- Email: [email protected]
• Perceptions of african-american law school students toward law librarianship as a career choice
A
s early as 1980, Robert Jordan and David Ziyad noted the lack of African-Americans in library and information science (LIS).’ Some eight years later, Kathleen Heim and William Moen analyzed the graduates of the class of 1988 and found them to be overwhelmingly white, with minorities accounting for only 6.2% of the total.2 In the latest analysis of library school graduates, Kathleen McCook and Paula Geist found 8.5% of those earning master’s degrees were members of minority groups.3 Other writers have expanded on this theme by discussing strategies to recruit more minority students into the profession.4 Still others have contributed by profiling minorities already in the field.5 Taken as a whole these studies provide a glimpse of possible reasons that minorities enter the profession and the insights gained can be incorporated into effective recruitment strategies. For example, most minority librarians in these studies worked in libraries prior to entering library school. This tells us that we should be designing recruitment materials to target our current support staff and student library assistants. The studies mentioned above have looked at minorities currently in the field. Very few LIS researchers have approached the topic of minorities in LIS from the perspective of potential LIS students. How do potential students, particularly minority college students with undeclared majors and minorities seeking second career options, feel about the profession? This lack of empirically-derived knowledge seriously hampers the development of effective recruitment strategies. As McCook and Geist have noted, “If librarians could isolate reasons why the information profession fails to attract minority entrants, it might be easier to provide solutions.“6 The present study addressed the perceptions of one specific group of minority students, African-American law school students, toward a specialized area of LIS, law librarianship, as a career choice. Law school students were selected because they are the primary source for new public service law librarians and law library administrators in aca-
Madison Mosley Jr. is Associate Director, Charles A. Dana Law Library, Stetson University College of Law, St. Petersburg, FL 33707.
232
The Journal
of Academic
Librarianship,
Volume
25, Number
3, pages 232-234
demic law libraries and because this writer teaches a course in law librarianship. While law librarianship is comprised of professionals with varying degree mixes, this study was limited to those who would have the Juris Doctor and the Master of Library Science. PROCEDURE
African-American law students in Florida law schools were designated as the population for this study. Of the then five Florida law schools, two, from different areas of the state, were selected and permission was requested to contact Black Law Students Association (BLSA) members at each school. Determining that he needed at least 55 useable questionnaires to be returned,7 the researcher distributed a total of 143 questionnaires to African-American law school students during January and February 1995. He obtained a list of BLSA members from one school, randomly selected 73 participants and mailed questionnaires to them. The other school would not supply such a list so the researcher delivered 70 questionnaires to the office of Student Services, which selected participants by using randomly assigned examination numbers. Questionnaires were distributed through this school’s mail system. The researcher provided individual reply envelopes to all participants. The present instrument was pretested on a group of prospective African-American law school students attending a law school “open house” and a class of library science students. Feedback from both groups was used to revise or eliminate ambiguous items. The final instrument consisted of five preliminary questions followed by eight items designed to assess attitudes or perceptions toward law librarianship as a career choice. For each of the eight items, a Likert-type scale of four possible choices was provided.8 Because the pretest showed over one third of the respondents took a neutral position on many of the statements, the researcher did not provide this option on the final instrument. FINDINGS
Fifty-seven (39.9 %) of the law school students returned useable questionnaires. Of these, 23 (41%) were from males and 33 (59%) were from females. One respondent did not answer the question relating to gender. To determine whether the gender composition of the sam-
ple reflected the gender composition of the population, the researcher obtained enrollment data for Fall 1994.9 Of the 448 African-American students then enrolled in Florida law schools, 39% were male and 61% were female. In the present study, 41% of the respondents were male while 59% were female. The researcher felt that these percentages were not far apart and concluded, facially, that the sample did indeed reflect the population on the basis of gender. Most of the respondents had undergraduate majors in business or political science. The majority (40 or 84.2%) did not have a graduate degree upon entering law school. An overwhelming majority (42 or 9 1.1%) indicated no one had talked to them about being a librarian during their college career. More importantly, a majority (43 or 76.8%) indicated they would not be willing to study librarianship if given a scholarship to do so. Perceptions An overwhelming majority of the respondents (48 or 86%) either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “Law librarianship appears to be one of the best jobs of which I am aware.” Similarly, a majority (42 or 73.7%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, ‘,‘I feel Law librarianship could give me a number of advantages over other careers I could choose.” A little over one-half (30) of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I cannot picture myself doing the work of a law librarian.” Nearly three-fourths of the respondents (41 or 74.5%) agreed or strongly agreed that “Law librarianship is a worthwhile occupation for law school students to consider as a career choice.” A majority of the respondents (47 or 83.9%) agreed or strongly agreed that “Law librarianship may be a good career choice for some people, but it is not a good career choice for me.” A little over one-half of the respondents (30 or 53.6%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “I am not convinced of the importance of law librarianship as a career choice.” Again, over one-half (30 or 55.5%) of those responding disagreed or strongly disagreed that “Law librarianship as a career choice is not worth the sacrifice of going to law school.” Finally, a large majority of the responding law school students (46 or 85.2%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “I am sure 1 would enjoy a career as a law librarian.” Of the responses to the eight statements, responses to only two of the statements could be characterized as positive toward law librarianship as a career choice: l
l
Agreement with: Law librarianship is a worthwhile occupation for law school students to consider as a career choice; and Disagreement with: Law librarianship as a career choice is not worth the sacrifice of going to law school.
The responses to the statement, “I am not convinced of the importance of law librarianship as a career choice” so closely matched the expected responses (from a theoretical distribution) that it is difficult to say how the respondents feel toward this statement. DISCUSSION The most frequently occurring undergraduate major revealed by this study, business, also represents the undergraduate
major in which most African-Americans in the Florida State University System received their degrees.” Most of these law school students pursued the first professional degree as their next degree as opposed to a graduate degree. Perhaps both of these findings reflect the pragmatism of today’s African-American students. In their study of the recruitment of minorities, Lois Buttlar and William Caynon found “only eight respondents (5%) stated that they learned about possibilities in librarianship from a recruiter.“” In the present study, only five respondents (8.9%) had been contacted in some manner about being a librarian. It is evident that the profession is not making strides in selling librarianship as a career option to minority students. Though many writers and conventional wisdom promote the availability of scholarships as a means of attracting more minorities to the profession, the results of this study did not support that view. In fact, a sizable percentage of these African-American law school students indicated they would not consider studying librarianship, even if given a scholarship. The African-American law school students in this study viewed law librarianship positively as a career choice for someone other than themselves. This summative finding comports with that from J. Hart Walters’ early 1970 study of the image and status of the field. As part of his study, he compared the perceptions of library school students and other college students toward the library and information science field. These “other” students included undergraduates and graduate students in business, law, and social work. He concluded that “ . . . there is little in the library and information services field that is seen as attractive by the nonlibrary students. In all the instruments relating to status, it was almost totally clear that their regard for the field is low.“‘* CONCLUSION This less than receptive perception of African-American law school students toward law librarianship as a career choice prevents a sizable portion of them from choosing law librarianship as a career choice. Thus, the numbers, from this cohort, will remain low. The challenge for the profession is to change the perceptions of African-American law school students toward law librarianship as a career choice. There is a recent trend toward alternative careers for those with law degrees. A number of publications on this topic mention law librarianship as a viable career option.13 Law librarianship, in particular, and the LIS profession in general need to exhibit the profession to prospective candidates at college career days and job fairs for those thinking of changing careers. This writer has gone to several historically black colleges and universities on law school recruiting trips and has marveled at the absence of LIS schools participating in such events. To help law librarians and the LIS profession to gain empirically derived insight with which to design realistic and effective career awareness strategies, this researcher proposes to the following: l
This study should be replicated on a broader scale;
l
A
qualitative study of African-American and other minority law school students should be conducted to identify
May
1999
233
possible reasons that students in this study did not feel law librarianship to be a suitable career option; and l
A study, modeled after Walters’ and comparing the attitudes of African-American and other minority law school students toward several alternative legal careers, should be conducted to gauge the relative value these students would assign to a career as a law librarian.
The information gained from these suggested investigations when coupled with the findings of this study and the study by Walters should provide a fairly solid view of how those outside the profession view and regard us. Recruitment strategies and materials can then be designed to address specific misconceptions and to reinforce positive images. NOTESAND REFERENCES 1. Robert T. Jordan & David Ziyad, “Wanted: More Black Americans in the Information Technology Workforce,” American Libraries 11 (November 1980): 593. 2. Kathleen M. Heim & William E. Moen, “Diversification of the Library and Information Science Entry Pool: Issues from the LISSADA Survey Report,” Journal of Library Administration 16 (1992): 95-107. 3. Kathleen de la Pena McCook & Paula Geist, “Diversity Deferred: Where are the Minority Librarians ?,” Library Journal 118 (November 1, 1993): 35-38. 4. Lorene B. Brown, “Student Admission and Multicultural Recruitment,” Journal of Library Administration 16 (1992): 109-132; Em Claire Knowles, “How to Attract Ethnic Minorities to the Profession,” Special Libraries 81 (Spring 1990): 141-145; Theo Jones-Quartey & Kit S. Byunn, “Ethnic Minorities in Librarianship: A Selected Bibliography,” Special Libraries 84 (Spring 1993): 104-111; Julie Holmes, “The Black Librarian: An Endangered Species,” Mississippi Libraries 56 (Fall 1992): 72-75; Stephanie L. Sterling, “Recruiting Minorities for Librarianship: Issues and Strategies Revisited,” in Culture Keepers: Enlightening and Empowering Our Communities: Proceedings of the First National Conference of African-American Librarians, edited by Stanton F. Biddle (Neward, NJ: The Black
234 The Journal of Academic Librarianship
Caucus of the American Library Association, 1993), pp.182-185; “Diversity in Recruitment and Professional Development,” in Culture Keepers National
II: Unity Conference
through Diversity: of African-American
Proceedings Librarians,
of
the
Second
edited by Stanton F. Biddle et al. (Neward, NJ: The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 1995), pp. 321-379. 5. Dwight King, Rhea A-L Ballard, Helena Lai, & Grace M. Mills, “Profiling Minority Law Librarians: A Report on the 1992-93 Survey,” Law Library Journal 87 (Spring 1995): 247-309; Patricia Ball, “African-American Male Library Administrators in Public and Academic Libraries,” College & Research Libraries 56 (November 1995): 53 l-554. 6. McCook h Geist, “Diversity Deferred,” pp. 35-38. 7. In arriving at a sample size of 55 cases, the researcher addressed several design questions. Among these were the alpha level (a), Effect size (ES) and the level of power desired for the study, as well as the appropriate statistical test to use. This researcher set (at .05, ES at .40 and power at .70. See Jacob Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 1988), p. 258. 8. See Marvin E. Shaw & Jack M. Wright, Scales for the Measurement of Attitudes (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). 9. Memo from Geri Nappa, then Registrar, Stetson University College of Law, to Madison Mosley, March 10, 1995. She provided data for all but one law school, which refused to share its data. 10. State University System of Florida Fact Book: 1993-94 (Tallahassee, FL: Florida Board of Regents, 1995), p. 92. 11. Lois Buttlar & William Caynon, “Recruitment into the Profession: The Minority Perspective,” Library & Information Science Research 14 (July/September 1992): 259-280. 12. J. Hart Walters, Jr., Image and Status of the Library and Znformation Services Field (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, 1970, ED 045 130), p. 40. 13. See, for example, Susan Gainen, “Non-traditional Career Paths for the 1990’s,” Maryland Bar Journal 25 (March-April 1992): 3; Gary A. Munneke & William D. Henslee, Nonlegal Careers for Lawyers (Chicago: American Bar Association, 1994), p. 80; Changing Jobs: A Handbook for Lawyers for the 1990’s (Chicago: American Bar Association, 1994), p. 291.
s early as 1980, Robert Jordan and David Ziyad noted the lack of African-Americans in library and information science (LIS).’ Some eight years later, Kathleen Heim and William Moen analyzed the graduates of the class of 1988 and found them to be overwhelmingly white, with minorities accounting for only 6.2% of the total.2 In the latest analysis of library school graduates, Kathleen McCook and Paula Geist found 8.5% of those earning master’s degrees were members of minority groups.3 Other writers have expanded on this theme by discussing strategies to recruit more minority students into the profession.4 Still others have contributed by profiling minorities already in the field.5 Taken as a whole these studies provide a glimpse of possible reasons that minorities enter the profession and the insights gained can be incorporated into effective recruitment strategies. For example, most minority librarians in these studies worked in libraries prior to entering library school. This tells us that we should be designing recruitment materials to target our current support staff and student library assistants. The studies mentioned above have looked at minorities currently in the field. Very few LIS researchers have approached the topic of minorities in LIS from the perspective of potential LIS students. How do potential students, particularly minority college students with undeclared majors and minorities seeking second career options, feel about the profession? This lack of empirically-derived knowledge seriously hampers the development of effective recruitment strategies. As McCook and Geist have noted, “If librarians could isolate reasons why the information profession fails to attract minority entrants, it might be easier to provide solutions.“6 The present study addressed the perceptions of one specific group of minority students, African-American law school students, toward a specialized area of LIS, law librarianship, as a career choice. Law school students were selected because they are the primary source for new public service law librarians and law library administrators in aca-
Madison Mosley Jr. is Associate Director, Charles A. Dana Law Library, Stetson University College of Law, St. Petersburg, FL 33707.
232
The Journal
of Academic
Librarianship,
Volume
25, Number
3, pages 232-234
demic law libraries and because this writer teaches a course in law librarianship. While law librarianship is comprised of professionals with varying degree mixes, this study was limited to those who would have the Juris Doctor and the Master of Library Science. PROCEDURE
African-American law students in Florida law schools were designated as the population for this study. Of the then five Florida law schools, two, from different areas of the state, were selected and permission was requested to contact Black Law Students Association (BLSA) members at each school. Determining that he needed at least 55 useable questionnaires to be returned,7 the researcher distributed a total of 143 questionnaires to African-American law school students during January and February 1995. He obtained a list of BLSA members from one school, randomly selected 73 participants and mailed questionnaires to them. The other school would not supply such a list so the researcher delivered 70 questionnaires to the office of Student Services, which selected participants by using randomly assigned examination numbers. Questionnaires were distributed through this school’s mail system. The researcher provided individual reply envelopes to all participants. The present instrument was pretested on a group of prospective African-American law school students attending a law school “open house” and a class of library science students. Feedback from both groups was used to revise or eliminate ambiguous items. The final instrument consisted of five preliminary questions followed by eight items designed to assess attitudes or perceptions toward law librarianship as a career choice. For each of the eight items, a Likert-type scale of four possible choices was provided.8 Because the pretest showed over one third of the respondents took a neutral position on many of the statements, the researcher did not provide this option on the final instrument. FINDINGS
Fifty-seven (39.9 %) of the law school students returned useable questionnaires. Of these, 23 (41%) were from males and 33 (59%) were from females. One respondent did not answer the question relating to gender. To determine whether the gender composition of the sam-
ple reflected the gender composition of the population, the researcher obtained enrollment data for Fall 1994.9 Of the 448 African-American students then enrolled in Florida law schools, 39% were male and 61% were female. In the present study, 41% of the respondents were male while 59% were female. The researcher felt that these percentages were not far apart and concluded, facially, that the sample did indeed reflect the population on the basis of gender. Most of the respondents had undergraduate majors in business or political science. The majority (40 or 84.2%) did not have a graduate degree upon entering law school. An overwhelming majority (42 or 9 1.1%) indicated no one had talked to them about being a librarian during their college career. More importantly, a majority (43 or 76.8%) indicated they would not be willing to study librarianship if given a scholarship to do so. Perceptions An overwhelming majority of the respondents (48 or 86%) either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “Law librarianship appears to be one of the best jobs of which I am aware.” Similarly, a majority (42 or 73.7%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, ‘,‘I feel Law librarianship could give me a number of advantages over other careers I could choose.” A little over one-half (30) of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I cannot picture myself doing the work of a law librarian.” Nearly three-fourths of the respondents (41 or 74.5%) agreed or strongly agreed that “Law librarianship is a worthwhile occupation for law school students to consider as a career choice.” A majority of the respondents (47 or 83.9%) agreed or strongly agreed that “Law librarianship may be a good career choice for some people, but it is not a good career choice for me.” A little over one-half of the respondents (30 or 53.6%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “I am not convinced of the importance of law librarianship as a career choice.” Again, over one-half (30 or 55.5%) of those responding disagreed or strongly disagreed that “Law librarianship as a career choice is not worth the sacrifice of going to law school.” Finally, a large majority of the responding law school students (46 or 85.2%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “I am sure 1 would enjoy a career as a law librarian.” Of the responses to the eight statements, responses to only two of the statements could be characterized as positive toward law librarianship as a career choice: l
l
Agreement with: Law librarianship is a worthwhile occupation for law school students to consider as a career choice; and Disagreement with: Law librarianship as a career choice is not worth the sacrifice of going to law school.
The responses to the statement, “I am not convinced of the importance of law librarianship as a career choice” so closely matched the expected responses (from a theoretical distribution) that it is difficult to say how the respondents feel toward this statement. DISCUSSION The most frequently occurring undergraduate major revealed by this study, business, also represents the undergraduate
major in which most African-Americans in the Florida State University System received their degrees.” Most of these law school students pursued the first professional degree as their next degree as opposed to a graduate degree. Perhaps both of these findings reflect the pragmatism of today’s African-American students. In their study of the recruitment of minorities, Lois Buttlar and William Caynon found “only eight respondents (5%) stated that they learned about possibilities in librarianship from a recruiter.“” In the present study, only five respondents (8.9%) had been contacted in some manner about being a librarian. It is evident that the profession is not making strides in selling librarianship as a career option to minority students. Though many writers and conventional wisdom promote the availability of scholarships as a means of attracting more minorities to the profession, the results of this study did not support that view. In fact, a sizable percentage of these African-American law school students indicated they would not consider studying librarianship, even if given a scholarship. The African-American law school students in this study viewed law librarianship positively as a career choice for someone other than themselves. This summative finding comports with that from J. Hart Walters’ early 1970 study of the image and status of the field. As part of his study, he compared the perceptions of library school students and other college students toward the library and information science field. These “other” students included undergraduates and graduate students in business, law, and social work. He concluded that “ . . . there is little in the library and information services field that is seen as attractive by the nonlibrary students. In all the instruments relating to status, it was almost totally clear that their regard for the field is low.“‘* CONCLUSION This less than receptive perception of African-American law school students toward law librarianship as a career choice prevents a sizable portion of them from choosing law librarianship as a career choice. Thus, the numbers, from this cohort, will remain low. The challenge for the profession is to change the perceptions of African-American law school students toward law librarianship as a career choice. There is a recent trend toward alternative careers for those with law degrees. A number of publications on this topic mention law librarianship as a viable career option.13 Law librarianship, in particular, and the LIS profession in general need to exhibit the profession to prospective candidates at college career days and job fairs for those thinking of changing careers. This writer has gone to several historically black colleges and universities on law school recruiting trips and has marveled at the absence of LIS schools participating in such events. To help law librarians and the LIS profession to gain empirically derived insight with which to design realistic and effective career awareness strategies, this researcher proposes to the following: l
This study should be replicated on a broader scale;
l
A
qualitative study of African-American and other minority law school students should be conducted to identify
May
1999
233
possible reasons that students in this study did not feel law librarianship to be a suitable career option; and l
A study, modeled after Walters’ and comparing the attitudes of African-American and other minority law school students toward several alternative legal careers, should be conducted to gauge the relative value these students would assign to a career as a law librarian.
The information gained from these suggested investigations when coupled with the findings of this study and the study by Walters should provide a fairly solid view of how those outside the profession view and regard us. Recruitment strategies and materials can then be designed to address specific misconceptions and to reinforce positive images. NOTESAND REFERENCES 1. Robert T. Jordan & David Ziyad, “Wanted: More Black Americans in the Information Technology Workforce,” American Libraries 11 (November 1980): 593. 2. Kathleen M. Heim & William E. Moen, “Diversification of the Library and Information Science Entry Pool: Issues from the LISSADA Survey Report,” Journal of Library Administration 16 (1992): 95-107. 3. Kathleen de la Pena McCook & Paula Geist, “Diversity Deferred: Where are the Minority Librarians ?,” Library Journal 118 (November 1, 1993): 35-38. 4. Lorene B. Brown, “Student Admission and Multicultural Recruitment,” Journal of Library Administration 16 (1992): 109-132; Em Claire Knowles, “How to Attract Ethnic Minorities to the Profession,” Special Libraries 81 (Spring 1990): 141-145; Theo Jones-Quartey & Kit S. Byunn, “Ethnic Minorities in Librarianship: A Selected Bibliography,” Special Libraries 84 (Spring 1993): 104-111; Julie Holmes, “The Black Librarian: An Endangered Species,” Mississippi Libraries 56 (Fall 1992): 72-75; Stephanie L. Sterling, “Recruiting Minorities for Librarianship: Issues and Strategies Revisited,” in Culture Keepers: Enlightening and Empowering Our Communities: Proceedings of the First National Conference of African-American Librarians, edited by Stanton F. Biddle (Neward, NJ: The Black
234 The Journal of Academic Librarianship
Caucus of the American Library Association, 1993), pp.182-185; “Diversity in Recruitment and Professional Development,” in Culture Keepers National
II: Unity Conference
through Diversity: of African-American
Proceedings Librarians,
of
the
Second
edited by Stanton F. Biddle et al. (Neward, NJ: The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 1995), pp. 321-379. 5. Dwight King, Rhea A-L Ballard, Helena Lai, & Grace M. Mills, “Profiling Minority Law Librarians: A Report on the 1992-93 Survey,” Law Library Journal 87 (Spring 1995): 247-309; Patricia Ball, “African-American Male Library Administrators in Public and Academic Libraries,” College & Research Libraries 56 (November 1995): 53 l-554. 6. McCook h Geist, “Diversity Deferred,” pp. 35-38. 7. In arriving at a sample size of 55 cases, the researcher addressed several design questions. Among these were the alpha level (a), Effect size (ES) and the level of power desired for the study, as well as the appropriate statistical test to use. This researcher set (at .05, ES at .40 and power at .70. See Jacob Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 1988), p. 258. 8. See Marvin E. Shaw & Jack M. Wright, Scales for the Measurement of Attitudes (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). 9. Memo from Geri Nappa, then Registrar, Stetson University College of Law, to Madison Mosley, March 10, 1995. She provided data for all but one law school, which refused to share its data. 10. State University System of Florida Fact Book: 1993-94 (Tallahassee, FL: Florida Board of Regents, 1995), p. 92. 11. Lois Buttlar & William Caynon, “Recruitment into the Profession: The Minority Perspective,” Library & Information Science Research 14 (July/September 1992): 259-280. 12. J. Hart Walters, Jr., Image and Status of the Library and Znformation Services Field (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, 1970, ED 045 130), p. 40. 13. See, for example, Susan Gainen, “Non-traditional Career Paths for the 1990’s,” Maryland Bar Journal 25 (March-April 1992): 3; Gary A. Munneke & William D. Henslee, Nonlegal Careers for Lawyers (Chicago: American Bar Association, 1994), p. 80; Changing Jobs: A Handbook for Lawyers for the 1990’s (Chicago: American Bar Association, 1994), p. 291.