Gender In The Academic Library[1]

Gender in the Academic Library

By Wilma L. Jones

May 2004

Research Question:

In what ways has gender played a role in the evolution of the profession of librarians in American Higher Education?

History of Academic Libraries• First Colonial academic

libraries – Harvard (1638)– William and Mary (1693)– Yale (1701)– College of New Jersey (1746,

now Princeton)– U. of Pennsylvania (1749)– King’s College (1754, now

Columbia University)– College of Rhode Island

(1764, now Brown University)– Dartmouth (1769)

• Collections mostly on Theology

• Gifts and bequests from influential scholars and Alumni– John Harvard in 1638

• Purchases made by professors on tour in Europe– Pres. Harper, U. of Chicago

First Librarians . . . Men

• Librarians during Colonial times were often, experts in the field:– Faculty members– Tutors– Presidents

• Solomon Stoddard, former tutor, first appointed librarian of the Harvard Library in 1667

•

Impact of Morrill Act of 1862

• Use of public lands to support higher education in practical areas such as agriculture and engineering – break away from “classical colleges”

• State Higher Education Institutions mushroomed• Library collections expanded to support diversified

curriculum• School of Library Economy established at Columbia in

1887 to train librarians

The field of Librarianship

• Visible signs of changes in the profession– Establishment of the American Library Assn (1876)– Standardization of library practices (1886)

• to facilitate use of the materials in the collection, starting with the Dewey Decimal Classification System

– Opening of School of Library Economy (1887)• To train male and female librarians

– Establishment of the Association of Research Libraries (1932)

Census figures of U.S Librarians 1870 - 1990

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

140000

160000

180000

Growth

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

Date

Census figures on U.S. Librarians

Female

Male

Characteristics of Male Librarians,1890 – 1920

• Well educated men (72.6% with bachelor’s degree)

• Sons of clergy, physicians, as well as farmers & machinists

• Had worked in a library (23.5%)

• Veterans with disability • Retired clergy or

teacher• One disillusioned

with/failed in other line of work

Reason for men choosing the field

• Encouraged by library professors to enter academic library or Library of Congress, not public or school libraries

• Assured fast move up to high-level position• 2-yr library program expedited entrance into

workforce for males; 1-year secured a lucrative position

Feminization of Professions

• Rapid change from male- to female-intensive fields between 1870 and 1920, influenced by the industrial revolution:– Teaching – 68% women in 1880 to 84% in 1920– Clerical – 95.6% male in 1880 to 54.3% in 1920– Library -- 80% male in 1870 to 80% women

in 1900(Passet, 1993)

Feminization of the Library field

• By 1910, more women entering librarianship than men

• Of 22 land-grant institutions west of the Mississippi, 15 had at least one woman responsible for the library prior to 1930

Reason for men exiting the field

• Perceived low status as more women entered the field; some for pay, others as volunteers

• Inadequate salaries paid to both men and women, minimal remuneration

• Often got stuck in an assistant position for years; desired upward mobility

• Low status of library work; aspired to be in leadership positions

First Women in the field

• Grace Raymond Hebard, librarian at the University of Wyoming, 1894 – 1919 (Ph.D in Political Science, no formal training in librarianship)

• Julia Pearce, first librarian to have no teaching responsibilities, Kansas State Agricultural College, 1863 – 1894.

• Dorothy Porter Wesley, first African American curator & scholar of the Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard U. in 1930-1973

Others as Volunteers

• Club women participation in public sphere– TX Federation of Club Women led the founding of

community libraries (1898)– By 1904 Women’s Club in 34 states ran 4600

traveling libraries and established 500 public libraries

– Approached Carnegie for funding of public libraries

– Volunteered time to prepare materials

Evolving field of librarianship

• Once the keeper of books …

• now recognized for ability to provide access to local and global resources in libraries with and without walls.

Librarians in Academia since 1971

• Masters degree from an ALA accredited program required for employment;

• 2nd grad degree for tenure track• Faculty positions gave women

better salaries, but lower than teaching faculty

• Unionized institutions gave women higher salaries; equal to males

Librarians in Academia …

• Requirement to publish in institutions with faculty status for librarians

• Faculty status gained librarian more respect than non- faculty status

• Improved work environment re: faculty benefits available to librarians (sabbaticals, research funds, tenure, etc.

• Increased participation in college governance

Impact of Internet technology, 1995 -

• “net technology” yielding new roles– Systems librarian– Web librarian– Digital librarian– Virtual reference librarian

• Increase in males entering the field

• Library programs emphasizing technology

• Library schools discussing omission of the “l” word

• Library instruction expanding—teaching scholars to evaluate, retrieve, & use materials ethically

Anomolies persist

• In a female-intensive field, 90 respondents surveyed identified themselves as directors, of which 34 were women (Jenkins, 1994).

• 2002 survey showed men had higher salaries in school, academic, and special libraries by 7.9% (Terrell, 2002)

• High-tech positions filled by more men; however, women in these positions had showed increase of 6.8% in 2001 (Lynch & Smith, 2001).

References• American Library Association. (2002). ALA presidents, treasurers, secretaries, and

executive directors. Handbook of organization. Chicago: American Library Association • American Library Association. (1999). Office for research and statistics. Chicago:

American Library Association. • Association of College and Research Libraries. (2001). Guidelines for academic status of

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References, continued.

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• Digest of education statistics. (2003). National Center for Education Statistics, Office of Educational Research and Improvement: U.S. Department of Education, Washington D.C.

• -----. (2002). National Center for Education Statistics, Office of Educational Research and Improvement: U.S. Department of Education, Washington D.C.

• Dowell, D.R. (1998). Leadership: In the eye of the beholder? In Leadership and Academic Librarians. Edited by T. F. Mech & G.B. Mcabe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 159-170.

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• Higley, G. (1996). College, Community and librarianship: Women librarians at the Western land grant colleges. In Reclaiming the American library past: Writing the women in. Edited by Suzanne Hildenbrand. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub Corp., pp. 53-98.

• Hildenbrand, S. (1999). The Information Age vs. gender equity. Library Journal.124, 44-47.

• Jenkins, C. (1996). “Since so many of today’s librarians are women. . .;” Women and Intellectual Freedom in U.S. librarianship . In Reclaiming the American library past: Writing the women in. Edited by Suzanne Hildenbrand. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub Corp., pp. 221-250.

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• Lynch, B. P., & Smith, K. R. (2001). The changing nature of work in academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 62, 407-419


• Passet, J.E. (1996). You don’t have to pay librarians. In Reclaiming the American library past: Writing the women in, edited by Suzanne Hildenbrand. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub Corp., pp. 207-220.

• -----. (1994). United States of America. In Encyclopedia of library history, edited by W.A. Wiegand & D.G. Davis, Jr. New York; London: Garland Publishing, Inc, pp. 644-650.

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• Terrell, T. (2002). Salaries rebound, women break out. Library Journal, 30-36.• Statistical Abstracts of the United States (2003). Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Labor

Statistics.