X-Envelope-to: LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.BITNET
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Approved-By:  Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Date:         Thu, 5 Nov 1992 11:12:54 CDT
From:         "William Y. Arms" <wya+%ANDREW.CMU.EDU@CARNEGIE.BITNET>
Subject:      Caste barriers in universities

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Recent postings have quoted a snippet of a paper of mine that appeared
in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  People might be interested in the
context.

For a conference about electronic information in the humanities, I was
asked to write a paper on the organizational implications.  The aim was
to stimulate lively discussion.  My first draft was returned to me as
not being sufficiently provocative!

The following are extracts from a section about the impact of electronic
information on the humanities faculty.  (In the interest of brevity, I
have left out the examples.)  Please note that this is the draft.  The
paper has not had its final editing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE HUMANITIES FACULTY

Many of the organizational implications of electronic information are
particularly important for the humanities.  Until quite recently, most
scholarship in the humanities could be carried out by a single
individual, with librarians and research assistants providing valuable
support.  Electronic information is changing all of this.

Experimental and Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Humanities research is beginning to resemble the experimental sciences,
with interdisciplinary teams cooperating on long term projects that
require substantial budgets for equipment and staff.  Every humanities
department is acquiring an experimental component that requires
permanent teams of support staff, such as computer professionals,
expensive equipment that must be maintained, space for project teams,
and administrative support.  At the very least, everybody needs a
personal computer connected to the national networks.

Some of the leading projects in electronic information have been led by
established faculty in the humanities, but many have been maverick
projects with little institutional support.  Sometimes, junior faculty
members have pursued new ideas against the opposition of senior members
in their departments.  On other occasions, scientists have applied their
experience to organize research projects that apply technology to topics
in the humanities.  Some projects have been coordinated by publishers,
librarians, or independent scholars.  The team that has built the
Mercury electronic library at Carnegie Mellon has been led by a group
with backgrounds in libraries, computing, economics, linguistics,
operational research, and computer science.

[Example of the new Oxford English Dictionary as an interdisciplinary
project.]

Many faculty in the humanities find difficulty in seeing themselves as
the leader of a research team and accepting the constraints of team
work.  A few fields, such as archeology, have long had teams of people
with large budgets, but these are the exceptions.  In contrast, a senior
scientist expects to be the leader of a team of people, supported by
extensive laboratories and computers.  In high energy physics, for
example, projects have become so large that published papers may have
one hundred names on them.

[Example of faculty working together as course teams at the British Open
University.]

The key to interdisciplinary projects is personnel management.
Universities are plagued by caste distinctions that inhibit team work.
Faculty treat non-faculty colleagues with disdain, professional
librarians act like a medieval guild, and computing professionals
consider technical knowledge the only measure of worth.  The cultural
divide between the humanities and the sciences is well known, but an
equally deep divide lies between scholars, librarians and computing
professionals.

The wide difference in salaries is one of the barriers.  It is troubling
to pay a programmer more than a professor, or to see the dean of the
medical school earning twice as much as the president.  Yet it is
necessary.  Top class work requires top class people and top class
people have a high market value.

[Example of IBM and Carnegie Mellon computing staff working together on
the Andrew computer project.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stick by my assertion that the caste distinctions in universities are
a real problem that inhibit team work.  Although not mentioned in the
paper, I would also argue that the most serious is the
faculty/non-faculty divide.

The following I believe to be a true statement, "SOME faculty treat
non-faculty colleagues with disdain, SOME professional librarians act
like a medieval guild, and SOME computing professionals consider
technical knowledge the only measure of worth."  To generalize across
all faculty, librarians and computer professionals is clearly a gross
overstatement, but I was writing to stimulate discussion and I have a
strong dislike of prose that is laden with adverbs of degree or vague
adjectives such as "many", "some", etc.

The parallel between medieval guilds and modern professions, such as
law, medicine and librarianship, came to me while reading a history of
Venice, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.  For hundreds of
years, the guilds provided the training, the expertise, craftsmanship,
and profesionalism that gave Venitian goods their outstanding reputation
for quality.  They also exhibited some of the tendencies of all
professional groups: private terminology (e.g. "OPAC"), barriers to
entry (e.g. "applicants must have an MLS degree"), and so on.


Bill Arms
Vice President for Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University

P.S.  My wife's godfather was the Warden of the Honourable Company of
Fishmongers in London.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU