LIS Education

Prepared? Reflecting on grad school after 3.5 months on the job

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how well my MS/LIS degree and its related experiences prepared me for my job now as a Research and Instructional Services Librarian. It’s important to note that I worked in my undergraduate library for three years while receiving my bachelors. I also worked in my hometown public library for a year before heading off to graduate school. I’d worked at a physical reference desk before, had worked with LibChat, and had a base knowledge of databases. I had more library experience than some, and therefore had a better idea of what classes I needed to be taking to become an academic librarian.

I feel like a broken record saying this, but my graduate experience was quite different and chaotic at best; my first year, I was entirely online (unplanned), assistantship and all. Online classes weren’t necessarily a surprise, given my alma mater’s strong online MS/LIS program, but setting foot in the library I worked for exactly once during the 2020-2021 school year wasn’t something I was expecting. I did chat and email reference, team meetings, and taught workshops all from my tiny bedroom in Urbana, IL. I’d moved to Illinois specifically to have an in-person program, but alas – Covid ruined those plans. My supervisor and the other librarians I worked with did their best to train my cohort remotely, but as you can imagine, the physical reference desk is a whole other beast compared to a virtual one. Even when we went back in person in summer 2021, things felt constantly up in the air. Policies were changing left and right as folks tried to reconcile COVID-19 restrictions with being back in person. If anything, my “chaos cohort” of other graduate assistants were prepared to be adaptable!

collection development

With that being said, one aspect of my degree that might seem controversial to some is that I actively chose not to take collection development, despite never having done that in any of the previously mentioned library jobs. This was based on some of my friends’ experiences in the class; it was useful, for sure, but there were other classes they’d wanted to take that they couldn’t as a result. I had the thought too that wherever I ended up, they would “do” collections differently. I’d have to learn new processes no matter what classes I took. Now that I’m here at Salisbury, I am responsible for collections in areas like Environmental Studies, Public Health, and Exercise Science, to name a few. I lean on my faculty for book recommendations, as well as Choice Reviews from ACRL and book reviews in journals. I am also part of our Leisure Reading committee, where our main responsibility is to develop our leisure collections for students, faculty and staff. Here, the collection development is a group effort. Personally, I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on too much; I’ve learned how to use GOBI on the job, and my university has a great faculty request system in place.

instruction

A theme I have noticed in literature regarding the master’s degree is that many academic librarians feel they weren’t adequately prepared to take on instruction. It’s also been written about on ACRLog before. This is something I felt fairly confident about, as I took the class “Instructional Strategies and Techniques for Information Professionals” with Merinda Hensley. We created a lesson plan, struggled through writing learning outcomes (emphasis on the struggle), and wrote teaching philosophies. I also took “E-Learning” with Melissa Wong, which gave me language and strategies for teaching virtually. On top of all of this, I was teaching for the UIUC library via my graduate assistantship. So when setting up instruction sessions with my faculty at Salisbury, I felt confident. I’m always going to be nervous before teaching, but it’s never been because I have no idea what I’m doing.

faculty communication

Where I feel shaky in regards to my job duties is in communication with faculty. Some of this is to be expected with a new librarian, but where I find myself unsure is how many emails to send, how to reach faculty that don’t already request library instruction… essentially, I am struggling in this aspect of “proving” myself and my job to other faculty at the university. I attended the CLAPS (Critical Librarianship & Pedagogy Symposium) two weeks ago, and Baharak Yousefi’s closing keynote has really stuck with me. Some of these tweets capture the essence of this powerful keynote, which had some focus on one-shot instruction:

“No physicist, historian, or geographer on our campus teaches this way – going around begging for the right to teach in a one-off manner.” (tweeted by @lydia_zv)

“We are deprofessionalized by being given work we can’t do well, and the very fact that we can’t do it well makes us reluctant to resist the condition of our de-professionalization” (tweeted by @RoxanneShirazi)

I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling, but Yousefi has captured it perfectly. I was hired at Salisbury to perform a job, I have faculty status, and yet, it sometimes feels like I need to prove the merit of library instruction. I’ve got some great faculty who know the value of a librarian for their students, but even then, I’m in front of them maybe once a semester. If the timing of our session isn’t quite right, students won’t see the value of what I teach yet or won’t want to re-do their research based on what I’ve shown them. I imagine that confidence in faculty communication will come with time and effort; is this even something an MS/LIS could prepare a new librarian for? I’m inclined to say no. We can perhaps be warned about the phenomenon by professors and mentors, but it strikes me as something a librarian has to experience and address themselves at their institutions.

These are just a few things I’ve been pondering since graduating. How did your MS/LIS prepare you for your library position? How did it not? Feel free to sound off below. This post by Sarah Crissinger on tips for graduate school might be of interest too.

The Slow Gradual Veer to Academic Librarianship

Check out our post on HLS today too! Jen Jarson, ACRLog blogger, reflects on the importance of place and work environment in “Room to Grow?” See more information about the HLS/ ACRLog collaboration here.

Hailley Fargo is a second year masters student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When she’s not in school, Hailley is an avid oatmeal connoisseur, baseball scorekeeper, bike rider, and reader of memoirs. She also likes to live tweet every once and a while (check out @hailthefargoats). Hailley was asked to write about why she’s interested in academic librarianship.

When I decided to come to graduate school, my heart was not set on academic librarianship. After working summers with children at my hometown public library and then working with all sorts of people at New York Public Library as a community outreach intern, I figured my place was with the communities at your local public library. I came into my graduate program dead set on children and youth services. The classes I first took at the University of Illinois pushed me away from that end-all-be-all focus and I ended up in the world of community informatics, digital literacy, and public libraries.

My second year in graduate school provided two opportunities that helped me to make the slow, gradual veer into academic librarianship. The first was my assistantship, as a library supervisor in our residence hall libraries. My job gives me the best of all library jobs – supervision, collection development, programming, and community building. I felt like I had finally plugged back into the college life – during my office hours I felt the energy of undergrads that I realized I missed when I entered graduate school. I was able to apply all my community engagement theories into actual lived experience and I found myself fully immersed. The job has given me challenges too, such as new projects for this spring and thinking through what undergraduates actually know about the library. What I love about this job is the daily work – there’s always something to do and I actually get to be out in the libraries, meeting students (and trying to relate to them), working with the clerks I supervise, and helping students and staff find information. It’s incredibly rewarding and I kept thinking to myself, “How can I stay in this sort of environment?”

The second opportunity was taking library instruction this fall. Our main lens to look into instruction was through academic librarianship. While the class was helpful in thinking through instruction to the elementary students I work with, reading books like Maria Accardi’s Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction and the collection of critical library instruction essays compiled by Emily Drabinski and company, got me thinking through what instruction for undergraduates might look like. My final instructional design project was focused on keyword searching for freshman and sophomores living in the residence halls my libraries are at. As I turned in my final PDF of the project I asked the same sort of question when I was in the residence hall libraries, “This is fun and challenging. How can I keep doing this?”

To me, academic librarianship seems to be about balance as you attempt to put together an intricate puzzle. You are trying to serve so many different groups across the campus. From the bright-eyed freshman to senioritis seniors to student research rockstars and then a faculty with wide-ranging and diverse interests. Of course one can’t forget about all the other people with access to the library, such as staff, other members of the institution, and sometimes even the public. I get so excited about trying to help them all and finding ways to connect these groups, not only with each other, but with other aspects of campus. Academic librarianship seems to provide this unique community engagement opportunity because you have access to a community that (sometimes) lives very close and who have a constant need for information (two to four years of coursework). I see the chance to be the spokesperson, to engage outside the library walls to help faculty understand why library instruction is, and to remind students the library is an important presence to have (and to take advantage of). Perhaps I’m being a little too idealistic and ignoring the actual reality of academic libraries. However, based on my experience at the residence hall libraries, it’s possible, it just takes time and lots of relationship building.

I haven’t firmly settled on academic librarianship. But it’s calling to me. As I start my job search, I seem to more drawn to the job descriptions I’m seeing at colleges across the United States. Reading through those job descriptions are exciting and I’m going to apply to some of them. Two years ago, I would have never suspected that academic libraries would have been on my librarianship path. Now, I feel the opportunity is available to me and I feel my experiences this spring will help to decide what I decide to pursue next.

Thank you to the ARCLog and Hack Library School for the opportunity to write this post.

Mentorship & LIS Students

Check out our post on HLS today too! Sveta Stoytcheva, ACRLog Guest FYAL blogger, reflects on how the academy shapes work/life balance in “Reflections on Work/Life Balance and Academic Librarianship.” See more information about the HLS/ ACRLog collaboration here.

Victoria Henry holds a Bachelors of Arts in History and a Bachelors of Music in Flute Performance from Hope College. She is entering her final semester of library school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She hopes to find a job in an academic library working with undergraduate student researchers and technology. While not in the library, Victoria enjoys spending time with her fiancé, playing her flute, and reading for fun. Victoria was asked to write about who her most valuable mentor has been and why.

As I’m entering my final semester of library school, I am finding myself reflecting on what the future holds and what has brought me to this point in my career. While many different professors, teachers, mentors, bosses, supervisors, and family have led me to begin library school, there is one particular person that stands above the rest as having guided, affirmed, and taught me along my journey to library school and career pursuit as a librarian.

As a history and flute performance major undergraduate student at a small liberal arts college, I knew that I enjoyed learning and researching, but found myself struggling to determine and discern the career path these very different interests would lead me. Should I be a professor or museum curator? These were just some of the many options that crossed my mind as I began to consider life beyond undergraduate education. It wasn’t until I talked to one of my history professors that I began to even consider library school. I remember that when my professor first mentioned library school as a possible career path and I chortled and told him that I was not an English major, so that clearly was not an option. However, after he explained that librarians are not always English majors and explained why he thought my interdisciplinary and research interests would fit well into an academic librarian profession, I was sold. He directed me to our campus library to sit down with a librarian and find out more about the profession.

After an initial introduction to a faculty research and instruction librarian, I was eventually given a position as a student research help desk assistant to explore the profession and determine if this was a career I should pursue. Within my first couple days on the job, I met one of the other research librarians that has had an incredible lasting impact on my current professional endeavors. My undergraduate library’s research help desk was set up as a tag-team effort. Faculty librarians sat at the desk next to a student worker and trained and guided them through the research interview process throughout their time working there. While many student employees were not interested in a career in libraries, the conversations I had turned into important questions about pursuing a career as a librarian, applying for school, open access, technology, collection development, reference, ACRL standards (and later the Framework), and other important question relevant to librarians.

Over the two years I worked there, this librarian became an incredibly important teacher, an asset, but most of all, a friend. She guided me through the application process for library school, helped me determine which school to go to, and provided guidance, support, and encouragement. When I began working at the help desk, she guided me through answering student questions, showing me the databases and how to conduct good reference interviews. As I learned more and more, this hands on assistance turned into small pointers and/or praise when a research question went well. Her approach taught me about providing good research services to student researchers—skills that continue to serve me well in my graduate assistantship position. Furthermore, she took an interest in caring about my well-being as a student and always took the time to ask how I was doing—even when we were not working together. Even now, as I am entering my final semester of library school, she continues to be a mentor and friend that supports me and is guiding me through the next portion of my career pursuits.

As I reflect back on this experience and look forward to a career in libraries, I am inspired to make the same difference and provide the same support for an upcoming librarian. I know without the love, support, friendship, and guidance of my undergraduate librarian and her willingness to answer and talk about libraries, I would not be pursuing a career as a library in the same manner that I am today.

Practitioner Engagement in LIS Education

Check out our post on HLS today too! Callie Wiygul, ACRLog FYAL blogger, compares the challenges of graduate school to her experience in the academy in “The Perils of Seeing a Job as Your Endgame.” See more information about the HLS/ ACRLog collaboration here.

Elizabeth Lieutenant is a current MSL(I)S student who will be graduating in May 2016. Her research explores how higher education structures, systems, and processes can be used to promote reflective praxis, student agency, educational equity, and organizational change. Elizabeth has presented her research on LIS student engagement in systematic planning at the Second Rutgers iSchool Research Invitational for Master’s Students, the Association for Library and Information Science Education 2016 Annual Conference, and the forthcoming Catholic University of America Eighth Annual Bridging the Spectrum Symposium and iConference 2016, respectively. Elizabeth was asked to write about if (and how) practicing librarians should be engaged in LIS education.

As a current LIS student, constituent engagement in higher education is one of my passions. Most of my attention has focused on improving student engagement in LIS education. I’ve spent the past year researching LIS student engagement in systematic program planning: The methods used to engage students, how systematically these methods are employed, and the types of programmatic changes implemented based on student engagement. Some of my most rewarding pre-professional experiences have been improving student engagement within my own LIS program: Organizing engagement sessions and meetings, creating and disseminating surveys and analyzing their data, and collaboratively leading various systematic planning initiatives to improve our students’ educational experiences. I will graduate in a few months and will soon be a practicing academic librarian. Shifting my focus from student to practitioner engagement in LIS education is a natural extension at this point in my career.

Practitioners, students, faculty, staff, alumni, employers, and university partners should each play an active and substantive role in LIS education. Each of these constituency groups has unique areas of expertise, perspectives, and needs that, when coupled together, can inform improvements to LIS education programs. The inclusion and engagement of diverse perspectives in LIS education ensures that program initiatives better serve their community, decision-making processes effectively respond to constituents’ needs, and collective praxis facilitates the educational formation of LIS students. Typical approaches to practitioner engagement in LIS education are usually confined to practica supervision, guest lecturers, and LIS student mentorship. However, these methods do not provide practitioners opportunities to engage in LIS education as broadly or substantively as they could.

Substantial practitioner commentary on LIS education exists, but most of this discourse is confined to informal venues: Blog posts, Twitter conversations, or advice to individual LIS students. There exists a far smaller pool of practitioner-led research on LIS curricula, the professional and educational preparation of LIS students, and the staffing needs of libraries and information centers. Recent scholarship on LIS curricula coverage of assessment and evaluation (Askew & Theodore-Shusta, 2013), copyright and intellectual property (Schmidt & English, 2015), and financial management (Burger, Kaufman, & Atkinson, 2015) revealed substantial deficits in preparing students to engage in professional practice. This type of research provides actionable data for LIS programs to benchmark their strengths and weaknesses and develop new curricula to respond to the profession’s needs.

Practitioner educators can also contribute a wealth of practical knowledge and expertise to LIS programs. Academic librarians who also serve as adjunct faculty are able to more deeply engage with a greater number of LIS students than they feasibly could in almost any other capacity. The mentoring relationships fostered with LIS students who take courses taught by adjunct faculty can be particularly rewarding for both parties (Brown, 2007). While I don’t support poorly compensated academic labor or precarity in higher education, practitioners who have the economic privilege to assume an adjunct teaching appointment play a critical role in enhancing LIS education.

Engagement in LIS program governance is another avenue for practitioner to substantively contribute to LIS education. Unlike informal dialog between practitioners and educators, committees, boards, and other governance bodies are structured, sustainable, and oft-times privileged venues for engaging in LIS education. Based on the most recently published ALISE Statistical Report (Albertson, Culbert, Snow, Spetka, & Hollenkamp, 2015), 17.6% of the 51 reporting schools included alumni representatives on their curriculum committees and 15.7% included practitioner representatives. These numbers fall far below staff (49.0%), student (60.8%), and faculty (100.0%) representation. Clearly, there are opportunities for LIS programs to improve practitioner engagement in program governance.

In my former position as an graduate assistant, I collaboratively initiated a number of processes that strengthen my own LIS program’s relationships with its constituents, including reestablishing the LIS Advisory Board. In recruiting eight new members to the Board, the LIS Department Chair and I ensured the Board included representatives from each of our constituency groups – students (now alumni), full-time and adjunct faculty, program administration, practitioners, alumni, employers, and university partners – to reflect our diverse community. Practitioners do not need to have an established relationship or formal alumni/instructor affiliation with an LIS program to serve as governance representatives. We all have biases, preferences, and limitations; representatives without an established affiliation can provide a impartial external perspective on a particular program’s strengths and weaknesses.

I have outlined a few opportunities for practitioners to be engaged in LIS education, but a program’s organizational culture – defined by its leadership and decision-makers – may preclude constituent engagement. Academic privilege, exclusionary practices, and personal biases all play a role in who is or is not invited to engage. As one of the presenters at the 2015 ALISE Annual Conference succinctly stated, “constituent engagement is important, but if your faculty and staff don’t want to engage, it’s not going to happen.” Even those who are invited to the table may be silenced by those in positions of power. Those few who do speak in this type of culture may find their knowledge dismissed, their contributions disdained, and their perspectives marginalized.

These types of exclusionary practices can have deep ramifications for LIS programs. A lack of constituent engagement in LIS education can lead to degradations of program quality, perceptions of irrelevancy to the profession, and, as the ALA’s Task Force on Library School Closing concluded, dissolution (Jeng, 2006). Yet even with these negative implications, LIS programs may still struggle to engage. LIS students at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Pratt Institute have publicly expressed concerns about their respective program’s lack of constituent engagement. It is not my intention to single out these two programs as negative examples of how to engage constituents – each LIS program has its strengths and weaknesses – but it does underscore the importance of program transparency, inclusivity, and communication.

I personally support these types of student-led initiatives to the hold their LIS programs accountable and sometime wish that LIS practitioners were more proactive in doing the same. My own work in trying to reestablish constituent engagement methods and relationships would have been far easier if other constituents had worked together to ensure that those relationships had not been neglected for years. While it may be easy for practitioners to dismiss the relevance of LIS education to our profession’s needs, it is those dismissals that contribute to LIS failing the future of our profession. Just as academic librarians must work with their constituents to better contribute to their scholarly communities, LIS programs and their constituents must work together to better contribute to our profession.

Of course, LIS programs cannot act on all suggestions, implement all improvements, or address all aspects of the profession. That would be akin to assuming that academic librarians can provide their scholarly community with unlimited access to all published scholarship, a heroic yet impractical ideal. However, there are opportunities to strengthen LIS education, and constituent engagement in LIS education can be a primary motivator for programs to improve. My own scholarship aims to motivate LIS programs to adopt decision-making processes that are inclusive of their students’ perceptions, voices, and needs. LIS programs cannot (and, I would argue, should not) reinvent themselves based on the suggestions of a few constituents. While I am realistic about these limitations, I am also optimistic that my contributions will have a tangible positive impact on LIS education.

As an aspiring academic librarian, one would undoubtedly assume that I assess LIS education based on my professional and intellectual needs. While there are particular experiences I wish my LIS program provided me, I don’t have a prescriptive vision for what LIS education should be, nor should I! I believe LIS education should be defined at the local level. My vision for LIS education is for programs to reflect the needs, values, and perspectives of their community. Actualizing that vision requires the engagement of members of all constituency groups: practitioners, students, faculty, staff, alumni, employers, and university partners. Whether the needs and values of a program’s community require a traditional approach to entry-level librarianship or a radical, forward-thinking approach to the information professions does not matter to me. What matters is having a LIS program’s community collaboratively provide its student with the preparation needed to ensure they graduate equipped to better meet their needs of their own constituencies.

I am personally grateful to the many professionals and fellow students who have played a role in my educational formation. I would not still be a student in my program without their support, guidance, and encouragement. However, our traditional approaches to practitioner engagement in LIS education – networking, mentoring, guest lectures, and resume reviews – is not enough to support LIS students. Those few who have played an active role in my LIS program, who have been engaged in my program, who have advocated for our students to be provided the opportunities and experiences we need, who have amplified our student’s voices, who have fought for an inclusive educational community, those are ones to whom I am forever indebted. Those are the ones we need more of. Practicing librarians should not just play a peripheral role in LIS education. Practitioners must be fully engaged in LIS education to better support the educational formation of our students, for it is our students who are tasked with creating the future of our profession.

So, how will you support the future of our profession?

References

Albertson, D., Culbert, C., Snow, K., Spetka, K., & Hollenkamp, J (Eds.). (2015). ALISE Statistical Report 2015 [Data set]. Retrieved from http://www.alise.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=415.

ALISE 2015 annual conference. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.alise.org/alise-2015-conference.

Askew, C. A., & Theodore-Shusta, E. (2013). How do librarians learn assessment? Library Leadership & Management, 28(1), 1-9.

Bajjaly, S., Burnett, K., Hastings, S. K., Hirsh, S., Marek, K., & Most, L. R. (2015, January). Representation for all: Including stakeholders in LIS program governance in a changing world. Juried panel presented at the meeting of the Association for Library and Information Science Education, Chicago, IL.

Brown, S. W. (2007). The adjunct life. Library Journal, 132(11) 42-44. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/libr_pubs/9.

Burger, R. H., Kaufman, P. T., & Atkinson, A. L. (2015). Disturbingly weak: The current state of financial management education in library and information science curricula. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 56(3), 190-197. doi:10.12783/issn.2328-2967/56/3/2.

CUA LIS Advisory Board. (2015, November 23). Retrieved from http://lis.cua.edu/about/LISadvisoryboard.cfm.

Hackney, S. (2015). SILSSA and the School of Information. Pratt SILSSA: The Student Association for the Pratt School of Information. Retrieved from http://silssa.prattsils.org/silssa-and-the-school-of-information/.

Helregel, N. (2014). Administrative transparency & LIS education. Hack Library School. Retrieved from http://hacklibraryschool.com/2014/12/11/administrative-transparency-lis-education/.

Jeng, L. H. (2005). Final report (2004-2005 ALA CD#48). Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/offices/sites/ala.org.offices/files/content/hrdr/abouthrdr/hrdrliaisoncomm/committeeoned/Library%20School%20Closi.pdf.

Schmidt, L. & English, M. (2015). Copyright instruction in LIS programs: Report of a survey of standards in the U.S.A. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 41(6), 736–743. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2015.08.004.

(Un)Written Tips for New LIS Students (Or, What I Learned In Grad School)

It’s mid-April and so many things are wrapping up. Most of my class projects have been turned in. I’m calculating the last hours I owe at each graduate assistantship. I just landed my first professional position! And—maybe most excitingly—one of my largest projects, the 2015 Symposium on LIS Education just happened last weekend. I’m finding myself with more free time (thank you, Lord) but also more anxiety about the future of my career.

Why not take a minute to look in the rear view mirror and reflect on the past instead of getting caught up on the “what ifs” of the future? I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. Because I am the only graduate student voice on ACRLog right now, I feel an obligation to speak to graduate students’ needs and concerns. Thus, I thought I would write a short reflection on what I have learned in graduate school—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Fair warning: my experience in no way represents all LIS students’ experiences. My hope is that this reflection will give those just starting an LIS program or thinking about starting one some information about what it was like and what I might do differently if I had the chance. Hindsight is 20/20 so why shouldn’t we give others the space to learn from our misunderstandings and mistakes?

It’s important to give some context first. I have had what some might call an abnormal LIS graduate student experience. I attended the University of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) where I focused on instruction and scholarly communication. I finished the program in two years. During the course of my forty credit hours, I took only four online courses. Throughout my time at GSLIS, I held 1-2 graduate assistantships, either in our reference or instruction department. This means that all of my classes were supplemented with practical, tangible experience, including fielding reference questions, performing assessments, instructing workshops, providing internal education, and even attending committee meetings. I was extremely blessed to have these experiences. I was extremely blessed to have the mentorship that these experiences inherently provide. I am a white female in the LIS field and I undoubtedly have privileges others do not. I had support and freedom to uproot my life and move to Illinois and many others do not. It’s important to acknowledge these differences and work to change the structural issues in our current LIS education system to include more diversity, in terms of prior experiences, race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic/ first generation status, and library training.

Below are my tips, in a nutshell. I have to admit that these were influenced by the recent Symposium on LIS Education Keynote (recording forthcoming) by Micah Vandegrift, Brianna Marshall, and Annie Pho entitled “Go Forth- OR- Community is Easy, Change is Difficult”. I’d like to thank them for giving me the courage to share both my successes and my failures.

Don’t underestimate your peers

I can’t overemphasize this enough. I came to GSLIS thinking that I would only really learn from my instructors and my supervisors. While I did end up learning a lot from these people, I learned just as much (if not more) from my peers. These peers—everyone from my colleagues at the information desk to the committee I worked with to plan the symposium—pushed me to think more critically about librarianship as a profession. They challenged me to think in new and complicated ways, through Twitter or weekly coffee breaks. They learned right alongside me, often sharing their newfound knowledge and developing projects with me so that I had some level of fluency in digital humanities or critical pedagogy or some other area I might have never been exposed to. By not only sparking my interest in these topics but also challenging my long-held conceptions about librarianship, they made me a better student, graduate assistant, job candidate, and (I hope) librarian.

Don’t get me wrong. I would advise you to ask your supervisor about their first job. Ask your instructor more about their experience with that topic. But don’t underestimate your peers—near or far. They know what you’re going through. They are trying to digest and grasp all of these new experiences too. Lean on each other. Mentor each other. Complain to each other! But make sure you develop relationships with the students around you. They are the future of this profession and your connection with them will be invaluable.

In short, I think my friend Kyle says it best:

Push yourself

When I moved to Illinois, I didn’t know a single person in the entire state. I left Ohio for professional and personal reasons and I thought moving two states away would fix most everything. All of that sounds great on paper. But when you arrive, you realize that it’s overwhelming and isolating. The first few months were lonely and, frankly, depressing. But I pushed myself. I pushed myself to meet people. I pushed myself to attend community events and get familiar with GSLIS.

After awhile, I found my footing. Eventually, I was able to push myself in new and exciting ways. I took classes that were outside of my comfort zone. I led more workshops and instructional sessions. I took on a more challenging assistantship. I took an international LIS class and met LIS students from around the world. While all of these decisions mean that I have more experience, I also believe they have made me more thoughtful. I can relate to others’ positions more now. I am more willing to try new things and take risks. Everyone has to follow the path that makes the most sense for them. I would just encourage you to find ways to get outside of your comfort zone while you’re on that path.

Take your own stance/ Push your teachers, mentors, and colleagues

You’re going to have a lot of different people tell you a lot of different things. Everyone has a different opinion on everything, from teaching methods to the best tools to use for a specific project. Moreover, many people—even within our small library world—take different high-level stances on things like theory and ethics. These people are people you look up to. They have been in the field for decades and they have professional experiences you won’t have for a long time. Take their wisdom seriously and let it shape and challenge you.

At the same time, hold your own! You have a voice! You are becoming a professional and an expert. They can learn from your experience too. I know it’s challenging and even scary to take a different stance then someone you look up to, but our profession will never grow if you don’t.

A quick note: I have to again emphasize that I have privileges that others do not. I am in no way advocating that this is feasible for everyone. We have bills we have to pay and sometimes challenging someone—especially if they have some level of authority over you—is not feasible. In short, if you have the privilege and space to challenge some of the issues in our profession, think about doing so, especially if they affect people that can’t have a voice.

Know your value

This is especially true in the job search. You’ll hear that jobs are difficult to land and they are. But you have worked really, really hard to be where you’re at. Recognize how incredibly intelligent, talented, and unique you are. I know that the job market is tight and you really just need to get your foot in the door. But remember why you came to library school in the first place—to do interesting, rewarding work. Think less about what kind of job you want and more about what kind of work you want to do. If a position doesn’t seem to give you space to do that work, seriously think about whether it’s right for you. This is all to say that if you believe you are a great library professional, others will often start to believe you are too. Don’t feel like you have to work somewhere were the work is mediocre, the pay is unfair, and the leadership isn’t active (often all in a region where you won’t be happy). You have to be realistic but you should also realize that you are the best advocate you have.

Reflect

All of the things you’re learning are new and exciting. You’re reading new topics and scholars in your courses, you are developing new relationships, and you might even be teaching or programming or doing some other exciting activity for the first time. It all happens so quickly. You will blink and forget those first experiences. In some ways, this is great. You get to improve without ruminating on some the stumbling blocks you had to get over.

At the same time, you risk being able to tangibly see how far you’ve come. Take some time, either weekly, monthly, or even once a semester, and think about all of the skills you have learned and all of the connections you have made. Often writing, discussing, or critiquing something we have done allows us to digest it. We gain new insights and are better able to identify successes and failures, all of which make us better practitioners the next time we do something.

Start healthy practices now

I hope that this doesn’t sound preachy but this is so important! Grad school is a stressful time—financially and emotionally. If you work and attend classes, you have little to no free time. I get all of that. I have lived it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set boundaries. At some point, you and your needs have to come first. If you don’t set boundaries now, it will be even more difficult to suddenly start setting them when you start your professional life.

I know you’d really like to be part of that new project. Or you think it might not be that big of a deal to take on one more hourly project. Maybe you think you can pick up the slack for your group for an assignment. Habits are hard to break! Think critically about how you like to work. Do you lead? Do you let someone else lead? Are you a perfectionist? Think critically about how you communicate. Do you say what you think directly? Are you sometimes passive aggressive? It might sound silly but take note of all of these now. The better you know yourself, the better you can advocate for yourself and your time. The more transparent you can be with yourself (and with others), the more successful and healthy your life will be.

My advice is simple. Be intentional and realistic about how much time you have. SAY NO! You never want to be in a position where you really care about something you volunteered for but you can’t actually do what you said you would. Put your needs first. Realize that you have an identity outside of your professional interests and that’s okay. You are an entire person—with a family, hobbies, and interests. Embrace that now and set boundaries when you can so you can enjoy all of the aspects of your life, personal and professional.

Embrace rejection

Last fall, my proposal for a large international conference was rejected. Many of my friends were attending and I felt foolish for not getting in. When asked about it, I glossed over it like it wasn’t a big deal. The truth is that talking about it more would have helped me grow. I would have been able to think about the quality of my proposal sooner and more effectively. Moreover, this wasn’t a career changer! I can still submit an improved proposal to another conference. I can take their feedback and use it constructively to challenge myself. (Also, sometimes there are just a lot of awesome proposals and the planning committee can only pick so many. Now that I have gone through this process myself, I realize how difficult choosing really is!).

Failure is hard, especially when you care as deeply about the profession as many people do. But see it as an opportunity to learn, grow, and reflect. Embrace it, stand back up, and try again!

Be kind to yourself

I’m not sure if I’m qualified to write about this because I’m not the best at it. It’s a goal I’m working toward. Be patient with yourself. Remember that learning and growth takes time. Remember that you can’t do it all. You can, however, acknowledge your successes and be proud of how far you’ve come. You deserve it.

More Resources Worth Exploring:

Brianna Marshall, Professionalism and Self- Presentation

Brianna Marshall, We Need to Share our Rejections

Jennifer Guiliano, Time, Money, and the Academy

Gennie Gebhart, Five Mistakes I Made in My First Quarter of Library School

Amanda Hope Davis, A Librarian’s Approach to Self-Care

Lix McGlynn, On Overcommitting

Brianna Marshall, Library School Life Lessons

Robin Camille, Hello from New York! My new job, how I got here, and the value of my MLIS