Exploring academic instructional librarians' career paths and deference behavior

This mixed-methods study on academic instructional librarian (AIL) deference builds on its predecessors through survey responses and in-depth interviews to examine AIL deference, the relationship between AILs' career path characteristics and their Deference scores, and strategies to reduce AIL deference. Both quantitative and qualitative portions of this study indicate that academic librarians defer, and their deference is influenced by characteristics related to their career paths, such as years in the field of librarianship, prior teaching experience outside the academic library, and years in academic librarianship instruction. In-depth interviews shed additional insight into the characteristics of AIL deference, negative consequences of deference, and strategies related to the career path variables that may minimize AIL deference to subject-area faculty.