I’m at the point in my career where I can look back and see trends. I can vividly remember my early obsession with professional networking (2009-2011), the deep dive into critical pedagogy and instruction (2011-2015), the slow rise into outreach (2015-2017), and the crossroads that led to management (2018-present). Assuming I retire between the age of 60-65, this means I am just approaching the half-way point.
That’s a sobering realization.
And it leads me to think “what’s next?” I’ve been invited to apply for associate dean and AUL positions. I don’t yet know if that’s the direction I want to go. I’ve also considered stepping back from management to focus entirely on strategic communications and assessment. I’m not sure that’s a direction I want to go either. Frankly, I’m undecided on what my immediate next step is.
And that’s OK.
What I do notice, however, is an emerging fascination with the professionalization of outreach work. Within academic libraries, there are certain areas of work that are highly professionalized: e.g., reference and instruction, special collections, collection development, e-resources management, and systems. Basically, if there are multiple annual academic conferences dedicated to your line of work in libraries, you can consider your area to be highly professionalized. Also: multiple academic journals on the topic; multiple ACRL sections and interest groups; and professional competencies.
Outreach librarianship, as a stand-alone position, emerged alongside distance education librarians at the dawn of the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s. So in the grand history of academic librarianship, it’s one of the younger specializations. We do have academic journals and we just recently adopted professional competencies, but we are no where near the level of professionalization that, say, reference librarianship or collection development work is at.
Outreach librarians take many forms: student engagement librarians, communication librarians, first-year experience librarians, various forms of liaison work, management, and instruction-adjacent positions. We also wear many hats, everything from program development and community engagement to marketing and social media strategy. Some are housed within reference and instruction departments, user services teams, or administration; others (like myself) are stand-alone departments.
With what remains of my career, I think that I want to continue to professionalize the work that outreach librarians do. Developing standardized assessment protocols. Advocating for the hiring of uniquely qualified and skilled individuals. Championing the work of academic libraries that support notable outreach projects. I’m doing some of this work already as the Marketing Column editor for Public Services Quarterly and as a board member of the Library Marketing and Communications Group.
To those ends, these are some of the projects I’d like to work on:
- Co-lead research that helps to further codify academic library outreach as its own LIS subfield
- Help to build a robust set of outreach assessment tools
- Form a community of practice around academic library ROI, storytelling, and communicating value
- Formally highlight notable examples of successful academic library outreach (see also: RIAL)
- Write a new book on academic library outreach
- Develop a new toolkit for library outreach (let’s bring back the ARL SPEC kits!)
- Co-teach a course on academic library outreach
Just to name a few.
Not that I have the time for any of this right now, of course; but as I look at the next 20-ish years of my career, I do want to start moving towards “the next thing.” And if that can be something that leaves an impact on the future of the profession by making it possible for more folks to pursue outreach librarian work along pathways that feel supported and well-trodden, that would be worth the journey.
banner image: Penn[sylvania] Delegation (via library_of_congress on flickr)
