This summer, I was engaged with quite a few projects (several of which I was in charge of), but was able to make time to focus on scholarship just about every Friday. Part of that, in my opinion, is this blog. This is how I engage with the profession, share my ideas, and have professional conversations with others. My writing here is certainly different than it is in the article I just turned in to a peer reviewed journal on the impact of the changing information environment and participatory technologies on pedagogy and information literacy, but it’s no less important (to me at least). And thank goodness I got that article submitted before the Fall quarter started, because I’ve been buried at work.
It’s a good kind of buried though. This is my first Fall at PSU and I’m trying to immerse myself as much as possible in our instruction program so that I can get a feel for what needs to be worked on. To that end, I’ve been trying to teach a diverse array of classes by offering to cover classes for some of my colleagues. And it’s been fun! The students at PSU are, for the most part, very motivated, probably because so many are non-traditional students and/or are paying for college themselves. I actually had a bunch of students in a class I taught last week request my PowerPoint slides (and another student was furiously writing down everything I said). It’s been fun. I’m also working on a whole bunch of projects designed to bring a culture of assessment to the library’s instruction program. I’m attending Assessment Immersion next month which has like 4 pre-assignments and a giant pile of readings. And I’m on search committees for three positions, one of which is our University Librarian, which I couldn’t be more excited about. This position is so important to our library and I’m glad to have the opportunity to help the University to select a great leader for us.
But one result of being buried (even in a good way) is that I don’t have enough time for blogging and traditional scholarship. I have about a gazillion books and articles on the next topic I want to research, but no time to read them. I’ve got about a dozen ideas for blog posts that are practically burning a hole in my brain, but no time to get my thoughts down on the screen. It’s a funny thing, because scholarship is so central to whether I get tenure (and thus stay in my job), and yet it’s the first thing that goes when I (and so many other tenure-track librarians) get busy. But what else does one drop? I can’t not serve on the search committees I’m on (well I guess I could, but that also would not be good for my tenure portfolio). I can’t stop working towards a final draft of our library instruction learning outcomes which have an administrative deadline. I can’t choose not to work at the reference desk or teach classes. I can’t drop the other things that have regular meetings and strict deadlines. So I drop the one thing in my work for which there are no specific goal-posts or deadlines (other than that final one when I turn in my tenure packet and cross my fingers).
In a service-centered profession, it can feel wrong and callous to be selfish, but it’s exactly what you need to be if you’re going to get tenure and continue providing service to your patrons. Somehow I have to find a way to choose my scholarship over things that will benefit my patrons, but honestly, I don’t know what to give up. I know I’ve taken on a lot this year, certainly too much, and that I’m going to be pretty well-buried until June, but I’m so used to making choices that are best for the library rather than making those that are best for me. At Norwich, I could do that, because my work was 100% about the library. But now, I have to think about my own career, and when tenure decisions are so strongly based on one’s research, I may sometimes need to put research above doing things that will further my goal of building a culture of assessment at the library. That is so antithetical to my vision of librarianship but clearly I need to find a balance where I can still be true to my values and get tenure.
And while thinking about all of this (actually, right in the middle of writing this, since I never get a post done in one straight shot anymore), I saw this great post in Scientific American entitled The three things I learned at the Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women: on being a radical scholar. In it, the author talks about having a plan for what you want to have achieved by the time you get tenure:
This point was largely inspired by a breakout session led by Dr. Mary Dankoski. In it, Dr. Dankoski asked us if we were the type of academic who lived by Plan A: did what we were asked to do and hoped we would have a rewarding fulfilling career while also meeting the promotion and tenure expectations, or Plan B: were proactive, developed a plan and negotiated responsibilities to be sure we will have vitality, find real meaning in our work, and meet promotion expectations.
You can probably guess which type most of us were, and which type Dankoski encouraged us to become. The Plan A academic says yes to most things because she is directionless and is trying to meet expectations, whereas the Plan B academic uses her personal values and interests to define and express her scholarly worth.
Related to Turner’s point about bringing your whole self to the job, Dankoski asked what we cared most about in order to create a career plan around it. She created a great handout to force us to write a Career Development Plan. The first step was to write on the following prompt:
“It is 5 years from today. If you were wildly successful in your work and personal life, what will you have achieved?”
…So, have a goal and make it a big one. Make a plan, ground it in your personal values. Dream big, form actionable steps towards those dreams, and put some thought into how your dreams and the mission of your institution intersect. Any time you can convince your employer that your dreams are good for them will make it easier to make them happen.
YES!!! While this doesn’t necessarily help with the “making time for scholarship” thing, nor the “institutional/collegial support for scholarship” thing, having a plan does help us to chart a course for what we want our scholarship and service to look like. For many years, I’ve been taking on things based on what I’ve been asked to do. I don’t say yes to every writing opportunity/presentation request/committee, but I’ve sort of fallen into some of my “research areas” because those are what I’ve been asked to write/talk about. I don’t have a clear vision of what I want to influence and achieve in the next 5 years. And I should. And having a clear plan will not only let me know what I should and should not say “yes” to; it will also help me to determine what I need to get done each year to reach my goal.
One thing I didn’t mention in this post is the equally (if not more) stressful issue of balancing being on the tenure track with family. That would have swelled this post to an epic size, so it’s probably best left for the future. But it is discussed at length in that blog post from Scientific American and it’s worth a read if you’re struggling with this too.
As you can see, I don’t have a lot of answers to all these issues; not for myself nor for the tenure system in libraries. So I’m very interested to hear about other people’s experiences. Do/did you have a clear plan for achieving tenure? How do/did you make time for scholarship? How does/did your institution support tenure-track librarians?
Pingback: Proactivity : COSWL Cause
I recently started at a non-tenure track library (thank goodness), but I have a list of things I wish I would have done at my previous tenure-track job:
1. Demand that at least 2 hours of my day (an 8 hour day) be devoted to research. This is no-phone-answering, no-door-answering, no-email-reading time. If your job depends on scholarship production, your colleagues should respect that you have to set aside this time to do this.
2. Request a mentor that can answer my questions and provide guidance.
3. Ask for a clear list of expectations. It would be good to do this with a hypothetical test case to poll the tenured faculty with: “If Candidate X produced Y articles and Z presentations, would you grant him tenure?”
4. Ask my mentor if serving on search committees and the like really did make a difference in terms of tenure (it did not at my previous job).
Ultimately, I think the tenure track is bad for librarians because it takes us away from our role as a responsive service to the university community and tries to cram us into a role meant for scholars who are judged primarily on their scholarship–no one gets tenure for their teaching, after all.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful post. As the director of a small academic library where librarians are on a “permanent-status” track (essentially equivalent to tenure) I had a few strong initial reaction. It will help to know that the library faculty have this full faculty status for the past 7 years so the four senior librarians were grand-fathered in. We also have prioritized evaluation criteria of librarianship, service, and scholarship/creativity which we think more accurately reflect our 40 hour week/12 month calendar.
As a director I would never counsel any librarian to serve on three search committees at once. These are very time-consuming commitments (as you know!). We only have 7 librarians, including me, and have never had more than one open position at a time, but we do serve on committees for other faculty or college administrators.
I would also strongly discourage new library faculty from focusing too much on publication in the first year. At least I would not have any expectation that an article would be submitted for publication. This may depend a lot on the type of library, and on whether a librarian is hired who has established a research agenda. A librarian new to the profession and the institution needs to learn and adjust a lot, just like any other new faculty member.
What I would be looking for is potential, interest, and communication about how I, and the college, can help.
You have given me some good ideas about looking for opportunities to provide early career librarians with the ability to create reading and research time. I think all of us feel that is lacking. The cohort you are in represents the future of our academic libraries. It is our responsibility to mentor, to advocate for and support, and sometimes to get out of the way.
Hi Celia. Thanks for your thoughtful response! My situation is a little different from many on the tenure track, since I have more than six years-worth of professional experience (and have been publishing all that time) and I’m in a management position. Being a manager often requires a lot more administrative and committee service work and I assume that will be factored in when I get reviewed. But I do completely agree with you that every institution should provide mentoring/support for their early-career (and new to the institution) librarians in terms of balancing expectations.
Pingback: Around the Web: Scientists & social media, Radical scholars, Coming to blows over books and more [Confessions of a Science Librarian] | Digital Brain ; Science and Technology News
From this post, do you question whether academic librarians should have tenure status?
Re: new librarians on the tenure track. I would say it is never too early to start and would not advise anyone to delay writing for a year. We generally do not hire anyone right out of library school here, but if I supervised a newbie I would make sure that he or she had something in the works by 6 months. I would also offer to co-author. Those years fly by.
I am now at my second university on the tenure track–left my prior university at 4 yr on my own accord. Am I nuts? I tend to reflect on my values more than actual goals and find that my productivity follows. It took me over a decade in this profession to figure this out.
Our requirements here are well-defined and I appreciate that after having such nebulous standards to try to follow. The general party line here is that committee service outside the library is not very important, but there needs to be some evidence of that and one does not have to work in this area every year. I am also in management now and it is a juggling act. I started this job with several projects under contract which probably was not very smart.
Finding the time to write is difficult for sure and it is something I am currently struggling with here. Sometimes I just have to leave it for weekends–boo, I am so NOT a fan of that, but it is how I fit it in during crunch time and I do make sure my whole weekend isn’t spent like that. I also get to work early and leave no later than 5. Sometimes lunch is at my desk (gotta eat, hypoglycemic!) so I can finish up a project and not have to stay until nightfall. I keep a mini notebook in my purse to jot down ideas, etc. I make time for my hobbies for an hour each day–regardless of what is hanging over my head. It is how I decompress and remain motivated.
While I’m certainly in favor of tenure for academic librarians, I don’t think everyone is–including many in library administration. I think this, in addition to how librarians’ scholarly activities are perceived on campus and even among other librarians, contributes to uncertainty about expectations. I’ve been involved in several projects and committees with other faculty on campus and it always comes as a bit of a surprise to them that librarians are faculty and have similar requirements for tenure. Obviously, we could do better at educating others on campus about our status, but I suspect that this is a pretty common issue on a lot of college campuses.
At my institution, we have the opportunity to select two tenured faculty as mentors to help guide us through the tenure process. I’m about half way through and one of the best decisions I made at the beginning was to ask a faculty member from one of my assigned departments to be my mentor. I knew her only through reputation at the time but she has since become one of my greatest allies. She has been an incredible resource to me and has helped me balance the more service-oriented roles more commonly associated with being a librarian with the scholarly activity that is emphasized throughout the rest of the campus. I also received the advice early on to have a clear plan from the start so that I didn’t take on too much that wasn’t related to my real interests and goals (it’s amazing how busy you can get when you express even the slightest bit of interest!) This is tough when you’re a new-ish librarian and I’m certainly still guilty of this to some degree, but I’m trying to let my priorities guide my decision making as much as I can.
I loved the link to Kate Clancy’s post, BTW. I’m so glad that “Mommy Guilt” (or “Daddy Guilt” for that matter) is something more and more people in academia are willing to talk about. One of the other reasons I chose my mentor was because she was a mom. I sometimes feel that children are a forbidden subject and it is nice to be able to talk to someone who has been through the sleepless nights and other craziness that comes with having children.
So, if I had any advice for a new librarian it would be to try to find support wherever you can–even if it’s outside the library.
Hi Cassandra! I definitely have issues with librarians having the same expectations for tenure as disciplinary faculty because we have very different priorities and constraints. I don’t have a problem with librarians being on a tenure track, but I think there has to be a recognition that it will look different than it will for disciplinary faculty and that the librarians need support because their core duties frequently eat away at any time they’d have for research.
Amanda, that is fantastic that your institution has an established mentoring program for tenure-track faculty. It’s a great idea and makes it much less awkward for junior faculty to seek out such relationships.
“it’s amazing how busy you can get when you express even the slightest bit of interest!”
YES! At my previous place of work, we had such a small staff that we were all pretty much involved in everything. I’m trying to be careful now not jump into too many projects that I have some interest in (and that’s a huge number of the projects here) because I know they will eat up all my time. Luckily, as a manager, I am able to delegate some things (like coordination of the development of online learning objects) to other colleagues, even though they happen to be things I’d love to have time to focus on.
I’m behind in my blog reading because everything at work has exploded AND I’m reviewing tenure & reappointment portfolios before our tenure committee meets this Wednesday. Funny though, I’d just posted on my own blog a bit–just a few thoughts–about the process.
My library has a formal mentoring program and encourages informal mentoring. We have an annual tenure workshop for pre-tenured librarians, their mentors and supervisors. I feel our T&P criteria are good, offering examples of non-directed (professional) service and research/scholarly/creative endeavors. We recognize that librarianship encompasses many new or non-traditional avenues for this work, and we’ve attempted to stress to junior faculty that there is flexibility built into our criteria. Our job descriptions, annual performance plans, and the Libraries’ and university’s strategic plans guide the process. The tenure committee provides feedback annually and expects to see action on that feedback.
As someone who went through the process as a single parent raising 3 children, I can say I rarely worked a 40 hour work week. I worked at home on nights and weekends. And I know a number of teaching faculty who, despite only teaching 2 or 3 classes and supposedly having time for research during their week, have numerous other tenure-related obligations that drive them to work in excess of 50 or more hours a week.
But finding balance is important because you DO need a life. The blog post in Scientific American has some excellent points. Find your passion in your work. Use that passion to drive your service and your scholarship. (We stress that to our pre-tenured faculty, too.) Be self-aware–know when you are taking on too much and work with supervisors and mentors to define your goals so you don’t get stretched in too many directions. Recognize that you cannot do everything you want to and that’s okay!
Pingback: more advice on tenure… « A Librarian’s Life