculty resources away from these traditional specialties," Hewitt says. "They want libraries to require the MLS, but they are not teaching the content we need." "I think many library schools have de-emphasized the academic library as a course of study," says Bryn Mawr's Shore. "There are fewer and fewer courses on administering collections, rare books, and archives, many of the traditional things." A debatable need "We need to wake up to the demographics," says Susan Nutter, vice provost and director of libraries, North Carolina State. "We really need new people. If we don't have the people, then the work will go to someone else, to people who have no background at all." Nutter thinks research libraries need short- and long-term strategies to increase their qualified staff. For now that means people with science and engineering degrees or technology qualifications. Some see no need at all. "Some of my colleagues say we need people who understand the discipline and content, with content knowledge to handle digitization projects," says Carla Stoffle, dean of libraries at the University of Arizona. "We do that work with our faculty. I have never understood why there is this need; we don't have it." The LIS deans are bystanders with a stake in the outcome of this debate. Jane Robbins, dean of the School of Information Studies at Florida State University (FSU), is blunt: "Library directors say they can't fill special positions, but they have never asked the LIS programs to recruit doctoral graduates from other disciplines. If they are telling us, in some indirect way, that the people who go to library school are not 'cutting it' then let me ask this: Will it be better to take Ph.D.s who are unhappy because they couldn't find teaching jobs and put them in jobs in libraries?" The CLIR initiative The best-known new initiative is the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) program to recruit humanities scholars for postdoctoral fellowships in research libraries. It is also the most feared and misunderstood. About 15 top academic and research libraries are expected to participate. The CLIR board, made up of librarians, provosts, scholars, and others, came up with the program. It is designed to help in what CLIR director of programs Abby Smith calls "critical information professions" with their "uncertain recruitment futures." These scholars have expertise to serve in libraries, especially in subject specialties, area studies, special collections, and archives. The CLIR program was the brainchild of Deanna Marcum, former head of CLIR and now associate librarian, Library of Congress (LC), and Charles Phelps, provost of the University of Rochester, NY. It was quickly adopted because of the enthusiastic support of people like Yale's Prochaska. Each host institution will define opportunities for a one- or two-year postdoctoral fellowship in its library. "We are being deliberately agnostic about the desired outcome," Smith says. "We're not trying to do anything specific about the nature of the library training or the nature of the Ph.D. involved," she says, responding to fears expressed by library staff and some faculty and deans in LIS programs. The postdoctoral fellow will have a Ph.D. in hand before the fellowship starts. Each will hold a joint appointment in an academic department and in the library. CLIR will offer "a common experience," according to Marcum, who chairs the group building the curriculum. "The idea is to build a network of people," Marcum says. It will be designed to give the postdocs the background and values shared by those who work in research libraries. CLIR will be the central site for all the recruiting, but the host institutions will create their own fellowships. "We are the enabling infrastructure," Smith says. A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support CLIR's role and the start-up of the program. Each institution will have to find support for its fellowship. What's typical in academe "We thought candidates would be more interested if our program was similar to other programs typical in the life of a scholar," Marcum says. "Universities are comfortable having fellows. They know how to pay for them." Under the plan, CLIR will match the candidates with specific opportunities. Marcum hopes some fellowships will go to projects to build digital collections. Interaction with ALA-accredited LIS programs is a matter for each host institution, according to Marcum, dealt with "on a case-by-case basis." The CLIR planners are not ready to make connections with LIS programs a requirement, but there is no objection if a participating institution wants to do so. It is not a new idea, and according to Shore there are lots of postdocs in the sciences, and most new Ph.D.s work at a series of them before they go into a teaching position. In the humanities there are very few transitional opportunities. Can they be recruited? Many in the libraries and the LIS programs feel that the CLIR initiative holds insufficient promise that the postdocs can be recruited. Many doubt that the Ph.D. candidates will be willing eventually to spend the time and money to earn an appropriate library credential, especially the MLIS. Yale's Prochaska is much more optimistic. To her, the CLIR program and others are a natural outgrowth of the "teaching library" movement to transform research libraries. "Keenly interested" in encouraging Ph.D.s to pursue academic library careers, Prochaska also aims to recruit other graduate students from all the disciplines. Michèle Cloonan, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, Boston, is talking with Prochaska about ties between the Yale program and the SLIS at Simmons. "I think there is a need in libraries for Ph.D.s in the humanities," Cloonan says, adding that when she earned her MLS at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, nearly everyone in the class had a Ph.D. "They were taking the library degree as a last resort," Cloonan says. "I think it's more positive to get people into libraries for a year and then have them go to get library degrees. It is a very positive way to recruit, to give them an opportunity to try on the profession. This is not a threat to our LIS programs." Himself recently recruited from the humanities, John Unsworth, the new dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, thinks the CLIR program is "a fine idea." "I hope we can get people to come and get interested in working for us," says Winston Tabb, dean, University Libraries at Johns Hopkins. "After they've been a fellow, they may decide they want to stay with us forever and even get a library degree." Tabb started the junior fellows program when he was at LC. Several of its recruits went on to library school. At Hopkins, Tabb hopes the program will add numbers and weight to the "audience of people in the provost's office and the offices of the deans," he says. "We need people in that audience who understand what libraries do. Having some come in and work with us early in their careers, even if they ultimately go into the classroom, will be very useful to us in the future." Though NC State's Nutter is looking for talent beyond the humanities, she sees the potential. "When they get exposed to library work, people love it!" she asserts. "It is an amazing experience for them. We're trying to bring in our own undergraduates, even some from high schools. We're exposing them to meaningful library work. We're starting an endowment so we can give scholarships to new students. You put people into special collections, collection development, or into research services and they get hooked." While she deems it "very healthy" for libraries to hire those who are prepared in many ways, FSU's Robbins wants to be sure those recruited have a strong commitment to librarianship. "We want to make sure they honestly want to be librarians, not people who want to rest until they get another job," she says. Should the MLS hold? Other experiments to get highly qualified people for research libraries are in the works. Brooke Sheldon, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Arizona, takes her experimental model from the business schools. She's working on a "fast-track program" to credit Ph.D.s for research skills and in-depth background in their discipline. "It is a good idea to get these strong scholars into the profession," says Sheldon, "but it will haunt them if they decide to make it a career and don't get our basic degree. They need to learn the values and philosophy that go with it. Not only must we ensure that they enter the profession on equal terms with the other librarians, it is vital that we maintain the integrity of the master's in library and information science." Johns Hopkins's Tabb likes the idea of giving credit for the fellowships as a practicum and for some of the other studies, so the program to an MLS could be shorter. ARL has proposed a "truncated" MLS program. It will seek funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. According to ARL's Webster, "Some LIS programs are willing to think imaginatively about how they package their degree programs." UNC's Hewitt feels that a Ph.D. would be unwilling to complete 36 hours of course work. He hopes programs will give substantial credit for the fellowships as "internships" and for the candidate's existing knowledge. "Ph.D.s don't want to pull up stakes to get the MLS," says Hewitt. They are not librarians! Dual degree programs might be a solution, according to Arizona's Stoffle. The programs would seek people with and without the Ph.D. They could accommodate those with a lot of library experience but no credential. The CLIR fellows do need a program for socialization and acculturation, says Simmons's Cloonan, and they should be encouraged to get the MLS. In talks between CLIR and LIS deans, Marcum showed little interest in involving LIS programs. No library educators were invited to a CLIR "summit" on the subject. NC State's Nutter is thinking about a summer program resulting in a new certification by ALA or ARL specifying what qualification is earned. The courses could teach "some of the things you get in library school or that are particular to higher education and public institutions." A summer program would make it unnecessary to send people with a Ph.D. back to school for one or two years, Nutter says. The LIS program at Illinois will try to develop ways to meet some of the curricular needs of the fellows, according to Unsworth. "Library directors have a variety of opinions about the value of traditional library education," he says. "It may be that these are people who don't and won't ever feel the need for that credential. I don't have a problem with that. I think they will feel the need for education, and I can speak to that as someone who is entering the field, indeed I am in midstride." "A short course, say a 15-week summer course, could give them some foundation, but it would be going down the slippery slope if librarians come to believe that it does not take a master's degree to be a librarian. If you give that credential to someone who already has the Ph.D., the library will always choose that person over one with the full MLS. The Ph.D. is the lingua franca of the university. You're telling people that the Ph.D. is more important than the MLS, but if there is a glut of Ph.D.s, tell 'em to go get the MLS. Otherwise they are not librarians." Many of the research library directors agree. Even NC State's Nutter believes "a minimum of a master's degree" is essential and prefers the library degree. "If we can't get that credential," she says, "we have to find a way around it in the short term. We all have an obligation to work together on this." John N. Berry III is Editor-in-Chief, LJ