One author whose newsletter I read avidly is Dr. Zed Zha. In Ask the Patient, she writes about holding on to humanity and humility as a health care provider and is an inspiration to someone like me who has experienced very few caring and invested doctors. The other day, she wrote a note about how she and some of the other female healthcare workers in her clinic came to work in spite of illnesses and family issues because they essentially felt that their brittle system would collapse without them. And frankly, in many cases, given how thinly things are staffed these days, they’re right. She wrote:
Does a workplace function without women who deprive themselves to keep it together?
Does the world run without women who place everyone else first?
Does the sky fall if women stop breaking their backs to hold it up?
I think we all know the answers.
But here’s the question we haven’t allowed ourselves to ask:
What happens when women, collectively, decide to stop giving ourselves to systems that feel entitled to our sacrifice?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Look closely at most libraries, and you’ll probably find a critically important service, program, or activity that is literally sustained by a single worker’s (let’s face it, probably a woman’s) passion. Whether it’s tutorials, assessment, OER and textbook affordability, copyright, outreach and marketing, scholarly communications, instructional technology, or something else, these things usually start as the passion of an individual library worker and grow into something essential to the institution. Sometimes, that growth happens without that work ever becoming part of the library worker’s formal job description and without release from any of their other regular duties that already made up a full workload. Some institutions might create a coordinator role to support this work, which, while not ideal (see the Library Loon’s old writings on coordinator syndrome), at least provides the library worker with time. Those who continue this work with no release from other job duties scrounge for interstitial moments to invest themselves in this work they are so passionate about or they let the work bleed into their free time – frequently the latter.
Lots of library workers have passions that are relevant to their jobs, but rarely do those become an important part of the library’s work. I used to have a colleague who was obsessed with podcasting. He would implore faculty to create podcasting assignments rather than traditional papers and pushed podcasting in committees he served on. Another colleague did amazing work with faculty around Reading Apprenticeship. While I learned quite a bit from her work that informed my teaching, it did not end up integrated into our information literacy instruction program. Early in my career, I was very passionate about social media (I shudder to think of that today), but I always saw it as something I did “on the side.” While I did implement some social media tools in my first job, it was never integral to the library and it also wasn’t time-consuming by any stretch.
These other things are different. They become essential parts – sometimes even required parts, like in the case of assessment work – of the library’s portfolio of work. They are often valued by faculty and students. They are frequently even seen as important by library administrators. Yet somehow they are not important enough to support in any concrete way. Because no one has to. Because they have someone dedicated enough to twist themselves into a pretzel and overwork to make it happen.
Those who’ve known me a long time will know that supporting online learners has been my specialty and passion since I entered this field. I started creating video tutorials in 2004 before I even had a professional position and it helped me get my first academic job as a distance learning librarian. I have a lot of experience and expertise in online instruction, both as a librarian and an online LIS instructor. While my role since 2014 has been more of a generic “liaison librarian/reference and instruction librarian,” I was still for many years the default “tutorial librarian” at work because it’s what I’m good at and passionate about. Early on, I got grant funding to build tutorials with a team (though I did all the technical parts of building them) and while it paid for some of my time to create the tutorials, later, I was expected to maintain them. And, as I found time, I continued building general-use tutorials to support our students and my colleagues’ teaching, even though it wasn’t explicitly my job to do so and I didn’t get release time for the work. I did it because there was a need and I wanted to be useful, I loved the work, and I was also surrounded by plenty of colleagues who also normalized overworking in the absence of support. Sometimes, I’d beg for people to cover a couple of my reference shifts to give me a few extra hours – like when a writing instructor asked me to build a Google Scholar tutorial and I wanted to make a good general one that would work in any discipline – but mostly, I just let the work bleed into my personal time. And I recognize that I did this to myself because I love the creativity of online instructional design work and I care deeply about online learners. It was a choice to overwork like this.
I always thought that I could make my colleagues recognize the importance of this work by making the work important; by showing how integral it could be to academic curricula. I shared one department’s data that found that students in Anthropology 101 who completed a tutorial I created for their final research assignment scored 50% better on an outcomes assessment of their term papers than 101 students who did not. I remember thinking at the time, wow! This data is irrefutable! Information literacy tutorials can really impact student learning in a major way! This is going to change everything! And nothing changed. Having a library video tutorial with over 58,000 views didn’t matter either. People appreciated the tutorials I made and would tell me that they believed that the work was important, but never to the point where I or anyone else would be given the time to focus on it. And given the amount of time it takes to build and maintain quality tutorials, the work was simply unsustainable given the other things I was expected to do.
After getting turned down when asking for just 32 hours of release time over an entire academic year to work on building a design philosophy, best practices, and plan for supporting the work of tutorial development and maintenance across the library, it became obvious to me that my boss and our department would never support making time for this work so long as I continued to squeeze the work into my already overstuffed job. So I stepped away from it and set healthier boundaries. I would only continue to maintain tutorials that were explicitly for my liaison areas, like our PsycINFO video and the interactive tutorials I made for classes in the social sciences. When we had to move to the new EBSCO database interface, I told my boss that I could only create a new version of my Academic Search Complete video with explicit release time. She never responded (?!) so I never updated it. After faculty complaints a few months later, the work was forced on a non-faculty colleague – and good friend – in Digital Services, which was shitty and made me feel shitty too. After a lot of conversations about our frustrations, she has also let go of a lot of responsibilities and set healthier boundaries, which I applaud. So who will update these tutorials next time around? Who knows!
The thing I constantly tell myself – and others – is that it’s not an individual worker’s responsibility to fill gaps created by poor leadership or organizational dysfunction. If a leader is going to brag to their superiors about the impact of our tutorials but then do nothing to provide support for their creation and maintenance, the workers shouldn’t feel like it’s their responsibility to create or maintain them. If one’s colleagues link to your tutorials and share them with students but never identify the creation of tutorials as a departmental priority (and I’m not blaming them; the issue feels far more systemic), then it’s not worth twisting yourself up into a pretzel and giving up personal time in an effort to make them. The cognitive dissonance was exasperating. Though I knew my stepping back wasn’t likely to change anything, it was an effort to stop enabling the dysfunction and to stop hurtling towards burnout.
Sometimes you have to surrender yourself to the reality of the situation instead of constantly fighting against the current. Did it suck? Yes. Did I feel like I was abandoning students when I set those boundaries? 100%. Did I also feel guilt because I knew some colleagues were still overworking in their un-or-under-recognized roles? Sure, though I’m cognizant of the fact that I can’t control the choices of others, only mine. But was building tutorials the only way for me to help students? Of course not. Surrendering isn’t giving up. Instead of fighting the current, you find a way to move with it. Because the other thing I always tell myself is that no matter how much we work, there will always be unmet needs in our communities. I say that to myself to discourage overworking, but also, it means that there are always other ways to make a difference.
Since then, I’ve found places to contribute that will have a major impact on our students and aren’t bleeding me dry (yet?). I’ve taken a leadership role in our collections work and have been leading several projects to support our students for whom English is not their first language. Last year we did a needs assessment of Spanish-speakers (the College is moving towards becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution), bought a ton of popular reading materials in Spanish, and translated a lot of our instructional materials into Spanish including building LibGuides in Spanish (after creating this and another guide in Spanish, I realized that this was another place where I had to set a firm boundary because I was doing a lot of translation work that really should not be my job – old habits die hard). I’m also leading a project to create World Languages collections at each of our campus libraries.
Like tutorials work, this is a labor of love, but it’s not a solo project. It can’t happen without collaboration with technical and access services. I love this work because I’ve gotten to collaborate with folks in every area of the library as well as people outside who support international students. I love playing the role of project manager and cheerleader. We were just awarded an LSTA mini-grant to help build our collection and I’m excited to get experience buying books in non-English languages beyond Spanish. Is this project adding to my workload? Yes. But because it’s more recognized than tutorials work as a “library project,” I’ve been better able to say no to other work. And, unlike tutorials, there isn’t as much time pressure. Other than fiscal deadlines, the work can much more easily be spread out and done in free moments here and there. I’m really glad I could find a space where I could make a difference and the work is collaborative, challenging, creative, valuable, and sustainable.
The Buddhists say that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. I know that well as someone with chronic pain and illness (and I practice a lot of surrendering to how I am feeling day-to-day as my health upends my best laid plans), but I also feel it very much with the choices I make at work. The first step is acknowledging that I do have choices. Knowing when to keep pushing against the current and when to surrender is an art and something most of us struggle with. Part of it is recognizing the things that we can’t control or even influence and letting go of the idea that if we grind hard enough, impress the powers-that-be enough, things will change. Stop offering free labor. Invest yourself in ways that enrich you rather than deplete you and set boundaries that keep you from overworking.
If you are toiling in an informal and unsupported role at your library, I see you. I know that there may be reasons some of you can’t give up what you’re doing, like being on the tenure track, worrying about not getting merit raises, etc., though even for you, setting boundaries around other work you do (projects and committees) might still be possible. But for those who are less constrained, choosing not to do something that is burning you out and isn’t supported isn’t a betrayal of your patrons. If this work is that important, it’s your institution that has betrayed patrons by not adequately supporting you. It’s not the job of an individual worker to prop up a dysfunctional system. It’s not the job of the worker to continue sacrificing themselves on the altar of vocational awe (Rest in Power, Fobazi Ettarh, and thank you). Your job is not entitled to more than your contract or job description promises. If there are not enough hours in the day to do everything, then everything can’t get done. The role of a manager is to help their direct reports prioritize their work and figure out what not to do. If something is important enough, they need to find a way to make sure it gets done with the resources (people and funds) they have.
What I really hate is the toll that all of this takes on the passionate, dedicated worker and on the organization when that bright light finally burns out. I was recently in a meeting of an assessment-related college committee I have been on for about 9 years. Some of the faculty who have been part of this group the whole time have gone from being the most active and passionate contributors to our college to jaded, angry, and burned out husks of their former selves. One of the people on the committee previously was a major leader in this work and put so much into it because she believed in it. Her department has 1/3 the number of full-time faculty that they had when she started at the college, yet they are still expected to do the same level of service and to meet all the administrative demands for assessment work and other administrivia (actually there’s more administrivia these days) that they did 15 years ago. After years of this, plus the complete disdain many of our administrators have shown toward faculty and staff, she now sees the assessment work we do as meaningless box-checking and suggests putting as little effort as possible into it. I can’t disagree, not at all, and I feel the same way about the college at this point, but it breaks my heart to see people I thought of as the most brilliant, passionate stars of the College burned to a crisp by such mistreatment and the expectation that we should keep filling these holes that administrators purposely create.
I have another colleague who does so much library outreach on social media and elsewhere on top of her regular job duties. She is amazing at it – a natural marketing whiz. She’s a brilliant, funny, and engaging communicator in ways I couldn’t ever hope to be. She told me she hopes that our Dean will make it her job and give her release time to do it and it hurts my heart because I know it won’t happen. While I truly love working with her (she is a JOY!) it would serve us right if some other library scooped her up to run their library marketing and outreach program. And I wonder when she will tire of doing this work that isn’t part of her job description and that she isn’t given release time to do. I hope it happens before she burns out because I’d hate for her to lose her passion and her shine. We all deserve to keep (or get back) our shine.
Ask yourselves, what happens when women we, collectively, decide to stop giving ourselves to systems that feel entitled to our sacrifice? What would surrendering look like in your worklife?
