Here is one more, though, with an unusual point of view. The contention of this article is not whether librarians should be accorded faculty status, but rather whether they deserve it, and more importantly, what they should do with it once it has been bestowed.In order to determine whether faculty status continues to be an issue of high priority, the authors conducted a literature review and considered more than seventy documents, many of them published quite recently. Additionally, the authors prepared a short questionnaire that was sent to one hundred academic librarians chosen at random from the American Library Directory. These librarians represent both colleges and universities, and their professional activities cover a broad range, e.g., technical services, public services, special collections, archives, and government documents.1 Fifty-one of the one hundred questionnaires were returned. Thirty-one respondents (61 percent) hold faculty status, and twenty (39 percent) do not. Thirty-four respondents (67 percent) indicate that faculty status is important to them, and seventeen (33 percent) state that it is not. Finally, thirtythree respondents (65 percent) believe that the general issue of faculty status for librarians is important, seventeen (33 percent) think that it is not, and one (2 percent) has no preference. The logical conclusion drawn from the literature review and survey is that faculty status, under whatever guise, continues to be an impor-, tant library issue.Certain assumptions concerning instructional faculty are normally taken for granted. Faculty are masters of substantive knowledge in a specific discipline, they teach, they ostensibly perform research and publish the results, they frequently hold earned doctorates, they are self-governing, they have nine-month contracts (except for chairpersons), they have academic freedom, and they are eligible for tenure. Often, librarians with faculty status have not mastered a discipline, do not teach, do not do research, do not possess an earned doctorate, do not hold nine-month contracts, must work a thirtyfive to forty hour week, and invariably earn less than their colleagues in other departments.2 Fred E. Hill is an instructional developer and teacher and Robert Hauptman is a reference librarian and teacher.
A telephone tape program designed to provide basic mental and physical health information to callers is described. The tapes were especially constructed to offer assistance to callers in coping with personal, social issues as well as problems of daily living. Each tape, lasting approximately 8 to 10 minutes, deals with the causes of a specific concern, suggestions whereby the listeners may be of help to themselves, and referral sources for the problem dealt with. Preliminary information suggests that telephone tapes offer a relatively inexpensive, effective mental health communication system, offering anonymity to the listener with suggestions for the utilization of more traditional mental health resources should the listener feel this need.The middle 1960s and early 1970s marked a period of acceleration in the delivery of a variety of mental health services via the medium of telephone. These services were frequently referred to as "hot lines," "24-hour counseling services," and "personal crisis services," among others. At about the same time, in an attempt to cope with increasing number of requests for information, some universities resorted to the transmission of information via telephone for their campus populations (Saffion, 1973;Vanderwiel & Foley, 1974). Specially constructed cassette tapes provided information to callers in the areas of coping with university regulations, identifying sources of help within the university, and answering standardized questions about university life. There was little if any attempt to deal with personal-social problems.The Telephone Counseling Referral Service (TCRS), a component of the Counseling-Psychological Services Center (CPSC), Division of Student Affairs, University of Texas, has been in continuous 24-hour operation since 1968 and is generally recognized as one of the older, if not the oldest, services of its kind. It is a regularly budgeted service staffed by trained professionals and paraprofessionals, serving a student body of 40,000 plus faculty and staff in the area of suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and counseling on a variety of problems. The utilization of TCRS had reached such a level (over 35,000 calls per year) that in the summer of 1975, a decision was made to expand services so as to include a "selfhelp cassette tape program" to serve as an adjunct to the 24-hour counseling service. The decision Requests for reprints should be sent to
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