No Librarian is an Island

If you were to walk into any university library during the last week of finals, some things are slowing down, while others remain. The thick air of stress, anxiety, and dread is slowly dissipating as more and more students depart for the winter break. Outside the reading rooms and study spaces, however, things are barely slowing down for academic library staff as systems and workflows continue to be maintained or, in some instances, ramp up. For my instruction team, our library workshops and summative assessments are complete. And yet, we are still busy completing postponed projects and pushing to prepare for the Spring semester as much as possible before the break, including planning for upcoming events, staff trainings, and library sessions in the near future.

Even though this slowdown is busy, there are still moments when I can pause and continue my reflection on the past semester. As I have written about in past posts, this first semester has been one of learning and discovery. I got more acquainted with the university where I work; I learned about the complexities of bringing politics into the classrooms; I learned that I could be honest about the limits of my knowledge when interacting with students. But the other thing I have started to learn is how my role connects with other departments in the library. 

Over the last few months, I have tried to meet with as many department heads and managers as possible to lift the hood of their units and see how they operate. This effort has been challenging due to schedule constraints and an initial worry that I was imposing on their work. However, now that the semester is winding down, I have had more space to do this again. 

Recently, I met with one of the heads of our Resource and Acquisition Management (RAM) Department and received some valuable insights into how it works. I learned how funds are allocated to purchase print books, ebooks, and journals, how academic database subscriptions like JSTOR are purchased and maintained, and how contracts for special circulating items like films are negotiated. On the one hand, I left the meeting with a slight headache as I thought about the amount of work being done behind the scenes to ensure students, faculty, and staff across the campus could access the resources and materials they needed. On the other hand, I gained a fuller picture of how the work that cataloging, acquisitions, metadata, and other staff within RAM did inform the research resources I introduced and demonstrated to students in library workshops and one-on-one consults throughout the semester. 

Similar to my meeting with RAM, I met with each of our subject librarians in my first month at the library. The initial aim of these meetings was to compile a list of the most useful subject-specific resources I could share with students during reference interactions. However, it became much more than that. I gained names that I could refer students to for further assistance during and at the end of my research consults. Like RAM, I now had a better understanding of how a different team intersected with me and how we complimented each other’s work.

Much like poet John Donne’s well-known phrase “no man is an island,” no academic librarian is an island, a library of themselves. There is an interconnectedness in the work we do with staff whose roles and responsibilities are different from ours. These connections might not be immediately obvious at first but emerge as time passes. Even though I’m still new in the field, one piece of advice I want to share with any new or aspiring academic librarian is to go beyond just meeting peer coworkers; in your first weeks and months, meet with department heads and managers, find out what their department’s work entails and how it overlaps with yours. If there are not any immediately clear points of connection, perhaps this could be an opportunity for you and your department to start discussions around collaboration. Doing this will not only help you understand your Library better but can potentially unlock exciting professional opportunities as well. 

For any academic librarian, regardless of tenure, the upcoming holiday break is a good moment to pause, reflect on your role and department, and ask: “Who are the colleagues I do not know?” “What could intentionally collaborating with them look like?” “What barriers might there be to collaborating.” Depending on the size and workplace culture of the library you work in, acting on these reflections might be easier for some than others, but you shouldn’t be afraid to try it out. Use 2025 to get off your island.