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Tenure and Promotion
Criteria and Procedures for Library Faculty
Introduction
Members of the Library Faculty are informed by the Vice President for Academic Administration’s (VPAA) office of their eligibility to apply for tenure and/or promotion to a higher rank. Should a member wish to apply, she/he will so notify the VPAA and the Library Director. Upon receipt of such notification, the Library Director will notify colleagues eligible to vote of a meeting at which the application will be evaluated and voted upon.
The applicant will be responsible for presenting a portfolio for departmental review that documents the applicant’s accomplishments in the three performance category areas – Professional Responsibilities, Service, and Scholarship. A candidate may submit letters of support from colleagues and peers as further evidence of outstanding performance.
Just as the model proposed by Ernest Boyer in his Scholarship Reconsidered informs the language in Providence College’s current Faculty Handbook, so has the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) used it to inform their formal statement defining and describing the kind of service and scholarship performed by academic librarians in their report entitled Academic Librarianship and the Redefining Scholarship Project. The Library Faculty has chosen to model its criteria in accord with this report (copy appended, hereafter referred to as the ACRL Report). Thus, the performance categories of Service and Scholarship follow closely the ACRL document.
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PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
FOR PROMOTION: “… For non-teaching members of the Ordinary Faculty, consistent demonstration of outstanding performance of professional responsibilities must be documented.
From the Faculty Handbook, 8th edition, page 19.
FOR TENURE: “… For non-teaching members of the Ordinary Faculty, consistent demonstration of outstanding performance of professional responsibilities must be documented.”
From the Faculty Handbook, 8th edition, page 23.
Each Library faculty member’s primary and other duties are outlined in her/his position description. This position description shall serve as the general framework for evaluation, with a candidate documenting outstanding performance in her/his request for tenure and/or promotion. It is incumbent for candidates to have an up-to-date, administration-approved position description.
The performance evaluation categories to be used by the Library Faculty in evaluating candidates will be analogous to those used in the College system for evaluating professional employees. These categories are:
Job Knowledge;
Judgment;
Initiative/Flexibility;
Teamwork/Relationships;
Planning and Organization;
Communication Skills;
Leadership Ability;
Appraisal and Development of People;
Fiscal Planning and Administration.
It is not expected that each candidate will present documentation in each category. However, it is expected that each candidate will provide documentation in the following categories: Job Knowledge (listed first, as the most important category); Judgment, Initiative/Flexibility; Teamwork/Relationships; Planning and Organization; and, Communication Skills.
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SERVICE
FOR PROMOTION: “Evidence of or potential for continuing performance of service in one or more of the following: 1. Service to the College; 2. Service to an academic department; 3. Service to an academic discipline; 4. Service to the community.
Faculty Handbook, 8th edition, page 20.
In reviewing candidates for tenure or promotion in the area of Service, the Library Faculty will use the ACRL Report as its guiding operational document.
For either promotion or tenure, the Library Faculty will assess candidates’ documentation by the following:
[Quote from the Boyer Report]:
Academic librarians are heavily involved in service to their academic institution, profession, and to the general public in the form of outreach. Service activities benefit both the librarians-increasing their ability to design and manage responsive and effective library services-and the groups to which they contribute. By participating in institutional planning and decision-making, librarians are better able to ensure that library goals, services, and collections reflect and support the institutional mission and priorities. The scope and character of library resources are essential components in delivering quality education, and institutional service enables librarians to manage those resources effectively as a result of a thorough understanding of the institution's curricular goals and requirements, teaching methods, faculty research interests, and student learning abilities and styles.
Professional and outreach service activities are the means by which librarians attempt to serve their clientele by influencing information policy development, … and the development and application of information technology. This often includes identifying and collaborating with strategic partners and allies, such as national and local governments and industries and nonprofit organizations concerned with information policy and technology. Professional library organizations are also instrumental in setting standards for information organization, delivery and preservation. In outreach service, librarians apply their expertise to situations outside of the academy, and educate the lay public on issues relating to access to information.
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The importance of academic librarians' service activities to the library, institution and greater community typically calls for such activities to be valued highly in performance reviews.
Service in academic librarianship includes, but is not limited to:
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Institutional service-participation in committees, councils, task forces, the faculty governance body; participation in institutional activities such as colloquia and seminars; fund raising on behalf of the institution or library.
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Professional service-serving as an officer in professional organizations; participating in committees, councils, accrediting bodies, or task forces; … reviewing grant proposals.
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Outreach service -sharing professional expertise with parties outside the institution, such as serving as a consultant; writing for lay audiences on subjects related to librarianship, intellectual freedom and censorship.
[end of quote]
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SCHOLARSHIP
FOR PROMOTION: “Evidence of or potential for continuing scholarly development and performance of scholarly responsibilities. Scholarship may be reflected in a range of professional and intellectual activities depending on the faculty member’s discipline and individual talents. These activities shall be considered collectively to be the scholarship product.” From the Faculty Handbook, 8th edition, page 19.
FOR TENURE: “Scholarship includes, but is not limited to: 1. Creative contributions to the stock of human knowledge. 2. Critical analysis or artistic expression centering on the interpretation and/or integration of existing knowledge or the application of expertise in one or more disciplines. 3. Critical analysis centering on significant innovations in courses, curriculum and/or the pedagogical arts.” From the Faculty Handbook, 8th edition, page 23.
In reviewing candidates for tenure or promotion in the area of Scholarship, the Library Faculty will use the ACRL Report as its guiding operational document.
The Boyer Report outlines four types of scholarship to provide a framework for considering how the activities of academic librarians may fit into the broader, more complete understanding of what constitutes academic work. These four types are called inquiry, integration, teaching and application. For either promotion or tenure, the Library Faculty will assess candidates’ documentation in:
[Quote from the Boyer Report with slight editorial changes indecated within brackets. Paragraph on Application reordered from original report]:
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Inquiry. Librarians have applied a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in advancing the discipline's knowledge base. [We] engage in the scholarship of inquiry in order to apply [our] findings to the everyday challenges of providing library services. Especially important areas of inquiry for librarians include conducting citation studies; analyzing how people seek and use information; constructing means for organizing bodies of data and information, and designing methods for precise and efficient information retrieval; establishing methods for evaluating the effectiveness of library services and processes; researching the effects of environment and library practices on the "life span" of the various information media found in libraries; discovering the communication modes and related factors that lead to the most effective reference interview, one that has the best chance of determining any given user's precise information needs; preparing analytical bibliographies; [and] investigating the history of the book and recorded knowle dge.
Integration. Academic librarianship has drawn upon a wide range of other disciplines for knowledge that informs and transforms library work. The considerable extent to which academic librarians integrate knowledge from other fields makes for a highly interdisciplinary profession.
Examples of the integration of knowledge from other fields into the scholarship and practice of librarianship include: drawing upon learning theory in order to design effective instruction; employing communication theory to improve the reference interview and establish sound communication throughout the library organization; applying the findings of ergonomic studies to the design of space for library users and personnel that will be conducive to human work and comfort; protecting for future generations of scholars the library's collections from environmental and usage-imposed dangers by means of preservation techniques; assisting users by interpreting and analyzing the components of their information needs and helping construct efficient and comprehensive research strategies, which often requires a thorough knowledge of the literature of several disciplines; integrating administrative and management techniques into the operation of a complex service organization;[and] advising fellow faculty about the constraints of copyright and the allowances for educational fair use of copyrighted materials in print and multimedia formats.
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Pedagogy of Teaching. The scholarship of teaching involves developing, testing and improving pedagogical techniques for meeting library instruction objectives, and communicating to peers the results of testing the techniques.
Teaching. The teaching that is most characteristic of academic librarianship involves instructing people in becoming "information literate" independent scholars who can find, assess and use information resources effectively. A 1987 ACRL document recommended the following general objectives for an instruction program: the student will understand how information is defined by experts, and recognize how that knowledge can help determine the direction of his/her search for specific information; the student will understand the importance of the organizational content, bibliographic structure, function, and use of information sources; the student will be able to identify useful information from information sources or information systems; [and] the student will be able to understand the way collections of information sources are physically organized and accessed.
Librarians teach users to plan and carry out search strategies appropriate to given needs, and to evaluate the extent to which various texts and databases may be considered authoritative and up to date.
Librarians teach these skills in a variety of ways; most commonly, instruction is delivered as librarians serve individuals at the reference desk or meet with classes as guest lecturers. At many institutions librarians conduct for-credit classes that last the entire academic term and teach library research skills in depth. Other effective means of teaching library skills include term paper clinics, workshops on electronic information retrieval skills, and extended reference consultation with students, faculty and other library users. Just as with other kinds of library skill teaching, research consultation involves a considered judgment about a patron's educational background and capabilities, and an understanding of the relative intellectual merits of the library's resources.
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Application. Academic librarianship applies the theory and knowledge gained through inquiry, integration, and pedagogical experimentation to meeting the research and learning needs of the academic community. By employing the results of the scholarship exemplified in the foregoing sections, academic librarians attempt to improve and refine their processes and programs…
[End of quote]
This document voted on and approved unanimously by the Library Faculty on 18 November 2003.