Tag: liaison

Finding my footing and imposter syndrome

Like Quetzalli, who started blogging for ACRLog a few years ago, I am dipping my toes into the world of academic libraries by starting with a residency position. While there is some discussion to be had on critiques of residencies and whether a residency is a good choice for any given individual, for my own part, I was drawn to a residency position because it offered me room to explore as well as a little more support. Luckily for me, my institution has also been very receptive about working with my interests and I have no regrets about choosing a residency.

That said, at almost exactly three months in, I am starting to take stock of what I have learned and accomplished so far. With the new semester fast approaching, I am also looking for ways to work better and to prioritize all the various projects that could take up my time. As a subject librarian, a large focus of my work is on liaisonship, which, it turns out, is something of a challenge for me.

As I see it, my challenges are twofold: getting my name out there and establishing myself as someone capable of and willing to work with faculty members. I’m in a new position, so faculty members and students in my subject areas aren’t necessarily primed to come looking for me. To combat this, I’ve sent the usual introductory emails and have been working on meeting faculty members when they’re interested and have the time. I’ve also attended as many events as possible, both to become more familiar with academic focuses on campus and to make sure I’m seen and can participate in informal conversations as they arise.

As for my second goal of demonstrating that I’m capable of the job I’m doing, this has come slower. I’m working as the liaison for Southeast Asian studies and South Asian studies, and my background is solely in Southeast Asian studies, which means I’m working to get up to speed on South Asia. Now, I know that to be an effective liaison you do not need to have extensive knowledge of your subject areas. This is true, too—I’ve successfully answered the South Asia reference questions that have come my way. All that said, I still find myself feeling inadequate, which leads me to an oft-discussed topic: imposter syndrome.

Erin has already written a great post about imposter syndrome, especially tied to comparing your CV to others’. I find myself performing a similar sort of comparison, looking at librarians in my institution and in similar positions beyond my institution and wondering how they do so much, how they are so involved. I know this is similar to Erin’s own struggle and that I’m only seeing things from the outside, but it’s one thing to know that and another to internalize it.

I brought up my position as a resident at the beginning of this post because I think it also plays a factor in this feeling of imposter syndrome. As a resident, maybe I am an imposter, or at the very least, maybe people see me as an imposter. But I know that this, too, is also just my insecurities talking. While it is true that residents (including myself) do have to explain their positions and do have to face skepticism, it is also true that residents are as qualified as any other new librarian. As Erin lays out in her post, it is perfectly acceptable to be a beginner. Luckily for me, I am part of an organization that supports me and all its new librarians and recognizes that we are all beginners in one way or another.

One of the support systems my library has in place is a new liaisons group that meets once a month. These meetings provide a place to discuss our work and formulate strategies to become more effective liaisons, as well as simply to discuss challenges we may be having. At a recent meeting, when I brought up how I sometimes feel nervous approaching faculty members, a more established librarian offered a piece of advice that really resonated with me: we are faculty members too, so there’s no reason to feel lesser. Now, librarians are not faculty members everywhere, but no matter the institution, we are professionals, and in liaison work as with librarianship in general, there is no reason to feel lesser, even if you are new. For now, I’m going to make an effort to understand that I am a beginner and to not apologize for it, while I continue to learn and grow and develop the relationships that will help me to become a better liaison.

What are some situations you’ve found yourself facing imposter syndrome? Do you have any tips to share that have worked for you?

On Being a New Liaison

Please welcome our new First Year Academic Librarian Experience blogger Abby Flanigan, Research Librarian for Music and Performing Arts at the University of Virginia.

Last January, I joined the University of Virginia Libraries as the Research Librarian for Music and Performing Arts. This is my first professional position after graduating from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with my MSLS in May 2016, and I’ve found myself in an entirely new (to me) area of the profession: liaison librarianship. In graduate school, I heeded the advice I’ve seen echoed in every corner of the Internet about LIS programs, which is to get as much work experience as you can, and cobbled together a variety of internships in preservation, digital scholarship, cataloging, and reference services. Despite this list of jobs on my resume, I remember feeling instantly panicked when the first question in my interview was to describe my past experience as a liaison, because, of course, I didn’t have any. Luckily, I managed to collect myself and describe some other capacities in which I had worked with faculty, and ended up getting the job. Now that I’ve been here a few months I wanted to share some of my observations about what makes being a liaison both challenging and exciting as a new professional.

No two liaison positions look exactly alike. Because each academic department has different needs and histories with the library, each liaison I know works differently with their departments. Some are busy all semester teaching classes or doing research consultations with undergraduate students, while other collaborate on grants or do collection development for foreign-language sources. Similarly, liaisons are organized differently at many libraries, so it can also be difficult to directly compare positions or responsibilities with colleagues at peer institutions. At UVA, subject liaison responsibilities are decoupled from collection development, general reference, and first-year teaching responsibilities, so my day-to-day work looks very different than liaisons at other institutions whose responsibilities are split across a variety of areas. This was challenging when I first started because, not knowing exactly what I was supposed to do, my instinct was to model my strategy for engagement on my colleagues’, but it didn’t always transfer or apply.

This brings me to my second point: it takes time to be an effective liaison. Getting comfortable in any new position takes a while, of course, but the liaison model seems to benefit in particular from institutional knowledge. Part of the job is knowing faculty and students in the departments, including their research interests, information needs, and communication habits. Gathering this information can take many meetings, emails, and chance encounters; much of it is tacit knowledge that is built up over time and not necessarily passed on from a predecessor. Many liaisons also rely on the “ripple effect.” By working with a faculty member one semester, they may have more interest the next semester based on word-of-mouth between colleagues. This means that as a new liaison, I am working on laying groundwork for richer collaborations in the future. Building up relationships and projects is a longer process than I was expecting, but I think that’s a good thing because it means this is a job that I can grow into.

Finally, as I build these relationships, I’ve learned just how important communication skills are to this position. Being a liaison requires reaching out cold to people in your departments, and, more importantly, once you are meeting with them, articulating your role and value. It can be intimidating to present yourself as a resource to experts in their respective fields, especially without an advanced degree in the discipline for which you are a liaison, but over the past nine months, I’ve gotten more comfortable and confident doing so. In the beginning, I struggled to define exactly how I could help, and erred on the side of suggesting every possible way in which they might use the library’s resources. Now I try to reach out when I have a specific idea to suggest or information to communicate. After a few successful collaborations, I also have a clearer idea myself about what I bring to the table, so I’m able to more confidently offer my services.

“Liaison” is term which means very little to anyone outside of libraries (I know this from the blank stares I get from friends and family when I try to explain what I do) but can be a source of anxiety for people in them as we rethink and reorganize subject expertise in academic libraries. Being a good liaison or having a strong liaison program seems to be an ever-moving target. Stepping into a role of this nebulous nature as a new librarian can be stressful — it’s hard to know whether you’re doing it right! — but I’m learning to be more comfortable with figuring it out as I go.