Author: Caelin Ross

Mic Drop: Belonging, Mentorship, and Professional Culture at the Music Library Association

When I attended my first conference hosted by the Music Library Association (MLA) in Salt Lake City, UT this year, I expected to learn about music collections, cataloging standards, and emerging research resources.

I did learn those things. But what surprised me most—and became the central lesson of my experience—was the way the community’s professional culture fundamentally shaped a sense of belonging and opportunity through mentorship and openness.

The conference became a model for how professional gatherings can foster mentorship, generosity, and true inclusion. For a newcomer like me, this was transformative, demonstrating that professional culture defines not just what we learn, but how we join the field.

I arrived at the conference at a moment of professional transition. I had recently begun a new role as Humanities Librarian at the University of Chicago Library, serving as liaison to the Music Department and the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies. The position carries a particular sense of responsibility: it has been vacant for more than six years following the sudden and tragic passing of my predecessor.

While I come to this work with a background in performing arts and librarianship, I do not hold a PhD in music or a formal degree in the discipline. In a research environment like the University of Chicago—an institution known for intellectual rigor and strong disciplinary traditions—that reality can feel especially visible.

Without a dedicated internal mentor in music librarianship, I rely on the field’s insight for questions about publishing ecosystems, vendors, cataloging, and collection strategies, despite supportive supervision.

Conference in a single hotel with multiple maps, an app, Slack channel, and the MLA website with message board.

Entering a Specialized Field

At the same time, I am still learning to navigate the institution’s culture. The University of Chicago has long been associated with intellectual intensity, but also with a certain institutional privacy—an academic environment that can feel somewhat mysterious from the outside. Until quite recently, that culture was manifested literally: the university gates were locked, and visitors to the library needed special permission to enter. While those policies have evolved, the image remains a powerful metaphor for how knowledge institutions sometimes operate—carefully guarded, selective, and structured by invisible boundaries.

Entering music librarianship at the University of Chicago, with its infamous institutional boundaries, has made access, mentorship, and the feeling of community more than just professional benefits—they are essential. Attending the MLA conference thus became a pivotal way to encounter this culture directly.

Although conferences often promote networking and mentorship, those interactions are frequently shaped by hierarchy and credentials in practice.

What I encountered at MLA felt strikingly different.

The conference was intentionally designed for participation—large enough for expertise, but small enough for repeated encounters. All events were held at a single hotel, allowing conversations to flow freely.

Before the conference even began, first-time attendees were invited to a pre-conference Zoom orientation that introduced the organization and explained what the conference experience would look like. Programming was shared well in advance via the CVent platform, making it easy to explore sessions and plan a schedule in advance. Many sessions were also available to stream, supported by a technical team that ensured clear audio and video, as well as recorded access.

As an attendee at the ACRL Conference in 2026, I noticed the conference organizers aimed for similar intentionality in welcoming newcomers. However, in my experience, ACRL felt overwhelming and panel and program acceptance were extremely competitive–less than 10% of submissions were accepted. The biannual structure increased the pressure and made networking challenging, despite the welcoming atmosphere. Even after volunteering on several committees, I found it difficult to build connections and advocate for myself in such a large, bureaucratic organization. Unlike the targeted mentorship I experienced at MLA, ACRL’s size and structure made formal mentoring difficult.

Even the scheduling reflected thoughtful design. Interest group and committee meetings were held the week after the conference, so attendees would not have to choose between participating in the organization and attending sessions.

These structural choices were more than logistical: by reducing barriers and prioritizing access, the conference created a setting where real community, collaboration, and learning could happen—illustrating the central role culture plays in professional belonging.

A Conference Designed for Participation

Professional networking can be difficult, even after years in academic libraries. Finding the right balance between introducing oneself and participating, while respecting others’ boundaries, takes care. Mentorship remains professional labor.

Because of this, I was especially grateful to connect with potential mentors before the conference even began. Through introductions from fellow librarian Greg MacAyeal, I had the opportunity to speak with several MLA members beforehand. By the time I arrived at the conference, there were already familiar faces in the room.

That small shift made a tremendous difference. What might have been an intimidating professional gathering instead felt relational and welcoming from the beginning.

Music librarianship is an extraordinarily specialized field. It requires familiarity with music publishing ecosystems, performance traditions, archival preservation, metadata standards, and constantly evolving formats.

Yet the expertise present at the conference did not feel guarded.

It was shared.

Sessions ranged from discussions of contemporary score distribution to cataloging documentation and collaborative strategies for collection development in an era of budget constraints. Librarians, composers, and distributors discussed how new technologies are reshaping the circulation of music.

Rather than presenting polished solutions, many sessions invited collective problem-solving. Librarians spoke candidly about institutional constraints—budgets, workflows, and evolving research needs—and the conversations continued outside the formal sessions.

Slides from the presentation “ADA Title II and Music Libraries: Implications, Questions, and Strategies”, Kristi Bergland, Jackie Zook, and Anna Dimoula.

Scholarship, Performance, and Community

The cumulative effect was a sense of shared responsibility, not competition—a model of professional culture grounded in collective advancement, which sharply contrasts with other associations.

One evening event captured that spirit particularly well: Salon Night.

The program featured an eclectic mix of scholarship and performance. There were operatic performances and a playful musical adaptation of Oklahoma! titled Obsolescence, which was hilarious and resonated with our beautiful nerdy hearts. A presentation on queer disco clubs in 1970s New York examined dance floors as spaces of cultural memory and community formation.

Kathleen (Kathy) Abromeit, Head of the Conservatory Library with Oberlin College Libraries, shared work from her new book An Index to Spirituals, , reflecting on how a single reference question in the 1990s grew into decades of scholarly documentation of African American spirituals as both musical and cultural history.

What stood out was not just the diversity of topics but the way people engaged with them.

The room moved easily between laughter, curiosity, and deep reflection—at moments people laughed loudly, and at others they wiped away tears. People spoke about archives, music, and cultural memory with a level of care that extended beyond professional obligation.

Spaces that blend rigorous inquiry with genuine openness were rare in my experience before this conference. It illustrated that professional cultures built around mentorship and inclusivity can redefine how newcomers join, contribute, and thrive.

Confronting the Field’s History

The conference also made space for conversations that confronted the field’s historical foundations. In a presentation on early twentieth-century music librarianship, Veronica A. Wells examined how collection practices helped codify the Western canon in American libraries and ongoing questions regarding designation of “popular” music and the deeply racist, classicist cultural assumptions held by founding librarians.

Those decisions continue to shape music collections today, underscoring how professional cultures can reinforce or challenge exclusion—making intentionality in mentorship and inclusion all the more crucial.

Listening to that presentation, I found myself thinking about Audre Lorde’s essay The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. Lorde reminds us that institutions can claim progressive intentions while still reproducing the structures they inherit.

Music libraries—like many cultural institutions—carry those histories.

The conference also included a panel titled “Furthering Contemporary Indigenous Representation and Inclusion in Collections and Programming: Library and Archive Perspectives,” featuring Jeanette Harrison, Allison McClanahan, Erin Fehr, Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, Delbert Anderson, and Laurie Arnold.

The discussion explored how Indigenous musicians, composers, and archivists are reshaping libraries’ approaches to collections, programming, and performance archives. Speakers reflected on the complex musical histories shaped by the U.S. boarding school system, where Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities and subjected to assimilationist policies. Within and despite these institutions, students encountered new musical forms and instruments that later influenced emerging musical traditions, including early jazz.

The panel emphasized that these histories must be understood not as products of the institutions themselves, but as examples of Indigenous resilience, adaptation, and cultural continuity. It also underscored the importance of centering Indigenous voices in archival interpretation and programming, ensuring that contemporary collections and performances reflect the perspectives of the communities whose histories they document.

A Profession Built on Conversation

Part of what makes this kind of conversation possible may lie in the nature of the field itself.

Music librarianship is often described as specialized, but in practice, it resists neat disciplinary boundaries. Music moves across formats and cultural contexts—scores, recordings, dance traditions, film, archives, and the ephemeral materials that surround performance.

A question about a score can quickly become a question about performance practice, cultural history, copyright law, or digital preservation.

Supporting this work requires collaboration with performers, composers, archivists, scholars, technologists, and community historians.

In that sense, music librarianship cannot easily operate in silos. The work itself demands conversation.

And perhaps that necessity helps cultivate the intellectual generosity I witnessed throughout the conference.

Carrying the Lessons Forward

Returning to my work at the University of Chicago Library, I have been thinking about what made this experience so meaningful.

Part of it was structural: thoughtful conference design, accessible programming, and mentorship opportunities for first-time attendees.

But much of it was cultural.

The MLA community demonstrated that professional expertise need not be guarded to be respected, and that intellectual rigor can coexist with generosity and care. In a profession often shaped by institutional prestige and credentialed authority, that culture felt quietly radical.

For someone entering a specialized field without a traditional disciplinary pathway—and inheriting a role that has been absent for years—that kind of professional community is not simply helpful.

It is essential.

And in many ways, the message that stayed with me from the conference came down to a single moment.

At the opening session, incoming MLA president Holling Smith-Borne, director of the Wilson Music Library at Vanderbilt University, reflected on their first experience attending an MLA meeting. They shared that when they first attended the conference, they quietly asked themselves, “Should I bring my full self to this space?” Do I belong here?

But they described choosing something different—to challenge that voice of doubt and replace it with another: No. You belong here. No matter who you are.

Listening to that story, I realized that what I had experienced throughout the conference—the mentorship, the intellectual generosity, and the willingness to share expertise—was not accidental.

It was a community intentionally working to make that statement true.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to the colleagues who welcomed me into the Music Library Association community with generosity and care. Special thanks to Becca Fülöp, Amanda Dubose, Allison McClanahan, Bruce Evans, Ruthann McTyre, Tamar Barzel, Michelle Rivera, Misti Shaw, Sarah Ward, and Greg MacAyeal for mentorship, conversation, and encouragement throughout the conference.

Salt Lake City, Utah.

Belonging, Power, and the Big Heart Building Work Between

Belonging is often described as a feeling—something we either experience or lack, as if it is found by chance rather than actively created. In institutions, belonging is frequently seen as incidental rather than the outcome of ongoing relational effort. But belonging is built through care, attention, and the often-invisible work of those who make room for others. Moments of transition make that labor visible, inviting us to pause and give flowers thoughtfully while we can.

This piece is a reflection on what it means to build belonging through librarianship, and on the communities and colleagues who make that work possible. It also asks how belonging is defined and distributed within a profession that is predominantly white and female, and how individual narratives—like my own—fit within, benefit from, and must be accountable to that broader context.

With Intentionality

Within university settings, librarianship and archival work have devoted significant time, energy, and resources to fostering a sense of belonging among students, faculty, and community members—often positioning libraries as sites of welcome, care, and connection within complex institutional landscapes. This was certainly what drew me in to the profession as an undergraduate. At a time when I struggled to understand who I was or what I could offer, librarianship felt less like a calling and more like a possibility. It seemed like it could be a space where belonging seemed not only valued, but intentionally built.

That isolation is not accidental. I’ve always been intensely aware of how lonely a university campus can be, and how much heavier this experience weighs on people who are already marginalized. That awareness drew me to librarianship. I wanted to counter that isolation.

Universities are often described as communities, yet within contemporary higher education–shaped by market logics, austerity, and increasing precarity—that language can feel aspirational at best. Even while benefiting from significant racial privilege, I did not experience the university as a site of meaningful belonging beyond my relationships with library staff colleagues. And even within that space, class distinctions between staff and librarians created points of tension that shaped how belonging was felt, distributed, and sustained.

Measuring success

It was at Arizona State University Library that belonging began to feel less aspirational and more tangible. While libraries are embedded wIthin the same institutional structures that shape higher education more broadly, they can have the possibility of operating through relational rather than strictly heirarchical practices. Care, attentiveness, and responsiveness are not abstract values but daily requirements of this work. And, I genuinely believe, values that ASU Library both champions and accomplishes through direct action. In this environment, belonging has emerged as something built collectively through trust, shared responsibility, and sustained relational labor.

At ASU, I experienced that sense of belonging most clearly through my colleagues. I was trusted to bring my full self to the work, encouraged to take intellectual and professional risks, and supported in ways that made sustained engagement possible. That support mattered profoundly. In a field where emotional and relational labor are often undervalued—and where isolation and burnout are common—experiencing collegial belonging shaped not only how I worked, but how I move through the world. It made the work feel shared rather than solitary, and it affirmed that building belonging is not an individual effort, but a collective one.

This did not mean the absence of tension or inequity. Librarianship remains shaped by the same racialized, gendered, and classed dynamics that structure the academy, including disparities in status, pay, and authority. And yet, within those constraints, I encountered colleagues who modeled what institutional belonging can look like in practice: collaboration, partnerships, and growth rather than competition.

The Potential for Repair

But my ASU story was also about complexity. Even when you believe in the work, it is exhausting to make a change. I discovered how draining it is to care deeply in spaces where change outpaces relationships. And I recognized how tenuous belonging can become when university politics shift around you.

That sense of belonging grew stronger and became real through the work itself, especially by caring for the Theatre for Youth and Community Collection. Working with this collection showed me that archives are not neutral, but shaped by who is included, who is invited, and whose stories are kept, and offers a chance to repair.

This potential for repair became most evident to me in moments when students encountered materials that reflected their own identities, communities, or creative lineages—sometimes for the first time. Watching a student recognize themselves in the historical record underscored how deeply representation matters. Importantly, these encounters were not incidental; rather, they resulted from intentional stewardship, collaborative description, and sustained relationship-building with artists, donors, and communities. As a result, belonging here was not symbolic. It was experienced.

At the same time, while these moments were powerful, they also revealed the significant labor required to build that sense of connection. Activating a collection in ways that feel inclusive, ethical, and responsive demands time, trust, and profound emotional investment. This experience is often in contexts where such labor is undervalued or under-resourced within an institution.

It is important to name the irony here: the sense of welcome and even belonging I found was largely cultivated by colleagues who themselves occupied marginal or precarious positions within the academy—arts faculty, staff members, colleagues with disabilities, and BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ librarians and archivists whose labor has historically been feminized, undervalued, and structurally constrained.

The Cost

Building belonging through librarianship is deeply meaningful work, but it is not without cost. The same relational labor that makes libraries feel humane can also be exhausting, especially when it is unevenly recognized or structurally unsupported. Care, when treated as an individual disposition rather than a shared, structurally resourced, institutional investment, becomes difficult to sustain.

At ASU, I became increasingly aware of the emotional weight that accompanies this kind of work. Advocating for community-centered collections, ethical archival practices, and inclusive engagement often meant navigating institutional constraints that moved faster than relationships could be built. The work required patience, persistence, and a willingness to sit with ambiguity. While I was fortunate to experience strong collegial support, the broader systems in which the work unfolded did not always make time and care for relational practice.

This tension—between the values that draw many of us to librarianship and the structures that shape how that work is resourced—was one of the most difficult lessons of my time at ASU. It sharpened my understanding of how fragile belonging can be in transition, and how quickly care-centered work can slip into burnout. And yet, naming that cost also clarified what I believe the work requires: not less care, but more collective accountability for sustaining it.

Going Grief

Leaving ASU for a new role in early 2026 has stirred a grief I was not entirely prepared for. Stepping away from students whose growth I have witnessed, from collections I have stewarded with care, and from especially colleagues who offered trust, generosity, and challenge in equal measure. This is not the grief of regret, but of genuine gratitude and connection that form when work is shared and deeply invested in.

There is a particular ache in leaving a place where you have poured vision and labor into something ongoing. Much of the work I was engaged in at ASU was iterative and future-facing: collections in the process of being reimagined, relationships still unfolding, students still finding their footing. To leave knowing that some of those seeds will continue to grow without you is both a testament to collective work and a reminder that belonging is never owned by a single person.

That grief is also evidence. It shows that something real was built. The ability to grieve a workplace and miss colleagues is rare and meaningful. It reflects a model of librarianship based on being changed by the work.

Carrying the Work Forward

As I move into my new role at the University of Chicago Library, I carry this work with me not as a completed chapter, but as an ongoing practice. The context will change. The questions will deepen. The communities and institutional cultures will be different. But the commitments that shaped my time at ASU remain the same: to build relationships grounded in care, to approach librarianship as an ethical practice, and to treat belonging not as an abstract value but as something made through daily, collective effort.

To my ASU Library community: Thank you for giving this early-career librarian a shot, and for showing me the way. Special thanks to Shari Laster, Nancy Godoy, Renee James, Harold Housley, Jessica Salow, Seonaid Valiant, Jasmine Torrez, Vina Begay, Elizabeth Dunham, Suzy Morgan, Rachel Leket-Mor, William Yates, Josh Maki, Zoie Ypsilanti, Allinston Saulsberry; and, of course, my Humanities Lab chapter writing crew, especially Matt Harp, Rachel Fernandez, and Joyce Martin.

Tenure-lite: Proving Value to Systems That Don’t Value Us

This past week, I submitted my 3-year probationary review dossier. I am currently working towards a promotion with a multi-year probationary period, and without going into detail for this post, I have incredibly complicated and often contradictory feelings about academia.

The ability to hold contradictions—to critique systems while working within them, to name injustice while building alternatives, to acknowledge precarity while finding meaning in our work—has become essential to succeeding as an academic librarian. But let’s be clear: this constant negotiation is emotional labor. It’s exhausting to simultaneously perform competence for evaluation while questioning the validity of those very metrics. And it’s draining to build community and solidarity while competing for limited positions. It’s demanding to maintain hope while documenting the ways systems fail us.

This emotional labor is real work, and it matters. Working through these contradictions—rather than resolving them or pretending they don’t exist—is itself valuable labor. It’s also labor that is often overlooked in our promotion criteria.

It’s complicated

My job provides me with significant academic freedom. I have the opportunity to publish, present, and share my work. When I started this position, I had never written anything for publication or presented at a professional conference, not even during my undergraduate or graduate studies. I am learning as I go, leaning into making mistakes and learning quickly rather than striving for perfectionism.

Yet even this support reveals the contradictions we navigate. Colleagues offer generous mentorship, but their most common response is, “It depends”—a phrase that simultaneously acknowledges the flexibility of our roles and signals the very ambiguity that creates anxiety. The academic freedom I value exists alongside unclear expectations. The opportunity to grow professionally comes with the burden of figuring out how to document that growth for systems that don’t quite know how to evaluate it.

These aren’t complaints about individuals—my colleagues are doing their best within structures that don’t serve any of us perfectly. But the emotional labor here is real: I’m genuinely grateful for support while simultaneously aware that I’m navigating challenges endemic to our profession. We lack the established paths that teaching faculty enjoy, and our unique contributions don’t fit neatly into academic frameworks. When I explain to non-academics that many positions require an additional master’s degree, a PhD, or getting another master’s for tenure, they ask, “All that for a librarian?” That question stings not because it’s wrong, but because it reveals how little our work is understood—even by institutions that employ us.

Learning to hold these contradictions—gratitude and frustration, support and uncertainty, professional growth and systemic dysfunction—is part of the work itself.

Before diving deeper into these challenges, I want to make clear that I am not naïvely optimistic or cynical.

Instead, I believe that transformation is possible within unjust systems, paired with an unflinching analysis of those systems’ limitations. It means acknowledging structural inequities—invisible labor, inconsistent evaluation criteria, limited access to research time or mentorship—while still building practices that affirm agency, solidarity, and purpose.

For hybrid or mixed-status librarians navigating promotion and tenure, this means:

  • Naming structural contradictions openly, refusing to internalize them as individual failings
  • Building communities of practice that counter isolation through collective accountability
  • Reclaiming narrative agency in our dossiers and professional identities
  • Cultivating sustainable imagination about what academic librarianship could become

This approach guides what follows.

I made a meme! Thank you, Zohran Mamdani, NYC mayor incumbent.

The Statistics–And What We’re Building From Them

The statistics reveal a complex reality: only 30% of academic institutions hire tenure-eligible librarians (Bailey & Becher, 2022). Moreover, a 2017 ACRL survey found roughly half of academic libraries categorize librarians as faculty, while nearly one-fifth classify them as non-tenure-track faculty.

At private institutions, 77% don’t offer tenure-track positions for librarians (Bailey & Becher, 2022). As one analysis notes, academic librarian status has undergone a “seismic shift away from faculty status and tenure-track positions,” with many universities operating “a mixed model where some librarians are hired as tenure-track and others with fixed-term contracts” (Academic Librarian Status, n.d.). Many of us fit into hybrid categories—”academic professionals,” continuing appointment tracks, mixed-status systems where “professional librarians” blend faculty and staff roles. That’s my current status.

These statistics could be read as evidence of professional decline—and many do read them that way. But they also function as evidence that academic librarianship is actively creating new models of academic work. We’re not failed faculty; we’re navigating uncharted territory, and that navigation itself is generative. The question isn’t whether we fit existing academic structures, but whether we can leverage our liminal position to reimagine what academic work can be.

This requires naming the contradictions openly—not to accept them, but to refuse to internalize them as individual failings. By articulating these tensions in our dossiers, in peer conversations, and in collective statements to administration, we engage in transparency as a pathway to reform.

What the literature doesn’t capture is how the metrics used often don’t match library work’s real demands. In reality, this constant evaluation—whether formal or informal—creates a hyperawareness of professional performance that can transform the joy of helping a student find precisely what they need into yet another moment of self-assessment.

The Structural Contradiction

The most absurd aspect is the fundamental contradiction at its heart: we’re asked to prove our value to systems that consistently undervalue us. We must justify our worth to provosts who regularly cut library budgets and positions, viewing us as expendable overhead rather than essential academic infrastructure. A profession that academic administration routinely underfunds is still expected to meet its standards and gain its approval.

This dynamic places the burden of success primarily on librarians themselves and on the mentorship networks within our profession. While other academic departments can count on institutional investment and colleagues who understand their field, academic librarians often find themselves advocating for resources while simultaneously having to prove we deserve them. We’re expected to demonstrate impact and innovation within systems designed to limit our influence.

The faculty liaison model exemplifies this dysfunction. We’re judged partly on how well we connect with faculty who have little institutional incentive to collaborate with us. Finding a faculty member who genuinely seeks meaningful partnership can be difficult. However, the institutional setup often shows that collaboration is more a matter of choice than necessity.

We’re held accountable for building bridges others have no motivation to cross—building relationships within systems that structurally discourage them, showing research impact with limited budgets, and showcasing educational innovation while frequently being excluded from curricular decisions. We’re asked to achieve academic excellence, yet administrators often view our work as secondary to the institution’s core mission.

Many librarians are already creating alternatives within this system:
  • Some libraries have formed peer review and writing groups across ranks, creating alternative mentorship structures when institutional support is inadequate.
  • Professional organizations like ACRL are developing new frameworks for evaluating library impact that don’t simply borrow from other disciplines.
  • Individual librarians are using local governance structures to advocate for clearer promotion pathways, submitting proposals for revised evaluation criteria that reflect our actual work.
  • Cross-institutional networks are sharing documentation strategies that make invisible labor legible—relational pedagogy, community partnerships, affective labor.

These aren’t solutions—they’re experiments in collective refusal. They represent librarians saying: “We will not compete in isolation; we will build alternative structures of support.” This is a complicated compromise, working within failing systems while actively building their replacements.

The Ambiguity Dilemma

Compounding these challenges is how RPT (review, promotion, tenure) documentation handles service expectations. Research on service satisfaction found that ambiguity in tenure documentation can cut both ways. It should be noted that some librarians appreciate the flexibility—vague standards allow them to explain their work creatively and encourage mentorship conversations with senior colleagues. For them, ambiguity equals freedom.

This isn’t naïve—it’s strategic. When we can’t change the rules, we can sometimes leverage their vagueness to make space for unconventional contributions: community-engaged scholarship that doesn’t fit traditional publication models, teaching innovations that happen outside classrooms, care work that sustains institutional equity. Some librarians use ambiguous criteria to craft dossier narratives that foreground process over product, showing how sustained community impact matters more than one-off publications.

But—and this is crucial—this strategy depends on power. 

Senior librarians with established reputations can often interpret ambiguity creatively. Early-career librarians, librarians of color, disabled librarians, and those in precarious positions often cannot.

For many others, especially those on the tenure track, the lack of clarity creates constant anxiety. One librarian in the study explained, “I never know when enough is enough.” Another described it more bluntly: “we complain about this [RPT] document… we’ll be told by admin, ‘oh, well, it’s left short so it’s really open to your interpretation’ but then the problem is you walk into the room and you get told you interpreted it wrong… it’s a moving mark that nobody ever knows how to hit” (Rutledge et al., 2023, p. 7).

This isn’t just frustration—it’s a structural issue. To be clear, when administrators defend vague standards as “open to interpretation” but then penalize librarians for interpreting them “wrong,” the ambiguity stops being flexibility and becomes a trap. You can’t meet unclear expectations, which means you’re constantly second-guessing whether your service choices will count when review time comes.

Ambiguity can be leveraged strategically and it functions as a tool of control. The question then becomes: How do we collectively advocate for clarity where it protects vulnerable colleagues, while preserving flexibility where it enables innovation? 

The Ableism Embedded in Academic Evaluation—and Disability Justice Alternatives

The probationary review process exists within what disability studies scholar Jay T. Dolmage identifies as an inherently ableist system, where disability has always been constructed as “the inverse, or opposite, of higher education” (3) The metrics we’re expected to meet—constant productivity, extensive conference travel, rigid timelines, intensive networking—reflect what researchers call “academic ableism.”

The pressure to perform well during probation can be especially challenging for individuals with chronic illnesses, neurodivergent conditions, or mental health issues. This situation is made even more complicated by the way ableism intersects with the precarious circumstances many of us face. Early-career academics often worry that disclosing their health challenges may negatively affect their careers, especially in environments where temporary contracts are more common than permanent positions.

The dilemma of disclosure—needing to request accommodations while fearing professional repercussions—forces many librarians to make difficult choices during their evaluations. As someone with chronic physical and mental health challenges, I have learned to advocate for myself but still struggle with the shame from internalized ableism.

But what if we reimagine what “productivity” and “excellence” can look like? This might mean:
  • Documenting process over product: showing how sustained community relationships matter more than publication counts.
  • Proposing alternative timelines that account for chronic illness, caregiving responsibilities, or neurodivergent work patterns.
  • Using disability justice frameworks to argue that diverse ways of working aren’t deficits to accommodate but strengths that enrich our profession.
  • Crafting dossiers that highlight integrative knowledge work—demonstrating how teaching, service, and scholarship mutually inform one another rather than treating them as separate categories.

Our precarious positions—frustrating as they are—may actually give us unique leverage here. Because we’re already outside traditional faculty structures, we have less to lose by proposing radical alternatives. We can be the ones who say: “What if we evaluated contribution over four years instead of three? What if we valued depth of community impact alongside breadth of conference presentations? What if we made sustainability explicit professional values?”

The Innovation Trap and its Alternatives

The pressure to innovate during probationary reviews creates what Julia Glassman (2017) describes as the “innovation fetish”—a fixation on newness for its own sake instead of genuine improvement. This pressure particularly affects those of us in precarious positions, where we are compelled to chase “flashy projects that take more time, resources, and money to do what we could have done with something much simpler.”

During my own review process, I’ve caught myself questioning whether refining and deepening existing successful programs counts as professional growth, or whether I need to reinvent my work to maintain a perception of innovation. This anxiety reflects what Glassman calls the corporatization of academic culture, which increasingly pressures us to see our work as startup pitches instead of lasting, relationship-based service.

But sustaining meaningful relationships isn’t just a “maintenance phase”. It means librarians collectively saying:

  • “I’m deepening this existing instruction program rather than creating a new one, and that’s scholarly growth.”
  • “We are maintaining relationships with community partners over years to build trust”
  • “Our team is refining a reference service that already works, and that’s innovation—just not the kind that gets conference buzz.”

Some of us are already practicing this resistance. We’re writing dossier narratives that foreground sustained care over flashy projects; supporting colleagues who choose depth over novelty; using promotion materials as sites of narrative sovereignty, and, crafting documents that insist: the moral and relational dimensions of librarianship are scholarly contributions.

This transforms the dossier from a compliance document into an act of professional re-visioning. It’s not just about getting promoted—it’s about changing what promotion values.

Looking Forward: What We Need

The landscape of academic librarianship is changing. We need better ways to understand and evaluate our work. The changes in librarian status at many institutions mean we are creating new models for academic life, often without past guidance or established best practices.

We need:

  • Assessment frameworks tailored specifically for library work instead of borrowing from other disciplines
  • Slow librarianship principles that focus on meaningful, sustainable work over constant innovation
  • Disability-inclusive evaluation processes that accommodate different ways of working and contributing
  • Documentation of the experiences of librarians in non-tenure-track academic professional roles
  • Advocacy for compensation and benefits that reflect our educational credentials and professional responsibilities
  • Solidarity practices that move us away from individual competition toward collective support for all library workers

    Ideas for Supporting This Work
  • Connect with or form local peer review groups that practice collective documentation and mutual support.
  • Use ACRL forums and special interest groups to share alternative promotion narratives and evaluation models.
  • Propose institutional pilots at your library: portfolios instead of CVs, reflective practice documentation, community impact assessments.
  • Document what you’re trying to change and why.

    What Still Needs Building
  • Disability-inclusive evaluation processes that accommodate diverse ways of working and normalize flexibility.
  • Compensation and benefit structures that reflect our educational credentials and professional responsibilities.
  • Solidarity practices that move us from individual competition toward collective care for all library workers—not just those on promotion tracks.
  • Documentation and research on the experiences of librarians in non-tenure-track roles, building the archive future librarians will need.
  • Feminist, Indigenous, and community-engaged epistemologies integrated into promotion criteria, recognizing diverse forms of knowledge work.

The Personal Stakes

Writing this from within the probationary process, I recognize that this isn’t an intellectual exercise. These questions of status, evaluation, and professional recognition have real implications for our livelihoods, career trajectories, and sense of professional identity. They influence our ability to take intellectual risks, pursue innovative projects, or speak truth to power in our institutions.

The research shows that tenured librarians assign greater value to the benefits of tenure compared to those without it (Silva et al., 2017)—a reminder that job security and academic freedom are not abstract concepts but tangible realities that influence our ability to serve our communities.

By documenting our professional achievements and our journeys through these challenges, and by sharing our stories—our emotions, our obstacles, and our creative solutions—we help build the roadmaps that future academic librarians will need.

Every time we support a colleague through their review, we practice the solidarity that could transform these systems.

Every time we document care work and relational labor as scholarly contributions, we chip away at the frameworks that undervalue us. The very act of articulating these problems is part of building solutions. Writing through my own review process, I hold onto this: transformation doesn’t require us to wait for institutions to value us differently. It requires us to value our work differently, collectively, and to build the structures that reflect that valuation.

It can also mean leaving. I mean this for career change librarians as well as those who refuse to stay in institutions that will never recognize their value. Refusal to compromise is entirely valid and just as important to this dialogue.

The roadmaps future academic librarians need aren’t waiting to be discovered—they’re being created right now, by us, in our imperfect and ongoing experiments in solidarity.

What has your experience been with probationary review or professional evaluation as an academic librarian? I’d love to hear your thoughts, stories and supportive screams in the comments.

References

Academic Librarian Status. (n.d.). A list of academic institutions in the United States and elsewhere, sorted by the professional status of their librarians. https://academiclibrarianstatus.wordpress.com/

Bailey, E., & Becher, M. (2022). Academic librarian faculty status. Chicago, IL. Association of College and Research Libraries.

Cary, S. (2001). Faculty rank, status, and tenure for librarians: Current trends. College & Research Libraries News, 62(5), 510-520. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.62.5.510

https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/19384/22679

Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability and higher education. University of Michigan Press.

Glassman, J. (2017). The innovation fetish and slow librarianship: What librarians can learn from the Juicero. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/innovation-fetish/

Investigation of tenured and tenure-track academic librarians’ service satisfaction at public Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) institutions. (2022). The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(6). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0099133322001677

Silva, E., Galbraith, Q., & Groesbeck, M. (2017). Academic librarians’ changing perceptions of faculty status and tenure. College & Research Libraries, 78(4), 428-441. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16639

Reframing Traditional Models: Research Needs in the Performing Arts

I occupy an unusual position in academic librarianship. As a continuing appointment performing arts librarian serving the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre, I straddle multiple worlds: subject specialist and generalist, curator and reference provider, researcher and daily practitioner. In other words, my work constantly shifts between different expectations and evaluative frameworks.

By comparison, my colleagues in music librarianship benefit from established professional infrastructure: specialized graduate training, the Music Library Association’s networks, standardized practices, and decades of scholarship. By contrast, librarians working with theatre and dance inhabit a professionalization gap. There is no dedicated graduate program, little in the way of shared training, and only fragmentary community infrastructure. As a result, this absence is not simply inconvenient; it shapes how tenure committees evaluate our work, how we articulate our expertise, and how effectively we support our constituencies.

Scott Stone (2023) notes that 40% of Music Library Association members now work beyond music specialization. Nevertheless, evaluation systems often remain grounded in older categories—either the “deep specialist” or the “broad generalist.” Hybrid roles like mine don’t fit neatly into either, even though performing arts librarianship often demands more disciplinary expertise, not less.

Consequently, this essay argues that performing arts librarianship requires frameworks that recognize creative research as distinctive: recursive, embodied, community-centered, and often resistant to the models libraries have traditionally used. To illustrate these dynamics, evidence from five studies—Fleming-May, Marini, Mayer, Dalal & Shane, and Stone—underscores both the gaps and the opportunities. My own practice with students demonstrates why new approaches are urgently needed.

Complementary Studies

Rachel Fleming-May’s (2025) meta-ethnography combines findings from 23 studies on how creative artists seek information (2019–2024). She sees that professional artists and scholars view emotions, memory, and experiences as valid sources of information. They describe creation as “dynamic information making.” This means research happens alongside practice, not before it (558). Artists seldom feel frustrated when they can’t find information. Instead, they see engagement as “an opportunity for creative dialogue rather than [addressing a deficit]” (558). Fleming-May shows how creative research differs from traditional academic work. Similarly, artists see making as a learning process. Even when alone, they keep a dialogue going. They also value exploration and chance discoveries.

Fleming-May examines professional artists in a broad manner, while Francesca Marini focuses her attention on theatre scholarship and its specialized practitioners. Marini’s 2007 study included 41 interviews. She spoke with theatre scholars and performing arts archivists from Italy, the U.S., France, and Belgium. Performing arts information professionals share five key traits with the scholars they help:

  • Attention to context.
  • Sensitivity to time and ephemerality. 
  • Creativity 
  • Passionate engagement 
  • Interdisciplinarity

Significantly, many have backgrounds as practitioners, like actors, directors, dancers, and designers. They also point out that there isn’t just one method, like there isn’t one form of theatre. Archivists and librarians are key research partners, helping users spot connections, both inside and outside the material, that might go unnoticed. By documenting proactively—arranging recordings, soliciting materials, they promote the creation of sources that would not otherwise exist. As one archivist puts it, “The archive has to be alive; it has to be an active entity… Theatre cannot be a dead issue” (29).

Impact on student experience

At the same time, these patterns become visible—and often troubling—in student researchers. Jennifer Mayer’s (2015) case study of upper-division performing arts students at the University of Wyoming found they struggled with multimedia discovery, couldn’t reliably distinguish primary from secondary sources, and found interdisciplinary research challenging to navigate. Dance students turned to Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube before library tools—not from laziness, but because these platforms matched their visual and exploratory habits (419). Students’ image selections often diverged from faculty expectations, revealing visual literacy gaps. Costume and scene design students reported unmet research demands and “tension between what sources the professors want versus what is realistically available” (423).

One sustained intervention demonstrates how to address these challenges. Heather Dalal and Robin Shane’s (2023) seven-year collaboration at Rider University embedded the librarian in courses and shifted toward collaborative, in-class research. Instead of demonstrating databases, they had students share images in Google Slides and conduct peer evaluation using prompts: “Is this first-hand research? What helps you know that? Does this feel like good research?” (1). Pairing iterative practice with ongoing feedback reduced anxiety and improved outcomes. Their approach succeeds because it treats creative research as distinctive practice requiring specialized support—not deficit remediation.

These studies mirror my experience: the gap between struggling students and expert practitioners is significant; traditional systems don’t fully serve creative researchers; and effective support begins by reconceptualizing what counts as research and how libraries partner in it.

Supporting MFA students

I work closely with MFA students whose research challenges assumptions about information-seeking. They often investigate connections between and embodied experience and knowledge; direct plays through non-linear, emotionally driven, community-centered processes where performance itself becomes research—creation and investigation happen simultaneously, not sequentially.

When they request research support, traditional frameworks often fail. Their processes are recursive: create, reflect, research, create again. Students draw from personal experience, community knowledge, and bodily understanding alongside scholarly sources. These are sophisticated behaviors, yet library systems and instruction models don’t consistently recognize them as legitimate scholarship.

Here, Marini’s framework helps me understand why certain approaches work. When I function as research partner rather than service provider—actively suggesting connections, participating in interpretation, understanding the ephemeral nature of their work—students respond differently. When I acknowledge my own theatre engagement (attending performances, understanding rehearsal processes), I build credibility.

Further more, theatre research still contends with Eurocentric frames that push materials into anthropology or religion rather than “theatre.” Play discovery remains challenging: cataloging rarely enables browsing by practitioners’ actual access points—theme, playwright demographics, historical setting. Eurocentrism persists not only in who appears in standard histories, but in the very definitions of “theatre” those histories assume.

Meeting these needs demands subject expertise most LIS curricula barely touch. These studies, combined with my observations, illuminate where library frameworks don’t yet align with creative research processes:

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

Gaps Between Traditional Library Models and Performing Arts Research

  • Performance as research. Artists don’t separate research from creation—performance itself generates knowledge. Traditional library models assume research precedes creation; systems do not yet account for knowledge emerging through practice.
  • Embodied knowledge. Academic and library frameworks often do not recognize bodily practice, kinesthetic learning, or experiential understanding as legitimate forms of research and knowledge generation.
  • Community expertise. Students focus on lived experience alongside published scholarship. Traditional hierarchies that privilege formal publications can undermine the legitimacy of community-based work.
  • Non-linear processes. Creative research is recursive and is frequently characterized by strong emotions. One-shot library instruction focuses on systematic searching. This often misses intuitive leaps and unexpected connections.
  • Visual information primacy. Artists across disciplines rely on visual representations, creating image “morgues” for research. Text-based discovery systems don’t yet serve visual searching well.
  • Serendipity over efficiency. Artists value browsing and accidental discoveries as sources of inspiration. When plays collocate with novels and poetry, or scores scatter across classifications, browsing becomes challenging. Library systems optimize for known-item retrieval, creating tension with exploratory investigation.
  • Interdisciplinary navigation. Students investigating trauma draw simultaneously on psychology, neuroscience, performance studies, and feminist theory. Disciplinary call number organization scatters related materials across locations.
  • Ephemeral materials. Theatre requires an understanding of materials that are “instantaneously past”—social, political, and artistic contexts and creative processes that disappear without documentation.

The Dalal and Shane Model: A Practical Approach

Fortunately, Dalal and Shane’s collaboration demonstrates several principles applicable to broader performing arts librarianship:

  • Sustained embedded partnerships rather than one-shot sessions. Developing evaluation sophistication, strategic approaches, and comfort with ambiguity takes years of practice. Mayer found that students who missed classes or transferred stayed behind. This shows that front-loading alone isn’t enough.
  • Peer learning occurs through practice rather than abstract instruction. Students build a “critical eye” by talking about real research choices and learning from their mistakes. Students develop intuitive judgment alongside analytical skills.
  • The need for explicit visual and primary source literacy teaching. 
  • Recognition of legitimate differences. Framing creative research as distinctive rather than deficient validates the sophisticated behaviors that Fleming-May and Marini document. 
  • Ongoing feedback and adaptation. By embedding themselves in courses and providing non-graded comments on individual submissions, Dalal and Shane offered point-of-need instruction. When they shifted to flipped classrooms with collaborative in-class research, “collaboration and source-sharing improved outcomes and reduced anxiety” (3).

Challenges and Ongoing Conversations

However, implementing these approaches faces significant challenges, particularly for tenure-track librarians in these specializations:

Within libraries: How do we prioritize sustained embedded relationships when staffing is limited? How do we assess impacts beyond traditional counts? How do we build subject expertise when LIS programs don’t teach it? Sustained partnerships, proactive documentation, and creative programming require resources many libraries lack.

For tenure and promotion: How do we make cases when creative research support doesn’t fit established categories? Stone notes the shift toward generalists means broader subject coverage, yet evaluation criteria remain designed for specialists or generalists—not hybrid positions requiring deep expertise across multiple performing arts.

Between libraries and academic units: How do we partner with faculty who may not recognize libraries as collaborators in practice-based research? The tension between desired sources and realistic resources means librarians must educate faculty about expectations while advocating for improved collections.

Professional infrastructure: We need more interconnected communities of practice like those music and art librarians have established. The Theatre Library Association (founded 1937) exists but remains largely inactive.

Training and standards: How do we advocate for specialized training in practice-based research? ARLIS/NA Core Competencies call for understanding users’ “research behaviors” and “visual literacy,” but no comparable framework spans music, dance, and theatre together. No specialized educational program for performing arts archivists and librarians matches film archivist training.

Community engagement: Prioritizing materials from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and historically marginalized creators requires transparent stewardship models and long-term commitment. How do we balance proactive documentation with ethical engagement that doesn’t extract or appropriate?

Moving Forward: What This Means for Practice

Taken together, these studies argue for reconceptualizing library practice across many domains:

  • Information literacy. Shift from one-off sessions to embedded, semester-long partnerships that blend deliberate practice with ongoing feedback. Teach visual and primary-source literacies explicitly; treat creative research as distinctive rather than deficient; address strategic information avoidance as a legitimate professional boundary; emphasize synthesis and argumentation alongside tool mechanics; and confirm embodied ways of knowing as part of inquiry.
  • Collections & discovery. Foreground visual browsing invites serendipity, supports robust multimedia search, and proactively documents ephemeral performance. In practice, build thematic (not only disciplinary) pathways for discovering plays; furnish designers with heterogeneous formats (such as photographs, ephemera, pattern books, and technical manuals); surface increasingly interdisciplinary sources for dance; and collect popular/non-scholarly sources when they best serve creative work.
  • Reference & research support. Develop deep subject expertise—including knowledge of creative practice. As Marini shows, this often emerges through practitioner backgrounds, sustained engagement with performances, or targeted study—not LIS training alone.
  • Archives & collection development. Adopt proactive—rather than reactive—approaches. Following Marini, “promote the creation of sources” by arranging recordings, soliciting documentation, and engaging artists during their processes. Stone describes symposia that teach dance companies fundamental archival practices to preserve ephemeral work. This challenges traditional neutrality, but the ephemerality of performance makes intervention necessary; without it, evidence disappears.
  • Professional development and evaluation. Recognize performing arts librarianship as specialized expertise even when roles span multiple disciplines. Build competencies through ongoing learning, practitioner engagement, and institutional support.

The Specialization Question

Stone’s data reveal a striking trend: between 2009 and 2016, MLA members not solely focusing on music increased from 31% to 40%—a 9% shift in seven years. This acceleration toward generalist positions reflects budget constraints that make specialists seem inefficient, pressures to “do more with less,” and assumptions that information literacy skills transfer seamlessly across disciplines.

Yet paradoxically, the work demands deeper specialization. Mastering dance knowledge, visual skills for theatre design, community research methods, and archival documentation requires years of practice. The result: a professional identity crisis. Are we generalists serving the performing arts, specialists spanning multiple disciplines, or something neither framework describes?

For tenure-track librarians, this tension is acute. Traditional evaluation rewards either deep specialization or broad excellence. Hybrid roles must prove both: generalist flexibility and specialist competence. Current frameworks rarely account for that duality.

The irony is stark: the interdisciplinary nature of performing arts often requires more specialized expertise, not less. Supporting a dance scholar exploring trauma and embodiment involves performance studies, psychology, neuroscience, somatics, and feminist theory—far more epistemically varied than guiding a chemistry student to journals. This isn’t about “different databases.” It’s about how practice produces knowledge, how to evaluate embodied evidence, when strategic information avoidance is appropriate, and how community knowledge interacts with scholarly sources.

Proactive documentation depends on relationships built over time—impossible through transactional, generalist reference. Closing representation gaps requires community history, trust-building, and culturally responsive practice. Visual and primary-source literacy demand specialized pedagogy—the sustained, embedded collaboration Dalal and Shane demonstrate. Flexibility alone cannot deliver this.

Making the Case for Expertise in an Era of Generalization

How, then, do we make the case institutionally? Casting generalist breadth as “transferable skills” rarely satisfies promotion committees or honors the depth of expertise required. The question may be less “specialist or generalist?” than whether we need new frameworks that recognize boundary-spanning expertise anchored in deep disciplinary knowledge. Music librarianship built such infrastructure over decades; theatre and dance have not received equivalent investment. Building it now will require long-term advocacy—or a redefinition of specialization itself when disciplines are inadequate to the work.

For now, many of us are improvising hybrid practices while documenting their impact in promotion-readable ways: publishing on the epistemology of creative research, presenting at library and performing arts venues, developing adoptable frameworks, leading professional initiatives, and evidencing sustained intellectual partnerships beyond service statistics. We argue—often from positions titled “generalist”—that the work requires specialized expertise.

The structural contradiction remains: institutions want flexibility and efficiency; the work demands long-term, deep engagement. Until evaluation criteria recognize hybrid expertise—or positions are re-scoped to acknowledge it—individual librarians will continue bearing the burden of reconciling incompatible expectations.

Conclusion

The professionalization gap in performing arts librarianship beyond music creates both challenges and opportunities. We can build frameworks that recognize creative research on its own terms—including performance as research, embodied knowledge, affective experience, community-based practice, and non-linear processes.

What does this mean in practice? For those of us in tenure-track positions, advocating that supporting creative research forms scholarly work deserving of promotion and advancement is essential. Moreover, it means publishing not only about collections or instructional methods, but also about epistemological questions: What is research? How is knowledge generated? What role do libraries play in creative and community-based inquiry?

Fleming-May’s meta-ethnography reveals that creative information behavior differs fundamentally from academic models. Marini demonstrates that performing arts specialists who share characteristics with the scholars they serve can function as true research partners. Mayer documents that students cannot intuit the skills their work requires. Dalal and Shane prove that sustained, practice-based, collaborative approaches can bridge these gaps. Stone illuminates the breadth of support needs across theatre and dance, from play discovery to interdisciplinary collection development to emerging technologies.

Together, these studies provide evidence-based foundations for reconceptualizing performing arts library practice. The work ahead includes turning insights into action, building support systems, and advocating for resources. That future requires us to question traditional models, build new frameworks, engage in ongoing conversations across institutions and disciplines, and commit to supporting creative research with sophistication and resources.

I am most hopeful when I see the library function as a living partner in the creative process—alive to context and generous with curiosity.

References

Inheriting, Repairing, and Reimagining Collections

What happens when you inherit a world-renowned collection that needs fundamental reimagining? My time as Performing Arts Librarian at Arizona State University has taught me that transformational collection work requires both patience and urgency—and that the process itself is as important as the outcome.

From Child Drama to Theatre for Youth and Community

When I stepped into my role stewarding what was then called the Child Drama Collection—the world’s largest repository of materials documenting theatre for youth—I quickly realized that both the collection’s scope and its name needed evolution. The archive, established in 1980, had grown to over 3,600 linear feet of materials spanning centuries of performance history. But as I assessed the collection’s strengths and gaps, a troubling pattern emerged: in an estimated 5,000 linear feet of materials, only three people of color were significantly represented.

This discovery aligned with concerns that scholar-practitioners Shavonne Coleman and Meriah Sage have raised about the broader field of theatre. In their recent article, “The Opposite of Absence is to Occupy”1, the authors discuss their early research for the project, “Hidden and Erased Stories in Drama and Theatre for the Young: Exploring Untold Narratives“. Their work, alongside Kristala Smart and Josh Streeter, seeks to document how BIPOC/TYA artists, educators, facilitators, practitioners and audiences in theatre for youth have been systematically excluded from institutional memory. The goal of this national research project is to document unwritten and illuminate hidden history facts and experiences that have been pushed to the margins in order to maintain the status quo.

This work asks a crucial question: “What happens if we don’t uncover hidden histories?”

My collection assessment revealed exactly what happens—entire communities disappear from the historical record, not because they weren’t contributing to the field, but because collecting practices privileged certain voices while marginalizing others.

This discovery became a catalyst for change, but not the kind that happens overnight. Institutional transformation, I learned, operates on a different timeline than individual urgency—but Coleman and Sage’s work demonstrates that this effort extends far beyond any single collection or institution.

Nashville Children’s Theatre Records, Arizona State University.

Alt image description: A group of children and one adults sit in chairs and on the floor, facing the camera in what appears to be an indoor gathering or event, reimagining a storytelling.

Learning to Process—Collections and Change

I got my archival training through volunteer work and graduate school. But the real learning happened on the job. Thanks to mentorship from colleagues like Associate Archivist Elizabeth Dunham, I discovered that processing archival materials takes about eight hours for each linear foot. At that rate, and with current staffing, the processing of our physical collection would take decades.

But the mathematical reality became complicated by a more immediate challenge: my predecessor accepted the task of building the collection over nearly 40 years and agreed to fulfill every request. Her focus was on acquisition and supporting what was then a robust PhD program in Theatre for Youth (which has since changed to one faculty member and no longer offers doctoral degrees). As an MFA graduate rather than a trained librarian or archivist with an MLIS, she lacked formalized training in archival processing and librarianship. This situation unfortunately occurs too often in the field, particularly with specialized collections.

The result?

I’ve been working on decades of technical processing issues that I’m now resolving. Incorrect barcodes. Incomplete records. Materials that need rehousing. Collections that need fundamental reorganization. I love community-centered collecting and reaching more people. But a lot of my daily work is less exciting. I spend time fixing past mistakes: updating catalog records, standardizing folder labels, creating finding aids, and making materials accessible to researchers.

This mundane technical work doesn’t generate headlines or conference presentations, but it’s essential infrastructure for everything else. You can’t build authentic community partnerships when your collections lack organization. You can’t serve researchers well when your catalog records are incomplete. And you can’t advocate for resources when you can’t prove basic professional competency in collection management.

Collection management roles should require MLIS training or similar archival credentials. Making these qualifications optional isn’t enough. Technical skills go beyond just following procedures. They’re about grasping how information architecture impacts access. We must ensure that communities can find and use the materials they trust us with.

Navigating Legacy and Change

One of the most delicate aspects of reimagining an established collection involves stakeholders with deep emotional investments managing their relationships regarding past practices. My predecessor dedicated nearly 40 years to building this collection, and her relationships with donors, faculty, and students fostered a strong sense of institutional loyalty. When I arrived with plans to shift collecting priorities and rename the collection, some community members felt that the changes represented a rejection of that legacy.

I frequently heard the phrase “When Kathy was here…” Descriptions followed about the different ways people managed things. Some well-meaning colleagues called me “the new Kathy.” This left some donors confused or worried about the changes to established practices. Some faculty emeriti, who shaped the collection’s original direction, saw community-centered collecting as a departure from its “true purpose.”

These conversations required careful navigation. I have profound respect for the foundation established by previous stewards; without their decades of work, no collection would exist to reimagine. But I also had to establish that while I honor that legacy, I am not my predecessor.

#Loyalty

The challenge grew as performing arts communities built strong loyalties. They often protect their beloved mentors. Graduate students and alumni may feel that changes to the curriculum or collection focus criticize their education. Some long-time donors worry that others may not value their contributions anymore. This concern arises when collecting priorities change.

I needed to state clearly that when faculty or librarians retire, they no longer make decisions for the institution. Emeritus status brings honor and respect, but not ongoing operational control. Current staff should address current needs and priorities, not cling to past methods.

This doesn’t mean dismissing valuable input or ignoring institutional history. Instead, it means that we distinguish between honoring legacy and allowing it to constrain us. The collection’s strength comes from its evolution, not its stasis.

Learning from Hidden Histories

My work intersects with broader efforts to document marginalized voices in theatre for youth. Hidden and Erased BIPOC Stories in Drama and Theatre for the Young: Exploring Untold Narratives exemplifies the kind of collaborative research needed to address historical gaps. The team wants to uncover and record overlooked historical facts and experiences. Many of these have been pushed aside to keep things the same. This effort mirrors the challenges faced by academic collections.

A cross-sectional approach offers essential lessons for academic libraries. Rather than waiting for traditional donation processes, this project actively seeks out stories through community connections and alternative documentation methods. It acknowledges that significant contributors may not identify with conventional academic labels—they might be storytellers, social workers, or community organizers whose work doesn’t fit neat categorical boundaries.

This perspective has shaped how I approach collection development. Instead of only seeking materials from established theatre organizations, I’m learning to recognize that vital historical documentation might exist in community centers, family collections, or oral traditions that formal archives have overlooked.

Image: MSS-273, Rosa Lee Scott Papers, Arizona State University.
Alt image description: Black and white photo of a Black woman standing in profile, thoughtfully resting her hand on her chin—a quiet moment of reflection—wearing a light jacket over a dark top against a plain background.

The “And” That Changes Everything

The collection’s new name—Theatre for Youth and Community—reflects more than a semantic preference. The addition of “and Community” acknowledges that methods and practices previously labeled “for youth” now serve a broader range of audiences. But it also recognizes that youth are often overlooked even in discussions of “community.” This collection intentionally works toward strengthening their sense of belonging and advocacy.

This seemingly small change necessitated extensive conversations with library leadership, faculty stakeholders, and community partners. It demanded research into the field’s evolution and careful consideration of how language shapes collecting priorities. The renaming process taught me that institutional change requires building consensus while maintaining focus on equity and inclusion.

Balancing vision with infrastructure

Academic libraries face constant tension between managing existing resources and adapting to evolving needs. With our collection, this meant simultaneously:

  • Addressing technical debt: Correcting years of processing inconsistencies, updating incomplete records, and rehousing materials according to current standards.
  • Processing decades of unprocessed materials using proper archival methods while working within realistic timelines.
  • Developing new community partnerships to address historical gaps in representation.
  • Training graduate assistants in both technical skills and community-centered approaches.
  • Learning from ASU’s Community-Driven Archives Initiative on hosting workshops and oral history events.

The key insight? These aren’t competing priorities—they’re interdependent aspects of responsible stewardship. You can’t build real community relationships without showing basic skills in collection management. You can’t help researchers well if your passion for inclusive collecting lacks strong technical support.

The unsexy work of fixing barcodes and standardizing folder labels might not align with the transformational vision I brought to the role, but it’s what makes that vision possible. Community members need to trust that their materials will receive proper care and remain accessible to future researchers. That trust starts with demonstrating that you can manage what you already have.

Community-Centered Collecting in Practice

Shifting toward community-centered collection development means more than updating mission statements. It requires:

  • Transparency and shared stewardship. Community members need to understand how they will use and preserve their materials, and they should provide ongoing input into those decisions.
  • Long-term relationship building. There’s no rush or pressure for donations. Trust develops through consistent engagement and demonstrated commitment to community priorities.
  • Resource allocation. Meaningful community engagement requires dedicated time and personnel—not good intentions.
  • Regional networking. Partnering with other institutions helps collection development focus on broader access goals. This way, they can work together instead of competing.
  • Acknowledging alternative forms of documentation is important. Not all critical work fits traditional archival formats. Community storytelling, oral histories, and unique documentation can capture experiences that formal records often overlook.

Lessons for Academic Libraries

My experience suggests several implications for academic librarians navigating similar collection challenges:

  • Embrace collaborative learning. Early-career librarians should not hesitate to seek mentorship, and institutions should create environments where questions and mistakes are part of professional development.
  • Invest in professional development and proper training. Specialized collections require specialized skills. Enthusiasm and subject expertise aren’t substitutes for professional competency in information management.
  • Address technical debt with transparency. Inherited collection problems don’t disappear—they compound. Building new partnerships while ignoring existing organizational issues creates unsustainable workloads and undermines trust.
  • Plan for the long term. Real change in collections, especially for diversity and inclusion, needs ongoing dedication. This must go beyond individual roles or funding periods.
  • Document the process. How we transform collections is as important as what we transform them into. Other institutions can learn from both successes and challenges.
  • Collaborate with existing projects. Rather than starting from scratch, look for community-led initiatives already doing this work. Projects like Coleman’s “Hidden and Erased” prove how academic institutions can support grassroots documentation efforts without trying to control them.

The Ongoing Work

Over two years into this role, I’m struck by how much I’ve learned and how much work remains. Processing continues alongside community outreach. Relationships develop over time while immediate access needs remain. At the same time, technical corrections occur alongside visionary planning. The collection grows in new directions while I’m still organizing what came before.

This tension isn’t a problem to solve—it’s the nature of the work. Academic libraries support various groups over time. Therefore, to create real change, they must balance short-term maintenance with long-term goals. For example, updating catalog records may seem dull, but it ultimately helps make collections more accessible. Rehousing materials shows the careful care communities need to see before they trust us with their histories.

Unsolicited advice

For ACRL colleagues facing similar challenges, my advice is this: embrace the long game while establishing your professional authority. Institutional change occurs at a gradual pace, yet it does occur. Furthermore, document your process and build authentic relationships. Most importantly, remember, the key question isn’t if you can change everything at once. It’s about whether you’re heading in the right direction. Remember that the key question isn’t whether you can avoid disappointing people who preferred how things used to be—instead, it’s about whether you’re stewarding collections responsibly for current and future communities.

The Theatre for Youth and Community Collection will continue evolving long after my tenure ends. That’s exactly as it should be. Our role as librarians isn’t to perfect collections, but to steward them responsively and responsibly for the communities we serve—including communities we haven’t served well in the past.

What stories are missing from your collections? How can community partnerships change what you collect and how you collect it? We all share the power to document history. But we must create conditions that allow everyone to join in. As Coleman’s project reminds us, the opposite of absence is to occupy—and academic libraries have a responsibility to make space for those who have been systematically excluded from institutional memory.

Questions for Reflection

When you consider collection development and your ties to the institution, ask yourself these questions:

  • When you assess your collections for gaps, whose voices are missing? How might those absences reflect historical power structures rather than simply acquisition opportunities?
  • What community-led documentation projects exist in your region? How might your institution support rather than compete with grassroots preservation efforts?

About institutional change:

  • How do you balance honoring institutional legacy with responding to current community needs? When does the preservation of tradition become resistance to necessary evolution?
  • What technical debt are you carrying from previous collection management practices? How does that infrastructure work to support or hinder your ability to serve diverse communities?

About professional identity:

  • How have you built your professional authority after a long-serving predecessor while also honoring their legacy? What strategies help you navigate stakeholder expectations?
  • How do you share changes in collection priorities with donors and community members?
  • When implementing equity-focused changes, how do you distinguish between legitimate concerns about process or resources versus resistance rooted in preserving existing power structures? What role might your identity markers (race, gender, age, career stage) play in how stakeholders receive your initiatives?

About the long-term work:

  • What would success look like for your collection transformation efforts in five years? In twenty years? Moreover, how do you measure progress on work that spans many career cycles?
  • How are you keeping track of your processes and decisions? Future librarians will need this information to continue the work.

Sources:

  1. Coleman, S., & Sage, M. (2025). The Opposite of Absence is to Occupy. ArtsPraxis, 11(2).  ↩︎