Institutional Change

Technologies of the self in academic librarianship

Some thoughts on the “why” of professional development.

Photo by Bohdan on Unsplash. Alt image: a multicolored ladder leaning on a gray stone wall.

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I subscribe to Book Freak, a substack newsletter by Mark Frauenfelder. In short, each newsletter summarizes a few main takeaways from “great books and thinkers to help improve yourself, boost productivity, build the life you want, and generally live better.” I’ve found it a concise way to consider new ideas from authors I would otherwise not have time to read (as my teetering bedside stack of similar books gathers dust in lieu of fantasy/sci-fi).

In a recent issue, Frauenfelder covered some key points from So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work. According to Book Freak, Newport advises that the best path to a tailored and meaningful career is via “the accumulation of ‘career capital’ — rare and valuable skills that can be traded for greater autonomy and impact.”

I mention Book Freak a) because I like it, and b) because I want to clarify that I have not read So Good They Can’t Ignore You—only a very short summary of some of its points. I’m sure there’s plenty of nuance I can’t speak to. That said, the advice to “Identify the core skills in your field that are both rare and valuable” and “Make a concrete plan to systematically improve these skills” spurred some thought about what those skills might be for an academic librarian. I asked a few mentors. Their response was mostly that specific valuable skills would depend on whichever area of librarianship one found themselves in, given the disparateness of academic library specializations; or perhaps that rare and valuable skills, like knowledge of scholarly communication intricacies in my case, is what qualifies one for specialized library positions in the first place. I’m curious what readers might posit as rare and valuable skills in their areas, or whether there are skills whose rarity and value would span all academic library positions.

Skills for whom?

Yet, a disheartening counterpoint to all of this is that rare and valuable skills won’t help you thrive or even save your job if your library is being stripped for parts. Brilliant librarians are being laid off at universities around the country (e.g. Duke, Northwestern, UC San Diego, Western Illinois). Some of these layoffs were the result of direct attacks on higher education; some were probably due to structural economic changes to the information landscape; all of them represent a devaluation of library work. In this climate, grinding for new skills doesn’t guarantee job security, although it may help with a career transition. Tressie McMillan Cottom has said in many places that the “institution does not/cannot love you.” Institutions exist to maintain themselves at whatever cost. I feel that a lot these days.

The logic of pursuing skills that might endear us to loveless institutions is a concrete example of how soft power influences the way we move through the world: what is valuable for us to spend our time learning is defined by what is useful to the institution, or to those in power within the institution, or in an even broader sense, by those with power through the generations. But, in a classic structure vs. agency paradigm, we retain some degree of human agency within and despite the visible and/or discursive structures that order our lives. Here, I’ll invoke some (probably tacky) Foucault, or rather a more digestible interpretation of his theory on “technologies of the self” from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“Subjects are not simply constructed by power; they themselves partake in that construction and modify themselves through practices of the self. They are not just docile bodies, but actively refuse, adopt and alter forms of being a subject. One way of contesting normalizing power is by shaping oneself and one’s lifestyle creatively: by exploring opportunities for new ways of being, new fields of experience, pleasures, relationships, modes of living and thinking.”

Threading the needle?

So, I close with two questions: a) what would “technologies of the self” look like for those of us working in academic libraries, and b) could they ever overlap with pursuit of “career capital” skills that are rare and valuable to institutions that cannot love us? In a practical sense, I’m not sure if resisting the institution is the way for more of us to keep our jobs… perhaps you are inherently a subject of the institution when you agree to receive a salary. I generally like what I understand my job to be, and I want to keep doing what seems worth doing. I also want to pursue skills and ideas and actions that align with my interest in stewarding information for the public good, but it’s hard to predict how higher educational institutions may or may not value that ideal in the future.

The best answer I can posit right now focuses on the word “creatively” in the encyclopedia quote above. After reflecting on my individual values and goals, I’d like to explore skills that will allow me to approach my work more experimentally and flexibly in alignment with those goals. Creativity may sound like a cliché thesis, but it’s easier said than done; it’s the highest tier of Bloom’s taxonomy, and it’s challenging to even identify how to increase creative capacity. Some of the skills I may explore through this approach to professional/personal development might be perceived as directly institutionally valuable, and some might not – via a course on fiction writing, for example. The overarching benefit would be my ability to do or create something with those skills that feels novel and generative and aligned with my professional values. The ability to be creative in one’s work tends to help the institution in the long run, even if the goal of shaping oneself creatively would be partly to resist normalizing power, in this case. To the institution’s credit: I’m not sure it counts as love, but I do appreciate the professional development stipend.

Collaboration Moves at the Speed of Trust

To work in higher ed these days is to grapple with institutional change. There’s no escaping it. Within our organizations, we’re experiencing structural, financial, curricular, pedagogical, or technological change — likely some combination thereof. We are working in a turbulent time.

This turbulence churns up doubt and creates strong ripple effects: suspicion and fear, not to mention low morale. Yet successfully navigating these waves of institutional change requires confidence in our leadership, in a shared vision, in our ability to collaborate.

You’ve heard that saying, collaboration moves at the speed of trust? We asked some librarians for their thoughts on the trust problems they’re seeing and how they’re building trust with their colleagues. Given the subject matter, we opted to anonymize this post.

Have thoughts you’d like to share, too? Drop us a line in the comments.

Have you seen the trust-in-higher-ed problem playing out in your past/current institutions? How so?

Response: One of my Directors of Libraries did not exactly instill trust among library staff. The Director claimed to be transparent in their decision-making, but library staff questioned their direction, with questionable decisions on budgeting, hiring, and new library services and technology. When asked respectfully, the Director was evasive and somewhat confrontational. This distrust feeds into work culture, creating a culture of fear and suspicion; it’s not a great place to work when that happens.

Response: At my institution, we had a very unfortunate situation play out with a partner that has seemed to pit the university vs. the local community. It was a PR nightmare, to say the least, and although the university is an anchor in this town and area of the country it’s severely wounded the local trust. As an example – social media posts that have nothing to do with said situation get comments about it because folks are so upset.

Response: As the budget situation at my public institution has worsened since the pandemic, we’re seeing very low levels of trust by faculty and staff in the upper administration. Several new administrators have come in over the past few years who have said they value communication, collaboration, and shared governance, though they have embarked on new, costly initiatives without input and now seem surprised at the pushback they’re receiving. While it can absolutely be true that higher educational institutions can be slow to change, especially if feedback is truly sought and accommodated, I think that often the lack of transparency and collaboration ends up dooming new initiatives from the outset, making things harder for faculty, staff, and ultimately for administrators.

What has undermined your trust in your past/current institutions?

Response: At both my past and current institution, a boys club mentality has undermined my trust in these institutions. When sitting on committees at a campus level, it’s disappointing to spend time and energy in those meetings but feel like the men in the room, and in positions of power, already have an agenda and we are there simply to go through the motions. It feels both difficult to make progress and is frustrating to think that your ideas (and ideas of your colleagues not in this club) are dismissed and not taken seriously.

Response: One thing that has undermined trust where I’ve worked is fake consultation. This is where library staff have been consulted on decisions, or appear to be part of the decision-making process in some capacity, but when recommendations are proposed, the decision seems to have been made from the start, as they would have been without consultation. When this happens over, and over, and over, trust is undermined.

Response: In my institution, the stark contrast between our leader in libraries and the broader administration (president, provost, etc) undermines the trust in the latter. Our Dean of Libraries is clear, transparent, and refers to a “life-work” balance instead of the other way around. We feel supported by them, and know that they are a staunch advocate for the Libraries in the many broader campus meetings they take part in.

The president and provost, however, are not as transparent. Once asked (or sometimes forced to an answer by tuition-paying parents) they willingly talk about things like the university budget and the new process about hiring. But they didn’t choose to speak about it on their own. Without explanations, there has been a new admin hired right at the end of spring semester last year (so, once most faculty left) and now there is a new position in the provost’s office, which has also not been elaborated on. That position was posted at around 4:15pm on a Friday. It’s like they either don’t see the optics problem, or they simply don’t care.

Oh, and did I mention we’re moving to a zero-based budget university-wide with mere weeks to submit, with an administration that prides themselves (overly so) on being data-driven? It doesn’t exactly build any trust whatsoever.

Response: I’ve also been struck by a boys club mentality in a previous institution, which was coupled with a lack of transparency from the president and head of finance about budgeting. The impression I had was that the president knew best how to allocate funds, and the library was far down the list of priorities for him. It was difficult for us in the library to plan from semester to semester because we could not trust that resources would be available for us to do our jobs, and morale was (not unexpectedly) a challenge.

What has fueled, reinforced, or stabilized your trust in your past/current institutions?

Response: In the last year, the institution I currently work at has brought in a new president, provost, and CFO. When sitting in the crowd for the president’s remarks upon the announcement of her hire, I felt hopeful about the future of the institution. Both the president and provost have done the work of showing up for events across campus, making time in their schedule to come to the library and listen to our ideas and concerns, and have communicated transparently about their work and external factors impacting our institution. I have seen the impact of this energy, on the dean of our library, the people I supervise, and colleagues outside the library. While our campus and budget problems aren’t completely solved, there’s a new level of trust that has re-energized us and made us feel a little more hopeful.

Response: Transparency; give me the reasons why a decision is being made. I don’t necessarily have to agree, but at least I can see the reason and I don’t have to guess or speak with colleagues for their opinions, which fuels gossip and can worsen work culture.

Response: I echo transparency. The gossip at my institution is out of control because the higher-ups are making moves without making sure that folks understand where those moves come from. I’m not saying that everything needs to be qualified and explained; I am saying you need to consider how things look to everyone that works under you, and make decisions about how to explain your actions.

What have you done to build trust with colleagues and teams?

Response: I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m a big fan of confiding in others and being vulnerable. I think this helps build long-term relationships that are built on a solid foundation of trust. Honesty and empathy, which can be common in long-term relationships, are huge components of building trust.

Response: My past professional experiences have shown me the importance of consistency in building trust. As a department head, I work to consistently show up for my team and for people within the library. In my current context, that plays out with me being on-site, keeping an open door and drop-in policy, and having frequent conversations with the department about workload and capacity. I do my best to communicate what I know, build consensus and make collaborative decisions as much as I can, and celebrate successes. I feel like it’s always a work in progress and maintaining trust is a verb, not something that can be attained and then you can coast.

Response: The open-door policy I have with members of my department has been crucial for the team to build trust in one another, especially with half of the entire department being new in one year. I know I can go to anyone’s office with a question, even our chair, and either get an answer or have a discussion on where we might find said answer. Us newbies have also been trying to build rapport with other departments in the library, which have historically been a bit siloed.

What kind of institutional change are you encountering?

To kick off our institutional change theme, we asked some librarians this question: In the New Year, what kind of institutional change are you encountering? Are you looking forward to it, dreading it, or some kind of in-between feeling? Given the subject matter, we opted to anonymize this post. If you have thoughts on institutional change, sound off in the comments or reach out to us to do a guest post!

Blogger 1: At my university, we have a fairly new president and provost. This has led to a complete overhaul of the way that positions are approved, along with a number of other changes. There has been a lot of faculty rumblings that ultimately came to a head with a letter from anonymous faculty to the President, listing both their concerns and rumors that had been swirling around the new administration. It was brought to everyone’s attention via a faculty senate motion. I shared some of the concerns, but there were also portions of the letter that were either untrue or petty in comparison to the real concerns. I did not feel it was representative of all faculty.

As you might imagine, this caused an absolute tizzy throughout campus. Faculty senate motions are public, so the letter was seen by everyone; even the student newspaper reported on it. The senate ultimately held an all-faculty meeting to go over the concerns, which are being compiled into a report (minus the rumors). There had been discussion at the library about administration, but this really brought it all into hard focus. A good portion of our department meetings have been spent on compiling and articulating our own concerns, which focus on the (lack of) communication from admin and staffing, since that aforementioned position approval process has slowed the hiring process down considerably. In my opinion, the whole debacle could have been avoided with a better communication strategy. Maybe needless to say, but it’s caused a lot of dread and anxiety overall for me; I do hope that it leads to change in the new admins’ approaches, though.

Blogger 2: I almost feel like the question might actually be what institutional change aren’t we encountering. In some ways, this year just seems to hold more of the same as the last few: a steady trickle of folks leaving all levels of positions whether for retirement or other positions and places; continuing enrollment troubles; growing budget challenges; and so on. These issues certainly aren’t new (or unique to my institution) but it does feel like they’re really piling up. On one hand, these converging and intensifying challenges are just adding a hearty dose of uncertainty and instability to the burnout and morale issues we’re already confronting. On the other hand, though, I do respect how the new university leadership seems to be addressing the challenges head on, rather than letting issues continue to fester. I admire how library leadership is transparent about the challenges and the decision-making processes being used to address them. I also appreciate how leadership is so far framing our organizational response to the (yes, mounting and increasingly consequential) challenges as opportunities for innovation, not just setbacks and hardships. Of course, they absolutely are setbacks and hardships — let’s not kid ourselves. But it helps to remember that we might actually be able to do something about it.

Blogger 3: At my library, we’re having a hard time hiring librarians. It’s hard to pinpoint why exactly we’re not getting positions filled; some positions it seems like aren’t appealing enough to attract candidates (e.g. job responsibilities and/or compensation) and some may be because of institutional issues (e.g. timing of searches, which vacant positions are prioritized, length of time to complete a search, and failed searches for one reason or another).

Related to length of time, the hiring process is an arduous process, with many librarians on search committees, getting job descriptions and advertisements approved from our institution’s administration, and the longlisting, shortlisting, and interviewing. When this results in a failed search—whether that’s due to a lack of applicants or procedural issues—this only exacerbates the issue to get the position filled timely. This is disheartening, to say the least.

We’re trying different approaches to attract candidates, to put them in the best position to succeed and feel adequately compensated. While our library can adapt our hiring practices, we still have to operate within our institutional policies on recruiting. In the meantime, we continue to cover positions in different ways and have our fingers crossed that we can finally get a full complement of librarians.

Contract Positions and Leave Coverage for Academic Librarians

Contract and term positions are all too common for early-career academic librarians. Shrinking post-secondary budgets, demand for academic librarian positions, doing more with less, and persistent vacant positions means landing a permanent and continuing position can be challenging. Job precarity is a reality for many of our early-career colleagues.

Sajni Lacey, in the article “Job Precarity, Contract Work, and Self-Care,” convincingly writes that employers must do more to look after their precarious employees, including caring for and supporting contract library workers. Lacey’s powerful final lines read, “[w]e need to hold each other accountable for how and why we use precarious work in libraries.”

Lacey’s final line is prescient when looking at my library at the University of Manitoba. Several years ago, our librarians discussed our usage of contract positions to cover for librarians on leave– whether that’s research, administrative, sick, or parental leave. We were wondering if there was a better way to cover for librarians who go on leave than relying on term positions. A committee was struck to survey how other Canadian academic libraries handle leaves, document our current process, and to offer recommendations.

I volunteered for the committee since at the time, I recently obtained a continuing position; prior to this I was working in a term position. In this term position, I was in a newly-created position at our library: a Leave/Vacancy Replacement Librarian. These positions are intended to swap in and out of our different libraries, covering the duties of librarians who are on leave or for vacant positions. The job description is very general, as you could be placed in pretty much any library or unit in our system. Though on contract, it’s a faculty-level position, giving you a fair salary and health benefits, although you need to go through the faculty-level interview process to get the position—as well as each time to interview for future continuing positions.

Our committee’s process was to see what other Canadian academic libraries do to cover leaves—if anything—, identify the core work of librarians that needs coverage, and provide recommendations to how this work will best be covered. Some of the questions our committee asked were: What’s common at other Canadian academic libraries? What are the core duties that could (or should) be performed by coworkers and those by a replacement? Is there a way to transition from term to continuing positions? What would this look like for covering leaves?

One suggestion, and the suggestion that led to the committee’s formation in the first place, was to make the term coverage positions continuing. Since librarians on leave still receive their salary, this makes it difficult to hire continuing coverage librarians. As well, as someone who had recently been in this position, I couldn’t imagine being a coverage librarian permanently; it’s disruptive to move positions every six months to a year.

After our committee surveyed other Canadian academic libraries—many of whom do not cover leaves at all—and discussed various issues specific to our institution, we collaboratively wrote up our findings in a report and fine-tuned our conclusions and recommendations. Ultimately, we were going to continue with our faculty-level term positions for covering librarians on leave. Thankfully, these positions provide health benefits, vacation time, and PD funding, all things that Yoonhee Lee touches on in an American Libraries article, despite these positions being precarious.

After our research, discussions, and writing, we realized that the status quo is the solution – and that’s okay; “[p]recarity within and outside of libraries is tied to larger structural forces, and no one library or librarian can craft a universal solution,” Lee writes. We did thoughtful and intentioned problem solving, in earnest, and continuing to cover leaves with librarians on term was the most realistic answer to our committee’s question. Sometimes the best way forward is to continue doing what you’ve been doing. Our committee did make progress, though; you don’t know if the way you’re currently going is the best way, if you don’t look deeper into it.

How does your library handle contract or part-time library work? I’m interested to know if you get leaves at your library, and if so, whether your library covers for librarians on leave?

Focus on Institutional Change

The transformation of Higher Education institutions has been an ongoing journey, gaining momentum due to the sweeping changes triggered by COVID-19 and a growing awareness of existential threats like climate change, inflation, housing insecurity, and institutional discrimination. These shifts have left a lasting imprint on the way academic libraries operate, offer services, and stay relevant. During the pandemic, academic libraries often led the way by swiftly returning to on-site operations to ensure core services were accessible to students and faculty. The landscape has changed significantly, with many institutions experiencing dramatic shifts.

My personal experience, beginning at my institution in May 2020, reflects this turbulence. In just two years, I had four different bosses, each with their unique vision for my role and department. Additionally, we welcomed a new University President and Provost. As I prepare to transition to a new role after three years, our Library Director is also stepping down. My story is not uncommon. The importance of higher education and libraries is being reevaluated, and the changes brought on by remote learning have given rise to new service models and expectations. Many library professionals have opted for retirement, while the needs and expectations of students on campus have evolved. As colleges and universities redefine their objectives, adopt new technologies, and revamp their methodologies, libraries are prompted to adapt as well. This adaptability is crucial for libraries to maintain their role in the academic ecosystem.

In the coming year, the ACRLog team will share posts that delve into these areas and more, showcasing how different institutions and individuals are navigating change. We’ll highlight instances of tension, failure, and success, with the hope of inspiring our community to engage and share what’s working. We acknowledge that there’s no perfect formula for managing institutional change, but we believe that the insights we share will stimulate discussions and help us all support one another as we shape the “new normal” for academic libraries.

Libraries, in their pursuit of academic support, must remain agile, adaptable, and forward-thinking. Embracing change is fundamental to maintaining their role as essential academic partners. As institutions evolve, academic libraries have a responsibility not only to adapt but to thrive in the new environment, continuing their legacy of nurturing knowledge, innovation, and intellectual growth.