Guidance for Librarians Transitioning to a New Environment

Tina Herman Buck, Sara Duff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000195378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Lehrmethoden

Guidance for Librarians Transitioning to a New Environment offers practical advice for those hoping to transition into a different type or size of institution. Written by librarians who have successfully navigated such changes, the book encourages consideration of unexplored opportunities.

Drawing on the authors' own experiences, as well as surveys and interviews conducted with those working in different types of libraries, the book will provide librarians with a fi eld guide for surviving and thriving in their new environment. It will do so by making suggestions for how librarians can orient themselves to their new library, add context to their CV or résumé, get started with presenting and publishing, and manage culture shock and emotions. Each chapter will also provide the opportunity for the librarian to refl ect on relevant aspects of their own situation and move forward with the help of action items.

Guidance for Librarians Transitioning to a New Environment is essential reading for librarians who are considering or in the process of making a career move, as well as those working on career planning. The book will also be helpful for library science school faculty and career counselors who are advising current students and library managers who want to help their new hires transition in the most effective way.

1A new size or type of library

There are many reasons why librarians might decide to take a job at a drastically different library. However, the transition is not always straightforward. Librarians should consider the challenges they could face before they make the transition to a different size or type of library, so that they will be better prepared. Though many librarians have moved between types and sizes, the authors had previously heard a widespread myth that librarians are pigeonholed into one library type throughout their career. A survey demonstrates that there are differences in attitudes toward moving between type and size depending on the answerer’s own career path. This chapter includes a discussion of similarities and differences between types of libraries, including patron focus, philosophies of library activities, and types of services and classes offered. This chapter suggests other options such as temporary or contract positions, rural libraries, and working in developing countries. There is a discussion of misconceptions about different library jobs. This chapter also has advice from interviewees who have changed library environment.

Some librarians have a career plan in mind from the start and steadily work toward their goals, adjusting as needed but always with a larger plan in mind. Some simply want to be working librarians and only consider the next step when something, internal or external, causes the realization that the current situation isn’t quite right.

Tina falls squarely in the latter camp. It is only looking back over a long and varied career that she sees how she came to feel qualified to write a book of support and guidance for librarians considering a change in library environment. At each step along the way, she had little awareness that changes between large and small libraries or public and academic (or public to private or across various geographic areas, for that matter) were particularly significant moves, ones that might cause a more planful librarian to proceed with caution.

We can guess that you picked up this book because you’re curious about the potential of transitioning to another library environment. Perhaps you’re a career planner and are looking for input. You might have a sense that it’s time to move on from your current position. Maybe you’re out of work or are at the very beginning of your library career and want help getting a job. In any of these circumstances, your first thought may be to stay within the type and/or size library that you are most familiar with, whether due to experience on the job or as a patron. The authors want to show you that a broader world of opportunity is available to you. (While the focus of this book is on changing library environments, there is also plenty to consider for those making any job change.) We suspect that that some librarians haven’t considered these options due to lack of information, preconceived notions, or having no colleagues who have made such a change. Some librarians have encountered bias against changing type – an attitude that fortunately seems to be fading over time – and may be leery as a result.

Thus, we’ll begin with a look at Tina’s real-life job transitions as a sort of case study about changing library environments. As an entry point to the rest of this book, we’ll focus on the aspects that are most relevant to our content: the appeal of a particular job and its environment, positives and negatives, and then the reason(s) Tina moved on.

After that, we’ll move into a discussion of why a librarian should consider such a change and look at some differences and similarities between types and sizes. We’ll offer some options that you may not have considered for your career. From there, we’ll dig into misconceptions that may be holding people back. Then we’ll see the results of the authors’ survey (Duff & Buck, 2019) of librarian perceptions of moving to a different environment. Finally, we’ll gain some insights from our interviewees who have changed types or sizes.

During college and graduate school, Tina worked as a para-professional in the public library system, first as a shelver in the children’s department and then in the catalog department doing a variety of copy cataloging tasks. It was a city system with about 20 branches. In the catalog department, taught and mentored by the professional catalogers, Tina found work that she was fascinated by and that prompted her to begin the Master of Library Science (MLS) program at the local university, focusing on cataloging and related coursework. Her stint in the children’s room instilled a lifelong fondness for picture books, but in terms of career expectations, Tina was sure she would become a cataloger in a public library and would always be one. Some of her fellow MLS students were planning to work at academic libraries, prison libraries, or other environments. The catalogers, archivists, reference and children’s librarians, and the management types seem to already have self-selected and it didn’t occur to Tina that her intended path would ever change, in terms of either library type or job duties.

That changed a bit when she landed her first professional job as a technical services librarian in a single-site small-town library. The appeal of the job was primarily the giddy delight of landing that first professional position in her desired sector of librarianship. The location was a positive, providing the opportunity to move to an area where she knew people. The job advertisement seemed like a good fit though the technical services components were broader than purely cataloging. Of course, the venue was a public library; at that stage it probably wouldn’t have occurred to Tina to apply to another type. Once she started the position, her adjustments included being the only technical services professional in the building, doing reference shifts (having taken little reference coursework in school), participating in collection development (having taken no collection-related coursework), being part of two library consortia, managing staff, and being recognized as the “library lady” everywhere she went in her new hometown. She learned about processing a wide variety of materials, small town politics, and the ILS (integrated library system, which was managed by the consortia central site), including her first system migration.

After a few years, Tina realized she would have to move to a larger library in order to do higher-level cataloging. The small-town library didn’t have OCLC, a widely used cataloging utility; original and complex copy cataloging needs were turned over to the consortia that managed the regional ILS. So, in pursuit of expanded professional responsibilities and skill-building, Tina became the assistant head of technical services in a nearby city with a public library system of eight or nine branches. She was still solely aware of the public library realm. The change in library size permitted her to get that experience doing complex cataloging on OCLC. She also got the opportunity to assist in managing a larger, more complicated technical services department and to work with professional cataloger colleagues. However, the larger library also had a much greater need for staffing at the multiple reference desks. Reference hours were part of Tina’s duties and staffing shortages kept her on the reference desk for a significant portion of the workweek, impacting what she could accomplish in technical services. Thus, when a colleague mentioned an opening for a technical services consultant at a multi-type library cooperative, Tina was faced with her first potential move across types.

The multi-type cooperative provided training, auxiliary collections, cooperative purchasing, interlibrary loan, and numerous other supports for their hundred-plus member libraries across the region. Tina had taken continuing education classes from the librarians at the multi-type so had some familiarity with the institution. The job sounded interesting, but she worried that not working in a more conventional library would be a career dead-end.

Remembering this misguided concern many years later, Tina can only shake her head because that job became one of the biggest growth periods of her career. It also led to numerous long-term, positive professional connections. Skills and knowledge built during this job opened the door to many opportunities. These include: volunteering to vanguard the adoption of a new ILS acquisitions module and to train other institutions on it set Tina up for work in the ILS migrations that happened in most of her subsequent institutions; co-managing a statewide materials purchasing cooperative set her up to understand purchasing rules, vendor processing, and acquisitions complexities; conducting frequent training sessions for librarians and library staff provided evidence of her capacity for performing library instruction when she applied to her first academic library. The job at the multi-type cooperative also finely honed her sense of the importance of being open to learning new skills and trying new things, even if you must figure things out for yourself and fail occasionally along the way.

In terms of the number of librarians and staff, the multi-type was essentially staffed at the same level as a small library, with about seven librarians and 15 staff. But Tina’s world of professional associates expanded greatly. While she was the only technical services librarian at the multi-type, that gap was filled by committee work for the ILS consortia with other member libraries and by connections to her peers at similar multi-types across the state. As part of her job as technical services consultant, she interacted with librarians from a wide range of libraries: different types (such as hospitals, schools, specials, and local history centers, in addition to the publics and academics); geographic realities from urban to rural; and patron size from populous to tiny. The libraries also varied greatly in their funding, local support, and staffing levels. None of these factors seemed to have any relationship to the creativity, dedication, or quality of service demonstrated by the librarian. In hindsight, Tina can see where the seeds of this book might have been sown during this time.

Tina reluctantly left the multi-type when family needs took her halfway across the country. Her primary motivation in her job search was simply to find a job quickly but she did reject an early offer of part-time cataloging work at a university. Library type played no part in her rejection; the part-time hours, very low pay, and long commute were the major negative factors. Instead, she found a full-time position with a strong collection management component at a large countywide public system with nearly 30 branches. Tina’s area was primarily print serials and standing orders and, lacking a very strong background in these, she was surprised to get the job. Looking back, she can see that her broad-based experience was probably her appeal. With cataloging know-how, she could help with the backlog of standing order cataloging; she knew some acquisitions, procurement, and collection management; had worked in a couple of public systems with multiple branches; had some experience with changing ILSs; was comfortable communicating with people across an institution, regardless of rank or role; and had been a supervisor in every job. Each of these elements was a component of her new job. The fact that she, as a recent transplant to the area, was able to start almost immediately was probably attractive too.

The new job made Tina part of a well-oiled, highly competent collection management team. It was a well-funded system with a strong focus on providing excellent library services to their population. She learned a lot and certainly had more to learn about collection management at that level, but after a relatively short tenure, her husband’s job took them halfway across the country again.

She quickly found a job as a cataloger at the public library in her new city, a system with about 20 locations. This was the kind of job she had envisioned herself in during library school. The city system was similar in scope to the one she worked at during library school and the scope of the job as a full-time cataloger was her original goal. Ironically, she found that wasn’t what she wanted. The catalogers and cataloging staff were assigned very specific areas and Tina found herself cataloging non-fiction DVDs all day long. The department required every detail on the DVD case to be in the bibliographic record, with no leeway for a cataloger’s judgment of important versus marginal information. Tina found it frustrating to spend what she considered to be unnecessary time on each title when there was a considerable cataloging backlog – many book-trucks of materials were unavailable to the public. It was the first time that she felt bored by cataloging – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that she was bored by only cataloging and according to chafing rules.

The library was getting ready for an ILS migration and Tina g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary and abbreviations
• List of librarians interviewed
• 1 A new size or type of library
• 2 Exploring new opportunities
• 3 Preparing for interviews and promotion
• 4 Mentorship
• 5 Being the new person
• 6 Looking inward: Managing your emotions
• 7 Publishing, presenting, and conferencing
• 8 Tying it all together
• Appendix A: Survey on librarian career path and attitudes
• Appendix B: Example résumé and CV
• Index