A strong and defining feature of academic work at many institutions is rank and tenure. The purpose of rank is to reflect respective levels of academic contributions over a career. In turn, the purpose of tenure (or its functional equivalent9) is to ensure “that academic staff exercise their academic freedom without fear of reprisal or retribution.”10
Collective agreements inceasingly provide rank and tenure to librarians and archivists. Many agreements follow the professoriate model of lecturer, assistant, associate and full professor, while others use a Librarian/Archivist I, II, III and IV model. As is the case with language regarding professorial rank and promotion, care must be taken when drafting and negotiating to avoid problems as outlined in the CAUT Policy Statement on Promotion Procedures.11 Employers increasingly look to impose statistical measurement and quantification concepts such as “quality” and “excellence” in evaluations,12 including the use of metrics. In a library context, measures of quality can be different from professional or academic standards. Using metrics not designed for the library context can neglect locally identified needs and priorities in favour of “measurables” that can be ranked and compared with those of competing institutions.13
9 Nomenclature for tenure can vary across institutions, as well as academic staff appointment. For example, at the University of Manitoba librarians are awarded continuing appointment; at Brock it is permanence; and at the University of Toronto teaching stream faculty are awarded continuing appointment.
12 Craig Russell, Joel Amernic and Dennis Tourish, “Perverse Audit Culture and Accountability of the Modern Public University.” Financial Accountability & Management 30, no. 1 (2014): 1-24; Cris Shore, “Audit Culture and Illiberal Governance: Universities and the Politics of Accountability.” Anthropological Theory 8 no. 3 (2008): 278-98.
13 Jeff Lilburn, "Ideology and Audit Culture: Standardized Service Quality Surveys in Academic Libraries." portal: Libraries and the Academy 17 no. 1 (2017): 91-110.