Patricia Layzell Ward

This month's column is based on an article which will appear in a forthcoming issue of Library Management. The author is Dr U. Selong Edem of the University of Calabar who has carried out a survey of some issues surrounding the career advancement of practising librarians in Nigerian universities. The findings may well be mirrored in other countries, and comments will be welcome.

The survey results were based on responses from 202 Nigerian academic librarians. Dr Edem makes a telling point when he writes that "Career advancement prospects rank high in the order of importance to every enthusiastic person who joins a profession". If the prospects are good then this becomes an important motivator. The respondents indicated that the greatest obstacle to career advancement was the requirement to combine professional duties with publication productivity (73%). Publication productivity is now a major criterion for promotion in Nigerian university libraries. The academic librarians had been classified as administrative and professional staff, but were reclassified as academic staff in 1990 which brought a requirement to publish the same number of papers as lecturers if they were to be considered for promotion. The second obstacle was the limited opportunity to reach the post of university librarian (12%). The third was the lack of higher educational qualifications (6%). The remaining barriers were a lack of generally accepted policy on promotion criteria, and an unnecessary emphasis on publication productivity at the expense of carrying out professional duties.

The question of publication output has affected university librarians in other parts of the world as academic status has been gained. It is, however, a particular problem when it is tied to publication in international journals. One outcome is that the national ILS literature is not always offered the best papers, or the author writes two versions on the same theme and risks being accused of duplication. There is not an easy answer to the problem.

The second obstacle received an interesting response from the academic librarians, which is to create posts at the professorial and readership levels. This would enable more librarians to advance in their careers, and give parity with the lecturers.

The question of higher qualifications is a major problem for countries where there is a limited number of local programmes, particularly those which cover a large geographic area. The expense of travelling abroad is high. Scholarships are fewer than in the past, with more competing for them. The answer is likely to lie in the development of distance learning programmes which could result in valuable local research projects forming the foundation for a thesis.

Several points emerge from the Nigerian experience. University librarians have made gains in salary and status from being granted academic status, but it may be that the requirements for promotion have created additional pressures. The possibility of gaining promotion to the higher academic grades is interesting and precedents would be welcomed please. The final point is the need to develop distance learning programmes based on the Internet which would provide research training and the encouragement to pursue a research theme relevant to, and grounded in, local practice.

Patricia Layzell Ward with acknowledgement to Dr U. Selong Edem, University of Calabar.

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