Tag: academic librarians

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John holding an ND filter

This is the last post in a weeklong series offering a snapshot of what a day in the life of an academic librarian, specifically an outreach librarian and department head, looks like. Here was Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4.

8:30a: Arrived at work and immediately had to troubleshoot an HR issue regarding student hiring. Once I handed that off to one of my team members to manage, I checked in with the campus children’s center to make sure story time was going ahead as planned (the air quality was almost poor enough to cancel their walk to the library).

9:00a: Because of meetings later in the day, I took advantage of my free morning to go to the gym.

10:00a: Cleaned up my email. Reviewed notes from the latest Faculty Senate meeting. Ordered gifts for my graduating senior student employees. Added an ND filter to my camera equipment inventory (pictured above).

11:00a: The leadership of the library met with the leadership of ITS. There were a number of issues to discuss, including cybersecurity of library systems, printing modernization, AI workshops, and digital assets management.

12:30p: Drafted the agenda for my department meeting on Monday and shared that with my team. More email (I always make sure my email inbox is cleared before the weekend). Emailed a student who won a raffle item by filling out a library survey. More coffee.

1:30p: My son was performing at his school today, so I hopped over to watch that.

2:30p: Went through my students’ project boards (we use Trello) and cleaned up their unassigned tasks, archived their completed work, and prioritized their projects for next week. I also scheduled their end of year performance review meetings.

3:30p: Committee on Committees meeting. We’ve mostly completed assigning all faculty volunteers to open committee seats, but there were a handful of unresolved issues to discuss.

4:30p: For the rest of the day (until about 6:30), I did my “Weekly Review.” I’ve discussed this before, but essentially it’s the time I set aside to review all my notes from the week, capture any action items, plan my priorities for the week ahead, and make it possible for me to go into the weekend without any hanging fire.

6:30p: Done and done. That’s it! If you were along for this whole ride, thanks for sticking around. Maybe I’ll do this again sometime. 

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This is the third in a week-long series of “Day in the Life” posts, written primarily for those considering a career in academic libraries—specifically working in either outreach or managerial positions. But also for nosey curious minds. See also: Day 1 and Day 2. 

8:30a: Arrive at work (a little more sluggish following yesterday’s faculty social event). I pulled together images that my student graphic designer created to post on Instagram. A “farewell” of sorts for our graduating seniors. 

9:00a: Board meeting for the Library Marketing and Communications Group. This is my third year serving on the board, whose primary responsibility is running the annual conference. I am the board secretary, as well as the lead on local arrangements for the conference and co-lead on the program selection committee. This work is part of the “service” obligations that all librarians at my institution are expected to undertake.

10:00a: Follow up meeting with select members of the LMCC Board to discuss the room setup for the conference and the timeline for selecting submitted proposals. 

10:30a: Clean up emails.

11:00a: Went to the campus gym. Normally I do this daily, but this week’s been busier than usual so today was the first day getting there. On the way there and back, I checked in with my team staffing the library’s table at a campus event. 

12:30p: Followed up with a student employee applicant and interviewed another student for two other potential positions at the library. 

1:30p: Lots of little things! Scheduled a meeting with a vendor. Uploaded a recent event recording to the library’s YouTube page. Drafted a blurb for a summer staff event and pop-up exhibit. Reviewed a proposed summer schedule for story time with the campus children’s center. Got coffee.

3:00p: Oversaw the start of “goat yoga,” an annual event that the library hosts during finals every year. Checked in with my student photographer who was capturing the day.

4:00p: By now, my daughter had arrived on campus so I took her to her gymnastics practice. 🤸

4:30p: Came back to campus and worked on setting up drafting files for the library’s Year in Review publication (that is, I set up instructions for all the various authors who contribute content to the document), including word counts, style and content directions, etc. 

5:30p: Helped set up for our “Graduation Hat Decorating Party” at the library.

6:00p: Staffed the Grad Hat Party with my team. Toward the end of the event, once we realized there would be left over food, I took a tray of cookies around the library and offered them to students who were studying for finals.

8:30p: Left the office after cleaning up the event.

decorated mortar board hat with flowers and butterflies

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This is the second in a series of “Day in the Life” posts for those considering a career in academic libraries, specifically working in either outreach or managerial positions (I wear both hats). Here was the post from Day 1. As for Tuesday of this week…

8:30a: Arrive at work. By now, I had received all the photos from last week’s Library Research Awards from the freelance photographer I hired. I reviewed the photos, posted a selection to instagram, selected all those that included the winners and sent those along to them, and archived everything in Box. 

9:00a: It’s Feel Good Finals, so we had puppies! I met the crew and helped them set up the dogs in front of the library. While I had planned to go back to my office to work on other projects, I ended up staying for the next hour to take photos and talk with students as they interacted with the dogs. 

10:30a: I met with the incoming Faculty Library Representative (FLR) for the Music Department (one of my subject liaison areas). We discussed the expectations of the FLR role and the types of support I can provide to the department, including collection development. We also discussed the possibility of having mini-music performances in the library next year. 🎼

11:30a: Cleaned up my email inbox. Took time for lunch. Then prepped for my 1:1 meeting with my boss (the dean). 

1:00p: Biweekly meeting with the dean. We discussed the outcomes of last month’s events, including National Library Week, the Long Night Against Procrastination, and our Senior All-Access Library Tours. We also discussed potential plans for future AI literacy-related external comms. Finally, I gave her an update on the various projects my team is working on.

2:00p: Met with my two student assistant for social media. We reviewed the stats from last week’s content and planned a video for today. This one…

3:00p: An external vendor reached out about partnering with the library on our Feel Good Finals events. I had to politely say no because it would violate our campus food contracts. I also emailed the campus children’s center to confirm the summer schedule for story time at the library. Finally, I handled some LMCC conference planning to-dos (I’m on the planning team for both the upcoming online conference and the in-person conference in November).

3:30p: Had a quick meeting with two of the speakers for next year’ Faculty Pub Night, mainly to discuss scope and promotional needs.

4:00p: Checked in on our Feel Good Finals setup (by this point, we had the campus radio station and student health services tabling outside the library). My son had shown up to the library by now as well so I had to make sure he wasn’t up to any trouble (he was not). I reviewed and provided feedback on a second video draft that my student employees created for Instagram (we’ll post it later this week). Finally, I emailed a potential new student hire with a job offer. 

4:30p: My dean asked me to review a short bio and rewrite it in a more “punchier” style.

5:00p: Headed off to the end of the year Faculty BBQ. Didn’t end up leaving until after 7:30p.

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Once upon a time, in internet days of old, librarian bloggers would annually create a “Day in the Life” post. The format has lived on in the GRWM and DITL posts on TikTok, but I still appreciate a good long-form blog post (see also 2023, 2017, 2015). If you are considering leadership work in an academic library (specifically of the outreach variety), here’s a glimpse of what it could look like. 

8:30a: Arrive at work. At the end of last week, I created a video with my student employees for Star Wars Day so I posted the final cut to Instagram. Additionally, I had already drafted the May edition of the library’s monthly newsletter but was just awaiting the hero image photography from an event we hosted last Friday. Thankfully, the photographer had already sent the photo so I popped that into the newsletter and sent it off to our 5K subscribers.

9:00a: I have three presentations I’m making to the library’s leadership team today. I’m giving an overview of the production process for the library’s annual Year in Review (and twisting some arms into helping out). I have revisions to the library’s social media policy that I’d like to get approved (it was). Finally, I have results from a recent survey of our Instagram users which provided evidence of our social media’s impact on students’ perception of the library (tl;dr: it’s very good). So I spent a good hour preparing my talking points for all three of these presentations.

word cloud that includes words like informative, fun, creative, library, engaging, and friendly
Word cloud of responses to a survey asking “How would you describe the @lmulibrary Instagram account to a friend?”

10:30a: Library leadership meeting with the dean, the library admin team, and all the department heads. In addition to my presentations above, we also discussed a new structure for our internal committees. 

12:00p: Took a short walk and visited the farm animals setup we had for Finals Week.

a pig and a rabbit

12:30p: Reviewed photos submitted by faculty for next year’s Faculty Pub Night speakers series. I’ll be working on the promotional materials all summer long so I need to get the faculty’s professional headshots before they leave for the summer.

1:00p: A colleague reached out to me to ask whether being interviewed by a grad student in an journalism program was considered a “media request.” Because of [reasons] this one fell somewhat into that category, so I quickly prepared talking points and a brief media kit for them to review before they met with the student. 

1:30p: Had a weekly 1:1 with one of my employees during which we talked about his recent projects and I asked for updates on some outstanding action items.

2:00p: Hosted my weekly department meeting. We had a debrief on last week’s Long Night Against Procrastination. We also reviewed progress on one of our team goals to update our internal documentation. We decided on gifts for our graduating student employees. We brainstormed objectives and desired outcomes for an upcoming collaboration with another team. Finally, we reviewed current projects for our student team.

3:30p: Met with my student graphic designer to review current projects. Their last project before they graduate as a matter of fact. 😢

4:00p: Spent about half an hour processing email.

4:45p: Headed out to take my son to his music lessons. 

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Obviously, academics read professional literature at work. It isn’t so obvious for academic librarians. Even less so for academic librarians without a tenure track.

At MPOW, librarians are eligible for promotion under a process that mimics tenure in everything but name and includes “conducting research [and] developing creative projects”. So it seems only reasonable to spend some at-work time reviewing the professional literature, conference proceedings, recent webinars, etc. Nonetheless, I have trouble sitting in my office (or anywhere else) to read. Too many other things battle for my attention (like students!).

Academic librarians: how do you overcome this feeling?

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I will say that one of the most difficult aspects of this new job is the constant task shifting. Whereas before I was single-tasking most of the day, now I shift repeatedly between preparing instruction sessions, working the reference desk, collection development, locating possible furniture purchases, preparing research proposals, exporting/importing statistical data, creating subject guides, reviewing tutorials, meetings, faculty tours, brainstorming sessions for new services, supervising employees (including student workers), working on professional projects outside of work, scheduling conference trips, and helping out an occasional drop-in student with the CMS.

And that’s just what I did today.

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From the AAUP, Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians (Jan. 11, 2013):

“As the primary means through which students and faculty gain access to the storehouse of organized knowledge, the college and university library performs a unique and indispensable function in the educational process. This function will grow in importance as students assume greater responsibility for their own intellectual and social development. Indeed, all members of the academic community are likely to become increasingly dependent on skilled professional guidance in the acquisition and use of library resources as the forms and numbers of these resources multiply, scholarly materials appear in more languages, bibliographical systems become more complicated, and library technology grows increasingly sophisticated. The librarian who provides such guidance plays a major role in the learning process…”

Source: ACRL

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It is not often that one encounters a collection of essays so thoroughly aligned in their approach and perspective as to merit reading the collection from cover to cover; yet such is the nature of this recently published collection in ACRL’s Publications in Librarianship series (no. 66). Edited by Daniel C. Mack, Head of the George and Sherry Middlemas Arts Humanities Library at Penn State, and Craig Gibson, Associate Director for Research and Education at the Ohio State University, this work brings together 14 authors from across the landscape of academic librarianship, including administrators, department heads, catalogers, technologists, reference and instruction librarians, subject specialists, and professors of library science…

You can read my full review in this month’s College & Research Libraries.