Description
In the 1960s, librarians in the California State University and Colleges System were one of three academic employee groups
along with teaching faculty and student affairs officers. Librarians were the only group of academic employees on a different
and lower salary schedule. The collection contains documents related to librarian efforts in the 1970’s and 1980s to attain
faculty status for librarians, including equal pay, sabbaticals and a ten-month year.
Background
In the late 1960s, many academic libraries across the U.S. supported the promotion of librarians to faculty status. In 1971,
the Association of College and Research Libraries adopted the "Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Librarians."
Other important developments were the Equal Pay Act of 1963 with its emphasis on comparing skill, effort and responsibility
of positions and the growing awareness of a pattern of depressed wage rates in occupational categories filled primarily by
women. Judy Reynolds, who donated this collection, was one of a core group of librarians, who worked with and obtained strong
support from the various faculty associations in the California State University, such as the Academic Senate, the United
Professors of California, and the California Faculty Association, and professional library associations, especially the State
University and Colleges Chapter of the California Library Association, the American Library Association, and the Association
of College and Research Librarians. Librarian activities and membership in these core associations was significant in building
the case and organizational support for faculty status for librarians. When collective bargaining came to the California
State University System in the early 1980s, librarians had established a strong community of interest with the faculty and
within the first decade of bargaining contracts achieved the same rights and responsibilities as other members of the California
State University faculty.
Restrictions
Copyright has been assigned to the San Jose State University Library Special Collections and Archives. All requests for permission
to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Director of Special Collections. Permission for publication
is given on behalf of the SJSU Special Collections and Archives as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to
include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader. Copyright restrictions also
apply to digital reproductions of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.