Faculty Status for Academic Librarians: A Review of the Literature

The faculty status issue continues to hold considerable attention among academic librarians. Although it remains a contested subject, there have been changes in general opinion about faculty status over the past few decades. This article is intended to identify the most significant aspects of the topic and to provide a general survey of the literature since 1974. An accompany-ing annotated bibliography of 121 items will be available through the ERIC Clearinghouse in early 1987. or at least the past forty years, academic librarians have been deeply concerned with their professional status. Currently, the majority of academic librarians pos-sess faculty status, 1 which is defined as ''an official recognition by an institution of higher education that librarians are part of the instructional and research staff by con