STAFF PARTICIPATION IN ACADEMIC LIBRARY GOVERNMENT

Abstract

Conventional wisdom has long held that senior staff in university libraries should have parity with their teaching colleagues not merely in salaries and general conditions of service but also in eligibility to participate in general university government through Senate, faculty boards and the like. The case for such participation and the benefits deriving to the university and to the library were well stated in the Parry Report twelve years ago; and in the US a whole monograph has been devoted to the topic of faculty status. That senior staff should also participate in the government of their libraries through departmental meetings, as their teaching colleagues do, is a proposition less frequently stated until more recently, in line with the increasing emphasis placed on the teaching side on participation at departmental level.