Take A Look At The Online Discussions
Since we have a few posts about the Chronicle’s special report on academic libraries, I’ll just add that I’d encourage readers to go to the Chronicle site to take a look at the comments being added to the online discussions for the tenure debate articles and the one on left-wing echo chamber. I added my comments to both of the discussions if you want to see what I had to say about these issues. But I will say that Barbara and I don’t exactly disagree on the tenure for librarians issue, but she certainly feels more strongly that it is necessary than do I.
Posted: September 29, 2005 by StevenB
in Worth Reading.
Comment from Barbara Fister
Posted: September 30, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Hey, I expect I’d be mouthy no matter what, but I think tenure is an idealistic social contract between society and scholars. We don’t always live up to it but it’s a noble effort to implement the ideals that Michael Polanyi laid out in his essay “The Republic of Science.” And if we’re willing as a profession to honor that contract, we should be participants.
It may be a good thing that librarians have a choice, since libraries are split on whether this should be part of our literal (as well as social) contract. But I hope that the choice isn’t based on whether or not librarians want to be curious and intellectually engaged enough to be scholars but rather on librarians finding the ways in which a particular institution embodies that social contract to be flawed. (That is, counting publications rather than evaluating scholarly contributions in a way that embraces mustiple approaches or failing to provide the conditions to live the life of a scholar.) I have heard librarians say “I don’t want to do research, I just want to do my job.” But I’m not sure how I would do that without engaging in research.