I’ve submitted my article for an online journal (not peer-reviewed) and am awaiting feedback. In the meanwhile I found ” The Scholarship of Canadian Research University Librarians” quite interesting. The researchers surveyed Canadian academic librarians regarding their research and scholarly activities.
Some highlights:
Motivation for doing research: most librarians engaged in scholarly activities for personal growth and professional development
Requirement for scholarship: over half (51%) of surveyed librarians worked for institutions that required them to research or engage in scholarly activities. At my institution, tenure-track librarians are expected to contribute to the profession (e.g. writing articles/books, presenting, participation in association work etc.)
Recommended percentage of time librarians should spend on scholarship: about 42% said 10-14% of our time should be devoted to scholarship. In my case, I calculated that 9% of my time is allocated for scholarship. This is based on working 260 days during the year minus 22 vacation days and minus 17 holidays=221 days worked. 221 days worked x 7 hrs a day (yeah right!!)=1547 hrs worked for the year. Out of that 20 days are allowed for research. Therefore 20 research days x 7 hrs=140 hrs allowed for research. 140 hrs out of 1547 hours worked is roughly 9% of time worked. I personally think it should be higher given that scholarship is a requirement of tenure. This, however, is contrary to the next finding….
Ranking of activities in order of perceived importance for tenure and promotion: most ranked the practice of professional skills as the most important criteria for tenure and promotion with scholarship ranked second last. Interestingly, Quebec librarians (who don’t have to go through the tenure process) spend more time on professional responsibilities and less time on scholarship. Since I just started my official tenure position last term I’m not sure how much weight is actually given to scholarship in the tenure and promotion process at my institution. On paper it appears that professional performance and knowledge is most important during the first stage of the T and P process, but I’ll see in the upcoming months whether this is the case!
Importance of Scholarly Activities for Achieving Tenure and Promotion: not surprisingly most librarians ranked peer-reviewed journal articles as the most important form of scholarship. Interestingly, published books was ranked as second most important although the process of publishing a book is, in my opinion, more time consuming. Professional blogs and websites were ranked low (slightly above unpublished reports and artistic performances). What a pity because I know of a few bloggers that contribute a world of ideas worthly of publication via their blogs.
Gender and Scholarly Intensity: there is a corelation between gender and intensity of scholarly pursuit.
“The data suggest a positive correlation between gender and scholarship. Male librarians are more likely to be represented in the Above Average and High categories of scholarly intensity and female librarians are more likely to be represented in the Below Average and Low categories. A Chi-square test of statistical significance indicated this result to be significant at the 99% level. The survey does not suggest any reason for this result, although there was also a statistically significant difference between male and female librarians in terms of hours per week devoted to scholarship. Male librarians were more likely to be in the Medium and High categories in terms of time devoted to scholarship, while female librarians were more likely to be in the Low category.”
Scholarly intensity was based on the results of Ranking of activities in order of perceived importance for tenure and promotion (i.e. someone publishing 3 peer-reviewed journal articles had a higher score for scholarly intensity than someone who published 3 book reviews). The results raise an interesting question: Why are female librarians less likely to publish or engage in scholarly activities? Could it be that family responsibilities prevent them from using extra time (beside the time offered at work) to pursuit scholarly activities? Or is it just that female librarians tend to participate in the lesser ranked scholarly activities (such as writing book reviews or publishing in non-peer-reviewed journals)? This sounds like an interesting research question….
